ã€ŠTechno Cultivatorã€‹


 Preface

    Dear readers.

    Firstly a few things about this story so you have an idea what your getting into.

    There¡¯s not that much sex in this story. Plenty of references, but full scenes are rare. Darker things like rape, abduction and child abuse will be referred to and discussed but again, I¡¯ve no intentions of going into any great detail.

    The general plot, characters and humour of this story are angled towards the darker end of the spectrum. So fair warning.

    The genre this story follows is a mix up Sci-fy Fantasy, taking, merging and creating things from a whole multitude of other genres. The main plot basis, cultivation, is from a story genre called Wuxia/Xanxia and is a popular Chinese fantasy fiction. You¡¯ll be seeing a number of odd Chinese metaphors here and there.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    I follow no uploading schedule and I¡¯m a new writer, so don¡¯t expect any Nobel prize writing from me.

    Lastly ... I made a few scaled maps of the world I¡¯m creating, please don¡¯t hate on them, they¡¯re there for you to get an idea of how the world is structured, not as some art exhibition I expect your critique on. I¡¯m as much a master map maker as I am a writer so keep your expectations low ... for both of those things.

    Regards,

    Noddy.

 Chapter 1: The Gateway

    Earth, the blue-green ball that we live on bound by the natural laws of Planetary Bodies and the Heavenly Expanse of space.

    Shackled by the Heavens and Earth we lesser beings, human beings, strive to achieve our everlasting goals. Our biological and genetic imperatives. Survive, Mate, Evolve!

    Like all other base lifeforms, to achieve our goals we strive for power over others, to claim as many mates as possible, to destroy everything that impedes our survival and to expand our territory and influence as far as possible.

    To ensure the continuation of our strongest bloodlines, we would kill all competitors to claim breeding partners of equal or better bloodline.

    Upon reaching sentience, we rapidly evolved our wisdom and intelligence, our greatest tools to aid in our survival and ensure our everlasting glory as the strongest predators.

    However, in just a short few tens of thousands of years, our most powerful aid in our evolution became the fetters of our species. We developed systems by which the strong gain no advantage and the baser instincts of our species began to restrict our growth.

    The greedy developed methods to control wealth and take from the needy. The prideful developed religion and government to control the masses and elevate themselves above others.

    The gluttonous developed agriculture and mining to extort wealth from the world to feed their growth. The fearful developed their armies and weapons to protect their own interests and power.

    Typically, the many systems and authorities would feed our evolution to ensure the strongest carry-on. Unfortunately, the many authorities and arrangements eventually checked and balanced each other.

    The evolution of our species as a whole slowly became stagnant as the world entered a time of ¡®peace¡¯, where many had no need to genuinely struggle and endeavour to survive or mate.

    Time soon came that our populations surged thanks to advances in medical science fed by our fear of death. Our natural resources began to flag under the pressure of our ever expanding selfish desires and our systems and political powers that had always restrained and limited one another began to no longer fight for power, land and wealth in the shadows of the world. They instead chose to wage their wars openly.

    For the first time in countless millennia, our entire species was forced back onto the path of evolution. They were compelled to fight for their own survival and to ensure their own genes were carried on, as the world around them was engulfed in flames and death.

    Our story begins moments before the first nuclear weapons were launched, hidden away deep underneath the Pacific Ocean in a top-secret research laboratory, centred directly on the equator and the national timeline.

    Tucked away within this laboratory is an international group of scientists from every major country in the world. They¡¯d been recruited here by a powerful, unnamed organisation to research and develop an infinite energy source.

    This project came about from the discovery of an almost undetectable space-time anomaly that appeared in December 2012, coinciding with the predicted doomsday foretold by the end of the Mayan calendar.

    After many years of research and development, a viable method using a complicated system of quantum-entangled electrons was developed and enacted.

    One batch of particles remained on Earth, and their quantum pair was fired through the anomalous space-time vortex. Today was the day they shot their first large batch of over a million separately bonded electron particles through at once.

    In the boringly plain mess hall on the second level of the sea-lab sat a group of young men and women attired in similarly boring dull grey jumpsuits. The only flare on their jumpsuits were various patches on their shoulders.

    Some patches depicted a monkey holding a wrench and some a man sleeping on a lightning bolt, a few even had ordinary stationery.

    This group of people was the night shift maintenance crew in charge of the operation and repair of the sea-lab during the scheduled evening hours. Though technically at the bottom of the dark and ever calm ocean, night and day were relative only to when the lights in your sleeping quarters were on and the time on your watch.

    ¡°I¡¯m tellin ya man! There¡¯s some batshit crazy stuff happening in that Aquarius Lab. The research assistant was telling me when they first set up this sea-lab there were all sorts of messed up sea critters getting about. Dude reckoned the whole sea floor here was covered in some weird radiation energy and the fish were visibly mutated and shit.¡± Alan a.k.a. Fatty, a young chubby Japanese man with short black hair and the monkey patch, was busy talking and stuffing his face simultaneously.

    The young lady across from him being sprayed with crumbs and spittle from Alan¡¯s excited eat-talking frowned slightly, pushed away her tray of already unappetizing protein gruel, now sprayed upon by Alan, and shuffled down the table to avoid the direct line of fire.

    ¡°Fatty! Can you not?!¡± rebuked the lass. Her frown distorting her handsome features as she slapped the table to draw Alan¡¯s attention to his poor table manners.

    ¡°Humph! Always so bossy! I¡¯m trying to spread the word here Jess. There¡¯s something they got locked up in the Aquarius Lab and whatever it is, it¡¯s dangerous. I shoulda left the lab on the last boat back to the mainland.¡±

    Clearly, Alan had no intention of listening to Jess as he continued on preaching. James, a young Caucasian man of mid-twenties, sitting next to Jess lifted his head and glanced at Fatty.

    He had long dark brown hair tied into a ponytail reaching halfway down his back and stood at 178 centimetres. He had the stature and bone structure of a bear with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He was at the mediocre stage of slightly protruding belly, but he was still well-muscled.

    While not thin, he could never be called fat but also couldn¡¯t be called fit. He spoke with a lethargic Australian accent and sounded as if he was perpetually tired and was even too lazy to talk. On his shoulder was the patch of a man sleeping on a lightning bolt.

    ¡°Fatty don¡¯t speak so loud. If management found out you¡¯ve been talking about the contents of a restricted lab again, they¡¯d fire your fat ass so fast the whiplash would probably kill you. You know how they are about their secrets.¡± Poor James however now drew the direct fire, Fatty¡¯s spittle and half chewed food sprayed from his mouth as he retorted again.

    ¡°I¡¯m serious James. Don¡¯t you guys get spooked out whenever you¡¯re working near that lab? It¡¯s like my sixth sense is telling me that lab will be the death of...¡±

    BOOM!!!

    Before he could even finish the entire sea-base shook violently and the lights flickered as people were thrown from their chairs and food and cutlery was launched through the air becoming lethal projectiles. Just as everyone was starting to gather themselves up from the floor... BOOM!

    Another shudder ran through the sea base as the lights went out and darkness enveloped everything. People were heard screaming, and the sound of things unknown smashing against walls and dragging across the floor resounded like a war zone in the mess hall.

    James tucked himself into a ball and covered his head as he was launched again through the air colliding with a wall and letting out a grunt of pain. This was followed by a stabbing pain in his arm.

    Soon another boom resounded and the base shuddered again. This repeated itself an unknown number of times as people were mercilessly smashed against walls, each other and even smashed into by loose objects flying around like bullets.

    After an unknown amount of time and the shuddering and quaking of the base stopped. The dark base was then filled with an eerie silence, accompanied only by the occasional groaning sound of metal trying to give way to the enormous pressure of the sea. Everything was enveloped in the darkness of the ocean depths.

    There was no screaming, nor even the sound of breathing until finally, the dull red glow of emergency backup lights filled the halls of the base with the buzzing of their electronics firing up.

    More time passed until finally another sound was heard as James slowly crawled out from beneath a fallen table pushing debris off himself. With a deep breath at finally being freed from under the rubble, he pulled himself to his feet.

    As he slowly limped forward, he began to review the damage to the mess hall that was left in the wake of this disaster.

    ¡®Dead!¡¯ This was James¡¯ first thought as he observed his surroundings covered with the lifeless bodies of numerous other patrons of the mess hall. He dazedly stepped forwards again looking lost and confused until he grimaced and reached for his head.

    ¡°Looks like I might have a concussion.¡± He drawled lazily looking at his bloodied hand. Finally, he grimaced again as he reached for his arm. With a grunt, he pulled his hand away revealing a spoon covered in blood.

    ¡°Fuck! Stabbed to death by spoon!¡± he grunted as he tried to stop the blood from flowing out like a gusset. He clambered forward looking for the emergency kit.

    He reached the hall and stepped over an obviously dead body. It wasn¡¯t obvious because of blood or gore, but because its lifeless, dead eyes were staring up at the ceiling, which is a strangely unnatural thing considering it was laying on its stomach.

    Just outside the mess hall was an emergency kit containing all sorts of useful things for emergencies. ¡®Pretty useless if there¡¯s a breach though.¡¯ thought James as he stumbled over to it.

    This thought was naturally referring to the fact the sea-base was deep enough in the ocean that should the protective pressure barrier on the hull of each section be breached the pressure alone would instantly crush him into a mushy paste.

    He pulled a small round tube from the emergency kit and then gave a pained grunt as he ripped the sleeve from his jumpsuit revealing a well-muscled, slightly tan arm. Along with said arm was a wound the size of a finger slowly pouring out whatever was left of his already reduced blood.

    He popped the cap on the small cylinder in his right hand and then stabbed what looked like a series of needles onto the wound on his upper left arm. A wave of dizzy nausea swept over him, and he nearly passed out. Swaying slightly and leaning his weight on the wall, he pulled the medical device away revealing a rapidly closing wound.

    He sat against the wall to get his bearings and started trying to think.

    ¡®Right, okay, good ... Not going to die right away.¡¯ James thought to himself. He then grunted as he shifted his weight and started trying to move his left arm a little. ¡®Not going to die right now, just trapped at the bottom of the ocean with no power, for fuck¡¯s sake! Okay first up, let¡¯s check for other survivors and make my way to the switch room. I might be able to get power back on.¡¯

    James pushed himself up from the wall then grabbed the med pack out of the emergency kit along with some rope and a handful of ¡®ultra-glow¡¯ glow sticks. Then limping back into the mess while stuffing some unknown pills from the med-kit into his mouth he surveyed the area.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    He soon began checking pulses of anyone that wasn¡¯t mangled, mutilated or stopped bleeding entirely.

    As he was moving about the mess hall, he heard a groan and turned to see some chairs and debris piled against a wall. After pulling a few away, he discovered Jessy pushed into the corner of the wall with blood leaking from the side of her mouth.

    After a quick check, he found that she was breathing laboriously and based on the size of the bruising he saw she appeared to have a broken rib.

    ¡°Ahh shit, Jess this doesn¡¯t look great, okay. Fuck what did they teach us in first-aid?¡± He tried to roll her on her side to empty her mouth of blood so she could breathe and after taking a look through his med-kit, he pulled out a spray can.

    After hurriedly reading the instructions he held it to her nose waiting for an inhale, then sprayed and waited for an exhale. This process repeated for a few times until her breathing started to improve a bit.

    James let out a long breath releasing his built up tension. ¡®Crap looks like that broken rib punctured her lung. I don¡¯t know how good this ¡®e-z breath¡¯ stuff is, but it said on the bottle ¡®repairs damaged lung tissue¡¯ so hears to hoping.¡¯

    It wasn¡¯t too long before Jessy finally moved again making a sound. She had very much the same look as James did when he first climbed up from the floor.

    Dazed, confused, shocked and also in pain, as she reached for her rib after pushing herself up to a sitting position to lean on the wall. She then just sat there looking pale as a ghost as she stared at the devastation around her.

    Now you might think James to be far too calm in this scenario showing no great emotions at all towards the dead people surrounding him, but, deep in his heart was like the tempestuous raging waves created by the gods of the seas. While his actions and demeanour on the outside almost seemed lazy and lethargic his mind was racing and his heart was rampaging, as adrenaline was flooding his system.

    This was the greatest catastrophe he¡¯d ever experienced in his life, and undoubtedly the first time he¡¯d ever stared death in the face. He knew full well he could have been one of these poor saps, spread across the wall like mashed potatoes flung from a spoon or displaying strange poses on the ground like some ultra-flexible double-jointed circus freak.

    His thoughts were at the tipping point of going into shock just like Jessy had, and the only thing preventing that was a steadfast, unbreakable will to live. He knew if he gave up these few moments in shock he may lose a chance to escape the sea-base entirely.

    The last thing he wanted was to still be trapped here the moment the hull gave in, which based on the groaning metal sounds that had continued since he¡¯d awoken, could be anytime soon.

    In his mind, he was trying to figure out if the sea-base was doomed to implode under the sea or if it could survive. He knew that the only way off was the underwater elevator but it may not even be operational now and worse still he needed power for it run which clearly he didn¡¯t have.

    Incidentally, the power also maintained a number of systems that could keep the sea-base operational, provided of course they were still functioning.

    Little did James know, he would be better off staying in the sea-base and getting it operational as up on the surface was a fierce nuclear holocaust. At least in the sea-base, he won¡¯t be instantly turned to ash in the raging radiation storms.

    While this deluge of thoughts was still racing around in his head and he was staring at Jessy who was staring at the corpses, the lights flickered. Soon after the natural humming sounds of the base started to resound as pressure pumps, air-conditioners, lighting, generators and all the other necessities roared back to life. James blanked for a second and then a big grin split his face.

    ¡°Hahaha, Jess we¡¯re gonna live ha-ha.¡± James shook Jessy¡¯s shoulders trying to rouse her from her shock. However, Jessy remained in a disconnected state. As if her mind itself had shut down completely.

    ¡°Jess! Jessy!¡± James tried again to wake her with no success. She¡¯d clearly snapped under the pressure of the situation. This lead James to grow increasingly worried.

    ¡°Bzzzt! Ah hello. Doof doof doof. Fuck how do I turn this fucking thing on! Squeal.¡° The P.A. system of the base buzzed, said some words and then squealed similar to when a microphone approaches a speaker.

    ¡°Ahem Attention to any survives this is ahhm. Hmm. Is that supposed to be blinking red? Boop. WEERRRAAA WEERRRAAA¡° following the sound a button being pressed a siren sprang to life on the other end of the sound system followed by some panicked muttering, frequent and violent swearing and then finally the sound of crashing, bashing and metal being ... ripped? At least that¡¯s what it sounded like.

    At last, the noise of the siren slowly died, as if it had been put in water and drowned as it trailed off. The speaker again returned to the microphone, cleared his throat bashfully, and continued.

    ¡°Ahem! Attention survives. I¡¯ll make this brief and to the point no time to spend on nonsense. Although I¡¯m sure most of you should be well aware by now, seeing as the only way you didn¡¯t notice the sea-base lurching around on the sea floor is if you were already dead. The sea-base has received perilous damage and will soon beee...¡± at the moment the voice trailed off and distracted muttering and cursing could be heard again until finally, the voice exclaimed through the loudspeaker.

    ¡°Any survivors are to meet me at the Aquarius laboratory on level 3 within 15 minutes. Dr Skay Out!¡± This short sentence was followed by what sounded like the microphone being dropped onto the ground and shuffling footsteps and occasional muttering and swearing slowly fading away into the distance.

    James stared at the only remaining speaker in the mess hall that happened to barely be hanging by the wires with a strange and complicated expression. Not only because of the utterly bizarre Dr Skay, of whom he¡¯d never met or heard of, but because of what he¡¯d heard in some of the mutterings.

    Things such as ¡®bomb¡¯, ¡®holocaust¡¯ and ¡®all dead¡¯ as well as some more obscure things like ¡®gone missing?¡¯ and the most often repeated ¡®can¡¯t be good, can¡¯t be good¡¯ that he heard after that brief pause.

    James naturally could piece some of these together. Enough at least to understand there¡¯d most likely been some kind of nuclear bomb that stirred up the ocean enough to effect this deep-sea base.

    As far as he knew, that was the only possible way the sea-base could have been so savagely shaken earlier. Or some kind of ridiculous level of tectonic activity.

    Of course, this wasn¡¯t the only possibility he thought of. His mind raced around things like sea monster or explosion in one of the labs and a plethora of other completely out there theories. After collecting himself for a moment, he looked at Jessy¡¯s blank empty expression and then picked her up in a princess carry along with the med-kit on his shoulder and started heading to the third level of the sea-base were the Aquarius lab was located.

    Along the way, he encountered numerous beaten and battered bodies littering hallways and open rooms but no other survivors. At the airlock to the 3rd level, he stopped in at the locker rooms and grabbed his tool bag.

    With a second thought, he grabbed another backpack from his locker as well. This one containing all sorts of strange knick-knacks and equipment that he usually never needed like his soldering and electronics kit.

    After getting everything else he thought he¡¯d need, he carried the lifeless Jessy and continued on towards the Aquarius lab.

    Inside the Aquarius laboratory, was a large open room with a small control room overlooking it. Inside the control room was a short, balding gentleman in a lab coat covered with blood and a number of other rather suspicious and questionable looking fluids and stains at least one of which looked like it moved.

    On his aged and weathered face sat a pair of glasses that could more aptly be described as binoculars based on the thickness of the lenses. On his head sat another ordinary looking pair of glasses, with the exception of the fifteen different lenses separated inside the primary lens, like oddly placed pot marks.

    He was frantically rushing around the control room mashing buttons in a sequence that to the untrained eye looked random and chaotic as a multitude of flashing red lights, wailing sirens and blaring warning signs cycled through on and off intermittently.

    He¡¯d occasionally look to be reading some graphs or text in a book or on a screen, then immediately begin cursing, throwing things and mashing buttons again. All of this was done while throwing worried looks out the main window of the control room into the central interior of the laboratory.

    What he was looking at no one knows, to regular eyes the lab looked to be completely empty and without the slightest ripple of motion or sound.

    It wasn¡¯t too long later, the echoes of banging were heard on the other side of the laboratory door. The poor Dr Skay nearly had a heart attack as he jumped like a cat after it¡¯s tail was stepped on.

    He then through a reproachful glare at the door as if it had done some great and unpardonable injustice to himself. Squinting his beady old eyes slightly he started mashing buttons while distractedly cursing and muttering as the door slowly opened to reveal James carrying Jessy.

    Walking into the control room, he looked around, while he was curious in his heart, his expression took on a blank poker face.

    This was James¡¯ standard operating procedure upon meeting an unexpected event or involved in something important. He would show few emotions if any, not because he had none but because he found them to distract him from important things that he would miss if he allowed himself to get too emotional.

    As such he often appears bored and apathetic even in this situation where he was entirely confused, absolutely curious and slightly wary of this laboratory. Only once he felt more comfortable with a situation would his rascally nature come forth.

    James walked into the control room observing the madly rushing around Dr Skay as he busied himself with ... something. Although he wouldn¡¯t admit to it, James felt this mad looking old man had no idea what he was doing as sirens blazed, stopped, started again, and then lights flashed everywhere like a very poorly coordinated rave party.

    He couldn¡¯t help but mutter this thought under his breath. Surprisingly the old man¡¯s hearing was like that of a bat as he spun around and fixed his keen beady eyes on James and Jessy.

    ¡°Humph! Humph! Good. You¡¯re not far wrong kid, I¡¯ve got no idea what I¡¯m doing. You see that!¡± The old man harrumphed grumpily. Then deciding to take out some of his pent-up frustrations on James, he started pointing out at the empty laboratory.

    ¡°Yes, I see an empty lab.¡± Replied James unperturbed by the old man¡¯s sarcastic way of questioning.

    ¡°Humph!! Of course you see nothing! That¡¯s because it¡¯s gone! And now there¡¯s something else there, and it¡¯s completely outside of all my knowledge and understanding. What was once a space-time anomaly that could be explained and reasoned with science is now a space-time anomaly that totally bends all the rules of the universe. That¡¯s why to you, there¡¯s nothing. Humph, such ignorance!¡±

    The old man was apparently enraged by the total lack of his abilities to explain what was going on now. In all his years as a researcher, he¡¯d never had something he couldn¡¯t at least theorise an explanation for.

    ¡°Regardless of the situation of your missing invisible thing. What happened to the base?¡± James said disinterestedly. Right now he was incredibly curious about a space-time anomaly but kerbed his interest on that subject to focus more on the subject that was relative to his survival.

    ¡°Humph! Ignorance! Foolish! Kids these days understand nothing. Listen closely boy. War is what happened! Massive nuclear holocaust creating massive ripples of massive power blasting through the massive ocean. Massive amounts of dead people, massive amounts of damage to the planet. But most importantly massive changes to my research and the space-time anomaly. Do you understand? Today was the day we enacted the plan to create free energy for the entire world.

    ¡°Batches of entangled electrons were shipped around the world to every major city. Each batch containing a little from all the others and interconnected to ensure even power flow and energy distribution across the globe.

    ¡°More importantly, every single one of those electrons had an entangled pair, right here in this base. And then wouldn¡¯t you know it the moment we launched the quantum electrons into the anomaly, some fuck-wit launched a nuclear weapon at some other fuck-wit and created an unprecedented feedback loop through the entire system of electrons which then fed back into the anomaly.

    ¡°To make it worse, every idiot with a nuclear weapon decided mutually assured destruction was the only choice, and so they all started throwing fusion and fission bombs at each other like pre-schoolers in a sandbox. Now the system¡¯s been filled with so much energy this happened.¡± The ragingly mad Doctor indicated the empty lab again.

    James was a little startled, not just because of the Holocaust, but also because it seemed like the mad doctor was more worried about his research of his imaginary missing space-time anomaly than the end of all life on earth.

    Dr Skay¡¯s crazy and shrewd little eyes squinted as if he was reading James¡¯ thoughts. He then grumpily continued to explain as he started madly harrumphing, pushing buttons and sprinting about the lab again.

    ¡°Humph idiot! Stupid! Did they not teach you anything in school? Where do you think all that wild energy out there that¡¯s colliding with our electrons is going exactly? It¡¯s going here! Or more precisely it¡¯s going there!¡± he gestured again at the empty lab.

    ¡°When that massive influx of energy collided with the anomaly something beyond our tiny ability to comprehend happened and the anomaly changed, going from our visible spectrum to a whole new spectrum. One I¡¯m barely even able to see. Worse still it mostly continues on beyond that to a level beyond our knowledge or ability to measure.

    ¡°If you don¡¯t understand that, then I¡¯ll say it more simply. The anomaly had safe levels of known radiation before, but now ... it¡¯s become incalculable levels of unknown radiation beyond our ability to comprehend and to make that situation more fucked up, the anomaly is growing as all that radiation up there is feeding it.

    ¡°Now at this point, I don¡¯t even know if we¡¯ll survive its expansion, let alone have the opportunity to worry about getting off this base!¡± Skay stopped and looked wide eyed at the empty space in the lab and started muttering madly, cursing bitterly and mashing buttons as if possessed.

    Then without warning all the loud sirens, flashing lights and blinking warning signs stopped. Everything seemed to freeze, and Dr Skay¡¯s eyes bulged out almost touching the lens of his glasses as he stared fixedly at the lab.

    ¡°Can¡¯t be good, can¡¯t be good.¡± he muttered. Before James had the chance to question more, a bright light enveloped everything, and he could see nothing but white.

    After the light had dimmed the lab remained empty. Curiously, the control room was now also empty, even missing computers and equipment. The only thing remaining of the entire base was the dead bodies and the structure itself.

    Following this unusual event, the hull started to breach and in but a moment the entire base imploded as it was completely crushed by the unimaginable pressure of the sea like a tin can beneath the tire of a truck.

 Chapter 2: Hello (New) World

    ¡°Augh!¡± James let out a grunt as he tried to open his blurry eyes. His body was wracked with pain and felt as if a heavy weight was pressing him to the ground.

    After a short time, his sore eyes finally opened in a teary squint, and he looked down his body at the supple, fit body of Jessy. Uncharacteristically, James took this moment to appreciate the beauty in his arms. It¡¯s not that he¡¯d never observed her much before but more that he¡¯d made an effort not to.

    After numerous hard past experiences, he learned not to engage in those sorts of thoughts or actions with co-workers. Now however, the world had ended, and she was pressed against his chest, how much closer contact could they have without removing their clothes?

    Jessy was a fitness freak yet quite slight in build, in addition, she was somewhat shorter than James at 160 odd centimetres tall. So she could hardly be considered heavy. She had strawberry hair. Literally dyed strawberry red. So her hair had always been quite eye catching.

    Her figure was well endowed with a perky rounded butt. Her face was almost unnaturally delicate and refined which was already abnormal for a trades person who made a living off hard work and hand tools.

    To further add to her charms, her face had a hand full of cute freckles peppered around her cheeks and nose making her truly adorable especially when she blushed. Her hair was held in a messy bun momentarily but would usually hang loosely down her back.

    Her legs were long in proportion to her body and with one of his hands placed on one of her legs he couldn¡¯t help feeling the soft, bouncy muscles and imagining these legs wrapped around his waist as she pulled him into her embrace begging him not to pull out.

    Taking this moment to indulge in looking and imagining, he soon developed a somewhat inappropriate but none the less honest reflection of his observations and fantasies. Unfortunately not more than a handful of seconds later Jessy¡¯s eyes suddenly snapped open looking directly into his.

    Somewhat startled James immediately stopped all movement. Jessy suddenly felt the rock hard protrusion reflecting his thoughts pressing against her mound through the cotton of their jumpsuits and noticed the very inappropriately placed hand that had been massaging its way up her leg towards her ass.

    Her expression then very quickly went through a whole assortment of emotions instantly. From blushing profusely, confused again, what appeared to be excited at one point, then angry and wrathful. Finally, she settling on the combination of angry and wronged.

    Not another second later, a resounding slap rang out as a red handprint appeared on James¡¯ face, and Jessy had jumped up, backing away looking a like a fearful and wronged puppy. All this happened simultaneously with her blushing so much her hair and her freckles lit up like fluorescents.

    It didn¡¯t take too long until James got his bearings, stood up coughed once and looked at her with a somewhat bashful expression.

    ¡°Excellent muscle tone Jess. Ahem ¡­ Very firm.¡± Maintaining his shy and innocent expression James brushed the entire matter aside and started to take account of what had just happened. The first thing he noticed now that he¡¯d pulled his mind from the gutter was the surroundings ¡­ or rather the complete lack of walls in his surroundings.

    At this moment he was standing in a grassy field nearby a dirt road covered in weeds and grass that looked less travelled. Littering the ground around them was a random assortment of equipment, electronics and other gear that was strewn about. About 50 meters away James was the presently unconscious body of Dr Skay lying face down in the grass.

    At his feet were the tool bag and backpack he had been carrying in the lab. About a kilometre from their position was the start of a tree line that slowly developed into a thick forest the further one looked. This forest was ascending the side of a mountain into the sky another 4 or 5 kilometres from his position.

    On the other side of the road was a vast field of what James was assuming was some sort of grain, spreading away as far as the eye could see.

    He was only ¡®assuming¡¯ mostly since he¡¯d never seen this species of grain. It was a striking golden colour and spread like a weed would branching off thousands of times and spreading stalks up into the air.

    Interestingly the stalks looked to reach nearly 5 meters into the air and from the head to the base were covered in offshoots packed with grains. James considered for a second on seeing this sight and tried to guess just how many square meters of farmland in his world would be saved by a single square meter of this world¡¯s grain.

    He guessed at least a dozen square meters. After doing this pointless calculation, he came to the realisation that he was already thinking of this as another world.

    After all, he¡¯d read plenty of fantasy and sci-fi stories before, and he wasn¡¯t and idiot. Although he may be dreaming or this could be some type of afterlife, but he didn¡¯t believe that to be the case.

    It was all far too real, and his body still hurt far too much. So unless he¡¯s gone through time then the only other explanation was through space and this space clearly wasn¡¯t on Earth. After all, Earth only has 1 sun.

    That¡¯s right there are 3 suns in the sky. 1 bright yellow sun and 2 much dimmer bluish suns. He questioned his understanding of the universe when he noticed this. After all, as far as he was concerned, for those suns to be so close to be as noticeable as they were, then logically they must be relatively close to each other in space.

    In other words. They should be consuming each other and engaging in the age old tradition of all massive universal bodies of mass that approach too closely to each other. In even more words they should be affecting each other¡¯s gravity and at least be pulling unimaginably vast solar flares and flaming gases from one another. But no such event was taking place, and the suns in the sky looked as stable and ordinary as if they were each the only sun in this solar system.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡®Must be one hell of a solar eclipse when these suns fall into line.¡¯ James couldn¡¯t help this arbitrary thought as he was squinting at the sky.

    ¡°What the fuck!!¡± an angry yell sounded, and James twisted to see Dr Skay staring into the heavens with a wrathful, angry expression. His hand was rapidly flicking the side of his 15 lensed glasses.

    Clearly, he was incredibly upset at not being able to explain this phenomenon. ¡°Absolute bloody nonsense! A dream! An Illusion! Anything!¡± he continued to profane, mumble and wrathfully shake his fist at the sky after pinching himself a few times and slapping himself a few more.

    To confuse matters even further a man came shooting across the sky from above the grain field. Or to be more accurate he was running through the air with an unusual stepping pattern, which to James looked like a chaotic mess of trying to skip and run simultaneously.

    His faced immediately assumed a tired stoic look as he always did in unusual circumstances like these, as if he¡¯d seen it all a hundred times. This was a natural defence mechanism he¡¯d developed over the years and was a reflex for him like scratching an itch. Meanwhile, his mind was operating madly trying to decipher the current situation.

    ¡®Well if this is another world surely it¡¯s not unacceptable to see flying people ¡­ Surely!¡¯ He tried reasoning to himself. As opposed to his emotionless poker face, that miserable old bastard Dr Skay was flipping out. Inversely to Skay¡¯s wrathful expression and cursing, Jessy appeared even more confused and frightened than ever and quickly approached James and hid behind his back in an attempt to become invisible.

    First the base and now this, it was all a bit too much for the usually outgoing Jessy.

    ¡°Over here!¡± The flying man yelled out, and his voice echoed across the flat plains of the fields like thunder. Shortly after, a handful of other people came running over. This time at least not through the sky, but on foot across the fields.

    Although not running across the sky they inexplicably ran across the tops of the grain as if they were light as a feather on the wind which was no less mind boggling to James and his companions.

    It wasn¡¯t too long before a middle-aged man of about 40 led a group of young men towards the trio until finally, they stopped at the road looking over the debris of James¡¯ space-time journey that lay scattered about the grassy field. For that brief moment when the wind blew nothing but the sounds of rustling grain fields and an old man¡¯s incessant rage filled rantings could be heard as James and the group of people stared at each other.

    During that brief intermission of staring, James felt as if that middle-aged man was peering directly into his soul and an overbearing pressure fell upon him as if the gravity in this entire area had increased.

    At that moment he stopped thinking entirely, afraid his thoughts were being read, or some other obscure mystical fantasy setting was currently happening. On the other hand, Jessy standing behind him seemed to become even more deathly afraid and clutched onto the back of his jumpsuit in much the same manner as anxious little girls clutched to the pant leg of their father when encountering strangers. It was truly adorable.

    ¡®Ahhh ¡­ Test, test, testing. 1. 2. Can you read my mind old man?¡¯ thought James to himself. Following the lack of any response or change in the man¡¯s expression, James concluded to himself that he was being paranoid and it was acceptable to resume normal brain functions. At which point his mind finally caught up and realised his legs were trembling from that absurd pressure.

    ¡®OK ¡­ so the dude can fly. That¡¯s new. He looks human and all, so there¡¯s that going for us. He doesn¡¯t look cannibalistic, but you never know with these things. Those young fellows behind him appear curious and cautious, so it¡¯s safe to assume we¡¯re all somewhat wondering what¡¯s going on and who¡¯s whom. Ok, let¡¯s try talking to him. I need information the most right now!¡¯

    Following this line of thought, he cleared his throat and assumed a friendly and harmless expression before asking politely. ¡°Err, excuse me, it appears we came here by accident can you tell me where we are?¡±

    Following his question, the middle-aged man grinned with a strange glint appearing in his eye and nodded enthusiastically and then said ¡°Good! Good! I like this one, very sensible for a Stepper.¡± Continuing on from his numerous head nods and ¡°Good goods¡± the pressure in the area suddenly disappeared as if it had never existed. The man then started to speak to James.

    ¡°It¡¯s your good fortune to have World Stepped near my fields, many other places, you would have been immediately enslaved and sold to a dealer. Now, gather your things, we¡¯re taking you back to the clan.¡±

    ¡°Wait, world stepped? Clan?¡± James already had an inkling of what world stepping was but didn¡¯t know what to think about them referring to a clan. The first thought to pop into his head was the idea of some kind of cult or creepy middle of the woods Amish township with no modern amenities.

    ¡°No questions filthy commoner. You¡¯ve not even developed the first level of spirit cultivation, and you¡¯ll do as your damn told!¡± An obnoxious and arrogant looking youth about the same age as James sneered at him from behind the middle-aged man.

    Following his rude interruption, a heaven-defying pressure descended on James and the hiding Jessy. Although James could just barely withstand it with all his strength, Jessy was immediately pressed flat to the ground with an ¡°Oomph!¡±

    James¡¯ face quickly resumed his lazy appearance, even though inside he was furious, confused and in pain from his legs feeling to be on the verge of snapping. He now realised this pressuring force was coming from these people and worse still this particular young fellow clearly was not as amicable as the flying man.

    Nor did this guy carry the curious and wary expressions of the other fellows, but instead carried himself as if a young prince with his eyes on the top of his head.

    Not a moment passed before with a wave of Flying Man¡¯s hand the pressure coming from the young man had blown away like a gentle breeze. Following which he sighed and looked somewhat helplessly at the young man. Then his face assumed a stern frown as with another wave, the young man was blown away like a leaf in a storm through the grain fields.

    ¡°Humph! Boy show some respect for our guests and don¡¯t lose your old man¡¯s face so effortlessly. Can¡¯t even make a commoner bend his knee when oppressing him with your full spirit power. Truly disappointing.¡± He sighed again and turned to James with a slightly sterner expression than earlier.

    ¡°Young man your questions will be answered at the clan. Suffice to say for the present that this world is called the Ascension Star and is a nexus for abnormal Heavenly laws intimately connecting thousands of other universes. Now come along. The Clan Elder will be wanting to meet any Steppers.¡±

    After saying such, the middle age man grew blurry in James¡¯ vision and appeared like a ghost not more than a step away from him. He reached out and grabbed James and the once again unconscious Jessy then turned and shot into the air like an arrow, holding Jessy over one shoulder and James under the opposite arm as he started making that chaotic and unusual stepping pattern and running through the air.

    The young men that had come running from the grain fields started picking up the debris and objects from the anomaly sight and flitting back across the stalks of the grain field. Strangely they had a few different methods of moving as some appeared to skate across the grain and others seemed to be ¡­ surfing.

    During this time the unsuspecting and previously entirely ignored old Dr Skay was also lifted from the anomaly zone like a piece of debris and was carried back across the grain field screaming, cursing and ripping out the scant remaining grey hairs dotting his wrinkled head.

    The poor youngster who¡¯d picked him up was permanently scarred and somewhat anaemic looking with blood running down his chin after the trip back to the city, in which he learned of methods of cussing someone so badly they would spit blood and see stars.

    And so, James and his companions, not even having taken a step yet, were dragged away into this strange new world of Ascension Star.

 Chapter 3: Elder Gau

    Abnormal! If James were asked to describe his present experience travelling under the arm of a middle-aged man skip-jumping through the sky, he would start with that word. Closely followed by uncomfortable, not solely because of the lack of any safety restrictions to prevent his death from falling and not even so much because bugs kept hitting him in the face and the wind burned his cheeks, but mostly because this powerful but amiable-seeming middle-aged man was constantly rubbing his nipples in flight.

    Now, James has never said any bad words against gay men, but being abducted and molested in mid paranormal flight was definitely one of the most uncomfortable moments in his life. The only saving grace was that while molesting him the man was also rubbing and squeezing the taught ass of the unconscious Jessy.

    At this juncture, James could only take solace in his hope that this older man was gentle because he had the strength of 10 men and his arm didn¡¯t even budge an inch no matter how hard James struggled. He was starting to wish he¡¯d passed out along with Jessy. At least she wouldn¡¯t be having nightmares about this in the near future.

    Even more aggravating than this was that it seemed all the wind just parted like the red sea as he travelled, leaving his clothes almost entirely unruffled.

    James, of course, thought this ability to be of the greatest use in skip-jumping flight. Regrettably, either by the lack of ability to, or for childish amusement, the man¡¯s wind splitting technique seemed to have no effect on James. So by the time they¡¯d travelled across the kilometres wide patch of grain he¡¯d swallowed bugs in the dozens and was pretty sure his nipple had a blister from all the rubbing.

    To make matters worse he couldn¡¯t even complain or beg mercy because by coincidence or the flying man¡¯s design, every time he opened his mouth he¡¯d end up swallowing something he wished he hadn¡¯t. Curiously despite these bugs looking like abnormal hairy skin growths that snapped off a sick man¡¯s body and grew wings, every time he was forced to swallow one a strange warmth spread through his abdomen like he¡¯d just swallowed a shot of strong Russian vodka.

    It got to the point at the end of the trip over the grain field that his entire body felt like it was aflame and not in a kinky bedroom kind of way, more in rubbing your whole body with hot sauce kind of way.

    Little did he know this was his first actual step into the world of cultivation and at this moment the man dragging him through the sky had a baffled and curious expression on his face. After all, he owned and administrated this grain field and every grain field for 30km in every direction and being said owner, he¡¯d never seen so many Golden Grain Fly¡¯s in a single area in the last 20 years he¡¯d managed them.

    ¡®Just catching five or six in the time span of a year is miraculous, but since the moment this kid entered the grain field with me they¡¯ve been flocking to him, and he¡¯s eating them like lollies. This kid¡¯s got the luck of the gods.¡¯ Was Flying Man¡¯s first thought watching James being forced to swallow these flies.

    He knew full well that these Golden Grain Flies were incredibly difficult to catch being fast as a bolt of lightning and he generously decided not to try to interfere in this boy¡¯s fortuitous encounter. He also knew if he tried to grasp one he¡¯d spend half a day chasing it through the fields.

    Never would James have imagined that the assortment of painkillers and pills he took back in the sea-lab would be the cause of the grain bugs fanatic desire to dive straight into his mouth. Needless to say, none survived his stomach acid, but the feeling of swallowing them and the burning feeling spreading through his body remained unwelcome by James.

    It took not even 30 minutes to travel nearly 30km to a nearby city surrounded by grain fields in every direction. The grain filled landscape was marred only by an occasionally rocky hill and the rivers and streams cutting along like the tracks of a giant serpent.

    The city itself was rather odd because it appeared to consist of thousands of grain silos reaching into the sky with only a few tens of thousands of houses varying from shanties and shacks to villas and mansions with small areas of forest or extensive gardens growing various strange and obscure looking plants.

    James judged them to look a lot like herbs and shrubbery with the occasionally glowing plant sparsely separated throughout and what seemed like a feeble bluish mist hovering over them. James couldn¡¯t help think these gardens appeared bizarrely big for a personal herb garden.

    All in all, James judged this city to more aptly be described as a grain silo township covering only two or three hundred odd square kilometres in total. Most of that being divided by the private forests and gardens of the handful of palace-like villas.

    Having finally arrived the flying man suddenly stopped in mid-air. James immediately resumed his poker-face not knowing how to process this development.

    Previously the flying man had always been in motion while flying, so James had assumed he needed to maintain momentum to remain airborne, to his surprise the man just stood in the air unmoving. Occasionally strange distortions spreading out from the base of his feet like ripples on a lake.

    James didn¡¯t have to wait long to find out what the flying man was waiting for. He could soon faintly hear the rapidly approaching cussing and screaming of old man Skay coming from the grain fields.

    Although this brief moment of respite was nice, James¡¯ body was growing even more uncomfortable, as he was starting to turn red faced. Undoubtedly it wasn¡¯t due to the nipple rubbing, but from his agitated nerves that felt like they were on fire. He wanted to start asking the flying man some more questions when just as he opened his mouth the man took off again in the direction of one of the bigger mansions in the city.

    Noticing the boys plight the man skip-jumped his way to a large well-maintained garden in the back of the mansion and threw James into a rock pond covered with slushy ice, saying only ¡°Stay there and adapt¡± before shooting off into the mansion.

    Almost immediately James felt a refreshing cooling feeling flow through his skin into his body, slowly comforting his emblazoned nerves. After this immediate release from the intense discomfort, James felt a dizzy wave before falling into a deep sleep leaning on the edge of the pond.

    When he finally awoke, he was lying on a marble bed staring at a strange ceiling, and despite everything he¡¯d been through recently, he felt unusually great.

    This was unusual because his second biggest vice only marginally falling behind sex was sleeping. He felt so good in fact it almost felt unnatural, like he wasn¡¯t even in his own body. James seized this first quiet moment he¡¯d had to try and figure out what in the hell was going on exactly.

    ¡®Firstly ¡­ portal? Wormhole? Surely something of this nature. Although I¡¯ve had no experience of such things and in fact had never even heard of any factual or theoretical evidence from so-called theorist and physicist experts on Earth supporting any such things, but I¡¯m sitting right here, and all those experts are currently ashes amongst the nuclear holocaust. For now, I¡¯ll just forget about what I can¡¯t know and think about things I know for certain.¡¯

    ¡®Secondly. This is definitely another world. As the multiple Suns can attest to. Also, the exotic plant and insect life can be some supporting evidence. Strangely everyone is wearing weird clothes. Initially, I took no notice of this anomaly as it was surely the most insignificant thing I had on my mind immediately after arriving here. But now that I think back to the flying man and his gang they all wore robes of monks or priests.¡¯

    He suddenly realised this was why his original notion of a clan was a cult of some sort. After all, isn¡¯t it common knowledge that cultists wear robes.

    ¡®Returning from that random deviation, I need to think about the people here. More specifically what they could do. Although they looked and sounded exactly like regular humans, they could do astonishing things that looked and can only be described as ¡­ magic.

    ¡®For starters, the flying man running on air. That unexplainable pressure these people could exude at a moments notice, and also dispel if I remember correctly. The flying man dispersed the pressure of that despotic dick with a wave of the hand.¡¯ Clearly, James had some aggrieved thoughts of the ass-hat who tried to pressure him and knocked Jessy to the ground.

    ¡®Also odd was them speaking English ¡­ a whole different world and they just happened to speak a language developed on Earth from thousands of years of it evolving and mashing together with other languages. After all, most of English was based off a brutally butchered Latin and God knows where Latin evolved from. Probably grunts and squeals if I were guessing. Something is definitely strange about the nature of language in this world.¡¯

    James then briefly paused his inner monologue as a terrifying thought struck him.

    ¡°Mind reading?¡± He mumbled to himself aloud.

    ¡®No, impossible.¡¯ Returning to his inner monologue, he tried to reason with himself. ¡®There¡¯s no way mind reading could just learn an entire language from my head in an instant. There must be some other paranormal phenomena at the root of this.¡¯

    Back on Earth mind reading was James¡¯ greatest irrational fear, with zombie apocalypse coming in as his close second. His list of rational fears was even fewer with only one fear, and that was bread from the biological imperative to reproduce. The fear of being alone.

    As he sat up on the bed to start organising all these rapidly occurring thoughts, the door to the room opened followed by the entrance of the constantly enraged at everything and always mumbling Dr Skay and a youth who¡¯d accompanied the flying man he¡¯d met on the day they arrived.

    For the moment it seemed that Dr Skay was far calmer than when James first met him. He was almost shocked to see him not cussing at something whether living or inanimate.

    ¡°You¡¯re awake that¡¯s good. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve got a lot of questions so let¡¯s go see Elder Gau.¡± The youth noticed James sitting up and with that brief sentence he turned on his heel and walked back out with Dr Skay in tow muttering something about ¡®gods?¡¯ ¡®heavenly laws¡¯ and other unintelligible words and phrases.

    James, once again lost in the situation, could only follow along as the youth travelled a winding and confusing path through the mansion.

    Along the way James encountered few people, and of those few they passed in the halls most were wearing the clothes of servants and only moved aside bowing their heads silently as they passed. Dr Skay seemed completely disinterested in this matter, but James was secretly a little shocked inside.

    His mind spinning as he tried to figure out just how rich and powerful this ¡®Elder¡¯ was to have such a huge mansion with so many servants attending it.

    After a few minutes of confusing travel, they came to a large hall lined with tables and seats enough to fit a few hundred people. More interesting was the tables and seats were in the style of a Chinese like setting, with cushions on the floor instead of chairs and the tables sitting only a few feet off the ground.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    Sitting at the main table in the hall was an old and wizened looking man with a full white beard reaching down into his lap. His snow-white eyebrows were so long as to droop halfway down his face almost looking like bangs. The rest of the hair on his head was shaved gone, and he wore a set of purple robes embroidered with a red anvil and hammer.

    Most shocking was his eyes. When James first met those eyes, he felt like he was staring into the clear night¡¯s sky containing endless shining and flickering stars. Now he really felt as if his mind was being read as a shiver ran up his spine, and a cold sweat broke out on his back.

    Although he felt no apparent pressure like when he first met the flying man he felt a profound and penetrating psychological pressure. His face immediately become impassive as if he noticed nothing.

    Contrary to James first impression and reaction Dr Skay almost couldn¡¯t contain himself as he ran up placing the odd glasses with fifteen inner lenses on his face and flicking through the lenses as he stared directly into the old man¡¯s eyes.

    Standing behind the Elder was the flying man wearing casual grey robes with a blue embroidered hammer and anvil. Accompanying the flying man and the elder was that brash arrogant young man, whom at this point James was assuming was flying man¡¯s son or some similar relation.

    He also wore grey but had a sword crossing over the anvil instead of a hammer embroidered on his robes. Seeing the pair¡¯s reaction to the Elder, one looking disinterested and the other looking like he was about to dissect him, the lad¡¯s face began to turn red, and he was trembling as if any moment he would erupt.

    Before the chance came however, Jessy finally arrived in the main hall. She had changed clothes into something resembling a black Chinese Cheongsam with her long red hair hung in a wavy style down her back.

    The moment she entered all eyes but Dr Skay and the Elder¡¯s diverted to her as if drawn there by the natural laws of the universe. Even the usually reserved, floor observing servants in the hall couldn¡¯t stop their attention being drawn.

    Although the dress was long the slice running up the side from the bottom to the hip revealed almost the entire white slender, toned leg from the flat shoes to the inner thigh with every step showing almost everything.

    But only almost. As if to just tease the eyes, the moment the leg was almost entirely revealed, the next step was already hiding it back beneath the cloth like some tortures cruel trick of the Gods.

    The cheongsam, although drawing a significant amount of interest to her beautiful legs also didn¡¯t skimp out on displaying her other charms. It fit to her tightly, almost as if a second skin. Her ample bosom pushed against the fabric of the dress as if in an attempt to escape and the air was just chilly enough in the hall to exhibit a reaction here.

    Also helping with this response was the many lustful eyes trained on her as she strode into the room and against her will she felt her nipples hardening into small points, clearly visible through the dress.

    Most importantly, was her physiological reaction as many pairs of eyes trained in on her, she blushed. The moment she started to blush she showed a very shy smile and the light was stolen from the world and all that was left was her and her alone.

    Almost every male in the hall and amusingly some females groaned slightly in synchronous as if they just came a bit and a little piece of their soul was stolen.

    The most obvious and powerful reaction in the hall was that of flying man¡¯s son, who¡¯s entire body shook. His eyes filling with unbridled greediness and desire. The evident tenting of his robes and dark splotch in that area went entirely unnoticed by him as he stared and his unfulfilled lust just grew stronger.

    After a short moment of Jessy¡¯s stunning visage, James regained his senses and began counting backwards from 100 in sevens to distract his mind and reduce the pressure in his underwear. The arrogant young man then promptly caught up to the situation as well as he waved his hands about frantically using some cultivator magic to eliminate the evidence of his embarrassing accident.

    Once this brief and enlightening interlude ended, James turned back to the Elder who was being examined everywhere by Dr Skay. Skay seemed so excited he almost reached out to touch the man¡¯s eyeball but held himself back at the last moment, coughed bashfully at his loss of control and then unceremoniously sat down on one of the three cushions in front of the Elder.

    James and Jessy glanced at each other and then quickly followed suit. At this moment flying man¡¯s son remembered himself and started to flush red with fury again.

    ¡°Filthy weakling peasants, don¡¯t even know to greet their seniors properly. No cultivation even though there so old, no respect for their betters. Disgusting. At least one will be good for some fun later.¡± Although he appeared to be muttering quietly, he was purposely loud enough in his mutterings for the trio to hear.

    Following this provocation, Jessy flushed red and looked as if she was getting ready to launch herself across the table and bit the man¡¯s face off. Before she had the chance, a grin spread across James¡¯ face as he remembered when he first met this punk and what flying man said to him before he got launched into the grain field like a pebble.

    ¡°Piss-ant side show card trick magician. Can¡¯t even cow a powerless commoner to his knee with all your strength. Pathetic.¡± James retorted calmly as he maintained an evil looking grin and stared straight into flying man¡¯s son¡¯s eyes.

    Following this verbal counter-attack flying man¡¯s son looked ready to launch himself at James and beat him to mush. The Elder smiled slightly and not giving him a chance he waved his hand speaking with a soft aged voice.

    ¡°Xanzu. You can return to the Sword Hall and ask Elder Grace to teach you how to control your spirit aura again. Don¡¯t come out until you withstand a blow from the 4th Golem. Go.¡± With that command, the fury and hatred for James glaring in Xanzu¡¯s eyes grew even more intense.

    Despite his desire to break James¡¯ back and throw him into the slum district, he couldn¡¯t refuse the Elder¡¯s commands. Turning to the Elder and Flying man, he clasped his left fist in his right hand brought them to his chest and bowed slightly to the Elder before letting out a final harrumph.

    As he left, he glared one last time at James and Jessy then marched out through a side door looking like he was ready to kill someone.

    ¡°Finally! Let¡¯s start, I have at present around 3000 questions I¡¯ve written down, and with any luck the more you answer, the more I¡¯ll have. I should progress to at least 10,000 in the next twelve hours!¡± Excitedly Dr Skay interrupted the slightly tense atmosphere and pulled out what looked to be a piece of flexible rolled up plastic.

    This entire time he was completely oblivious to all other things but his desire to learn. It was truly insatiable and if the people of this world ever observed Skay¡¯s abnormal attitude they would be filled with envy, jealousy and hatred!

    To a martial cultivator, a strong willpower and drive are needed to strive forth and grow stronger and although on average many had stronger hearts and willpower in this world than on Earth very few would ever match up to Dr Skay¡¯s insatiable greed for knowledge.

    Almost like a machine, no baser desire could overpower this need to grow by learning. It was almost as if some mutation appeared in his genetic makeup leaving only this one need to be fulfilled. Although he partook in other baser instincts such as lust and gluttony on occasion, it was only when he was blowing off some steam multi-tasking his body¡¯s need to relieve stress while his mind continued to spin in full gear working on 100¡¯s of interconnected problems and simultaneous.

    It was this drive and willpower that initially won him the right to lead the research team on the Infinite Energy Project and was something cultivators tried to cultivate as much as they cultivated their mystical powers.

    The Elders eyes seemed to twinkle even more brightly as he stared at the doctor. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but what the elder thought of him was the last thing Skay cared about. Right now, he must have answers and with a flick of the wrist Skay¡¯s rolled up plastic became a rigid A4 sheet and turned black. Then after a moment it appeared to start projecting something onto the screen. This was clearly some kind of personal computer pad.

    James wasn¡¯t aware, but for the last three days, he¡¯d been in a coma after he passed out in the ice pond.

    During these three days, while the Elder waited for all three of them to awaken, Skay had been furiously running experiments with some roughshod made equipment he assembled from the random parts that came through the anomaly with them.

    Using this equipment he slowly tried to get some understanding of this new world, and finally, this opportunity had come to learn about the thing he was most interested in. Magic! Or rather not magic, it was hard to tell at this point which was exactly why he was so eager at this moment.

    He began by asking the Elder if he would answer a series of ¡®yes/no or I don¡¯t understand¡¯ questions, and so began a marathon Q&A. They were all seemingly simple until after nearly an hour the questions changed to short answer questions and Skay became even more excited and fanatical as he started asking things like how they measure distance or time or volume.

    These issues then progressed further into increasingly advanced topics about political environment of this world and region divisions and currency system and then finally ¡­ superpowers/magic/paranormal or whatever the hell it was, which many questions and answers before this point had slowly been building up to.

    Many of these topics were far beyond James¡¯ ability to retain or understand from a single 12-hour discussion, but he managed to learn a great deal about the basics of this world.

    During this whole time the Elder as if infected by Skay¡¯s madness and zeal become even more in-depth in answering and only helped to generate more questions. His eyes were glowing with a madness once their discussion ended for the first break after 12 hours.

    At this point in time, James¡¯ eyes were bloodshot, and he looked as if he¡¯d aged ten years and lost 20kg. Upon returning to his quarters late in the night, his mind raced, trying to organise and remember everything he could that he¡¯d managed to understand.

    The most important thing he¡¯d learnt was that this world was in an entirely different universe to Earth and in this universe, a person¡¯s mind could alter the natural laws around them by training what cultivators here called their ¡®spirits¡¯.

    As their progress of cultivation advances, the control they wield over the natural laws of the universe becomes stronger and stronger. Eventually, a cultivator can reach the stage where, as the Elder described it, ¡°Literally part the oceans with a sneeze, obliterate mountains with a casual fart and even pull stars from the sky like stealing your neighbour¡¯s most precious apple in the dark of night.¡±

    The last part was a strangely particular metaphor by the Elder, with an even stranger glint in his eye as he said it. Hearing this Jessy began to blush a little as she inferred a weird connotation which James ultimately couldn¡¯t understand.

    This is the goal of all cultivators. Not to steal their neighbour¡¯s apples, naturally, but to reach this godlike level of power and stand above all others. When hearing this part James and Jessy looked at each other, their bloodshot eyes shining brightly, after all, who doesn¡¯t want to wield god-like power?!

    James also learnt that many influential cultivators gather together and found cultivation schools, referred to in this world as a Sects. Generally, depending on the strength of the founder, a sect starts off small and slowly grows over time as more members join and fight to secure resources for the Sect and its future growth.

    In order to encourage the strongest cultivators to grow into future leaders and to maintain the sect¡¯s power, wealth and glory, disciples will have to battle with fellow disciples and cultivators to earn a larger share of the resources. While plentiful compared to outside the sect, the resources available to sect members were still spread thin.

    That, of course, is a rule of thumb, because there is nowhere impervious to the treacherous shadows of greed pride and envy. Usually, as a Sect grows too fat with resources and corruption, it starts to weaken until another stronger Sect rears up and consumes them.

    James also quickly understood that a clan in this world is referring to a large family that is similar to a sect in structure. The main difference being the majority of members are related to the main bloodline of the family and enjoy the richest of the resources.

    Non-blood related members are generally only employed or enslaved by the clan and are more of peripheral members. Clans often hold a significant amount of power in their circle of influence, as attested to by this entire city and a good deal of land in the 50km radius being under the control of the Gau Clan.

    Another question that James had been wondering about was eventually explained when Elder Gau started to describe ¡®World Steppers¡¯.

    ¡°Generally the majority of Steppers pass through the fixed Gateways to this universe from their own worlds to train or travel to other Universes connected to Ascension Star. It¡¯s rare for non-cultivators such as yourselves to travel here at all and mortals commonly only appear through a Gateway that randomly generates.

    ¡°Usually, when anyone cultivator or otherwise, comes through a random Gateway, they will be captured and enslaved by bandits, slave traders or unscrupulous types. In this case, you¡¯re just lucky that Hao witnessed your anomaly patrolling the fields and not another group.¡±

    Flying man or rather Hao who¡¯d been patiently standing behind Elder Gau for countless hours chuckled then muttered some proverb about ¡®luck can also be considered a strength¡¯ as he fixed a gaze onto James.

    James had no idea what that was in reference to and just assumed he was referring to his timely arrival at their Gateway. Never suspecting this was regarding the dozens of Golden Grain Flies he swallowed. If he could, he would never remember that experience and forget everything between their arrival to this world and waking up in the mansion ¡­ for a multitude of disturbing reasons.

    James felt Hao¡¯s occasional glances were far too often and lengthy during this meeting. Every time it swept past him he shivered inside and subconsciously crossed his arms to protect his chest.

    Soon he could no longer focus as his strained and overloaded mind calmed and began drifting into sleep.

 Chapter 4: Mind Reading Monoliths?

    -Back at the Gateway site-

    ¡°Argh ¡­ it fuckin¡¯ hurts.¡± A now very thin and sickly looking Fatty Alan crawled out of a small ditch at the field where no more than a few days ago James and his two companions had awoken. He stared at his surroundings and then at the starry night sky and then at his bloodied jumpsuit.

    The night was dark and moonless, which in this case was very unfortunate for Fatty, seeing as the two moons are usually always on opposing sides of the planet. Fatty, being no astronomer, missed his chance to recognise the entirely different night sky and remained completely oblivious to the strange glow of the stars in this world.

    Most odd and the thing Fatty most definitely should have picked up on, was that on this night all the stars twinkled in an orderly and seemingly rehearsed manner. Their twinkling started from the most northern star which would shine a little brighter then dimmer as the closest star south of them then shined and dimmed.

    This process repeated until it looked like a Mexican wave of stars shining as it swept across the sky. Then it would go through endless reiterations of this trend from north to south.

    Fatty having no interest in such things gave no attention to the peculiarities of the night sky, which if he¡¯d observed, may have chosen differently from his pending action.

    ¡®Where the hell am I? Something happened on the base. Fuck, I said it didn¡¯t I? I¡¯ll bet they had some monster locked away in that lab. It must have got loose. How the fuck did I get here though?¡¯ he thought to himself.

    Glancing around he noticed a floating light moving through the tree line in the distance. Thinking it was someone with a torch, he struggled up and moved towards that unknown light.

    It wasn¡¯t long until he passed the tree line following the light into the forest and the direction of the huge mountain James had noticed on his arrival.

    -Gau Clan Mansion-

    Whoosh! James shot out of bed feeling great. For the first time since as far back as his memory served, he felt good and didn¡¯t feel like sleeping more. Gentle sunlight filled the room and birds sang as the refreshing smell of early morning dew filled his nose.

    Through the window he could make out the courtyard, in the centre of which was the ¡®ice slushy¡¯ pond and beyond that the beginnings of a forested landscape with cobblestone and dirt paths leading in and out of the tree line.

    As perfect as this scenery was, James¡¯ mind was distracted from it, and filled with hundreds of conflicting thoughts. As much as they talked with Elder Gau yesterday the majority of questions were forwarded by the very science minded Dr Skay and a good deal of them even the Elder couldn¡¯t answer.

    Some of them the Elder didn¡¯t even understand, and James made no effort to comprehend, instead focussing on things he thought mattered more. However, the greatest source of his conflicting thoughts was his growing suspicions.

    From what he could deduce, in this world cultivators were kings and anyone who didn¡¯t cultivate or had no spirit energy, himself for example, had no choice but to acquiesce to their betters. Moreover, even though commoners could seek out a meagre existence working in fields or other mediocre jobs, they would never truly be successful in this world.

    Regardless of their endeavours, they would never amount to anything. The strong ruled the weak to accumulate resources and the feeble served the mighty for protection. Not just to be protected by from other strong cultivators with less than noble ideals, but also to be protected from nature itself.

    ¡°Humans aren¡¯t the only cultivators in this universe.¡± James remembered this phrase said by Hao when Skay was questioning something regarding plant and animal life.

    ¡®Not the only cultivators, good god, does he mean even a household pet can gain the strength of a godly being?¡¯ James squinted slightly trying to see if the singing birds in the forest had supernatural powers. Other than perhaps being a little bigger and a bit more colourful looking, they perfectly resembled lorikeets and seemed just like Earth birds.

    Though this was cause for concern, it wasn¡¯t his most vexing issue. ¡®Why? If the strong rule the weak and us mortals are but ants to cultivators, for what reason did they bring us here?¡¯ This was James¡¯ most immediate thought in this situation.

    Although he hadn¡¯t considered it before, now that he understood the nature of people in this world he couldn¡¯t help wonder just what this Gau clan wanted and grew even more suspicious of them.

    It wasn¡¯t long after this thought that a middle-aged man wearing grey robes with a black embroidered sword and anvil on his left chest threw open the door and strolled into the guest room. After looking at James once he assumed a somewhat domineering posture with his hands on his hips and chest stuck out looking down his nose.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go scum!¡± With a derogatory remark thrown out he turned and started marching out of the room paying no mind at all to James. James displayed no expression assuming his trademark dead fish eyes and hurried out to catch up to the Gau Clan disciple.

    James could tell at a glance this fellow was certainly not as amiable as Hao and made no attempt to converse with or question him at all. He¡¯d almost find this posturing amusing if he hadn¡¯t just been considering how suspicious the Gau clan¡¯s actions were.

    After moving through the mansion, he found himself back in the main hall. Seated at the main table was Elder Gau who looked markedly older and somewhat stressed. Behind him was the figure of Hao standing there as always with an odd expression on his face as he stared at Skay. Even the servants in the hall looked somewhat bemused.

    As opposed to everyone else¡¯s strange expressions and the Elders rapid ageing, Dr Skay looked 10 years younger and had a blistering smile splitting his face as he rapid fired more questions followed by enthusiastic mutterings and the now oddly rare cursing.

    James started to wonder if the Elder had been trapped here all night answering questions, or rather, trying to respond to questions, seeing as Skay¡¯s inquiries were vastly more complicated than yesterday¡¯s.

    As James walked forward, he remembered a conversation yesterday regarding etiquette in this world and clasped hands to bow to the Elder and taking a chance to interrupt Skay.

    ¡°This Junior greets Senior Gau.¡± Seeing James arrive, Elder Gau¡¯s face lit up like he¡¯d seen a lifeboat while drowning at sea. Seeing this James put on timid expression and began to ask of Elder Gau.

    ¡°Elder I have a few questions I¡¯d like to ask you.¡±

    Hearing that there would only be more questions, the Elders face tensed, and he looked warily at James. Seeing this James chuckled inside.

    ¡°If the Elder hasn¡¯t time, I¡¯ll let you get back to your discussion with Dr Skay.¡± Said James throwing out a pleasant smile. Elder Gau¡¯s face worsened further before an involuntary cry of ¡°No!¡± erupted.

    ¡°Cough!, I mean feel free to give young Skay a break and ask a few question.¡±

    ¡®A few I might actually understand.¡¯ He thought to himself.

    James face showed an odd expression when he heard Elder Gau refer to Skay as ¡°young¡±. Seeing this expression Skay chuckled and jumped in to explain for James.

    ¡°Cultivators don¡¯t age ¡­ or rather they age incredibly slowly. Mind boggling no? I¡¯ve got a few theories about this but at present can¡¯t confirm anything without further understanding of this ¡®spirit energy¡¯.¡±

    When saying ¡®spirit energy¡¯ Skay actually made quotations with his fingers, as if to mock their total lack of understanding and suggest it had nothing at all to do with something as intangible and superstitious as a spirit.

    ¡°If I had to theorise a reason then it probably has something to do with a reaction between¡­¡±

    James stopped listening at this point as Skay started to launch into what James could already guess would be a very long explanation on Skay¡¯s billion thoughts of the subject. Instead, he wanted to focus more on what exactly the purpose was in bringing them here.

    James wasn¡¯t particularly shaken up by the probable likeliness of all other humans on Earth being dead. Nor was he concerned with finding a way back to Earth. James had no family and few people he called friends, most of which happened to be on the base when all of this mess started.

    Although he wanted to take a moment to process the complicated feelings he had and although he wanted to break out into hysteria and panic, he refused to.

    He was curious as to how Jessy was, especially seeing as she had apparently bounced back in the last three days, but again he chose to conceal his worry even from himself as he focused on his one true goal. Survive!

    Thinking to this point, James interrupted Skay¡¯s continuous dialogue again as he dove to the root of his paranoias. His face became serious as he looked back to the Elder¡¯s mysterious starry eyes after taking a seat at the table.

    ¡°Elder Gau, you¡¯ve mentioned that had anyone else found us we¡¯d be slaves. I could accept that you¡¯re clan may just be filled with endless good intentions and soft hearts if this were Earth. However from what you¡¯ve told us of your societies operation, as commoners we¡¯ve no right to or are even deserving of your good will. I¡¯d like to ask why you rescued us and more importantly, what are your intentions?¡±

    Though he tried to say this in a composed and severe tone, his inner heart was quaking in fear. He knew that if their intentions were anything but pure he could do nothing to stop them. Xanzu alone seemed powerful enough to slap him to death with a wave of the hand.

    Although Xanzu was worrying and James could detect nothing but malice from him, he wasn¡¯t as concerned with him as he was with his father, Hao. This anxiety was fed be various ¡­ recent traumas.

    Hearing James¡¯ question Elder Gau showed a surprised expression.

    ¡®These Steppers are truly impressive. They just arrived, and one of them is already challenging me on things beyond even my knowledge and understanding of our world. This other junior appears to be well centred and according to Hao has peculiarly good dumb luck. He¡¯s quite shrewd though to already be questioning our intentions. Hopefully, he isn¡¯t a problem later.¡¯ After this brief moment of thought, Elder Gau nodded, and his face resumed the slight smile and amiable face he had when they first met yesterday.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°Junior your question is a fair and pertinent one. Let me first ask, how old are you?¡±

    ¡°Twenty-five.¡± James replied.

    ¡°Well as you¡¯ve just discovered, spirit cultivators in this world age slower than commoners such as yourselves. Here, many people start their training at fifteen or sixteen years of age. Although the period before your thirty has the fastest growth for early cultivation stages, it is not an ironclad rule to start cultivating before this period ends.

    ¡°Countless numbers of commoners have broken through the first spirit barrier from every age. Even senile old men have breached this barrier and wrested back a chance at life.¡±

    The Elder¡¯s gaze grew strange again as he glanced at Skay who was busy mumbling and drawing strange equations on his black tech-pad seemingly paying no attention to this discussion.

    ¡°As I said yesterday, it¡¯s rare for commoners to come through a random Gateway, but it¡¯s not unheard of. Moreover many people, whether regular or cultivator, who passed through such as you did have affected the history of our world because they have come from a universe not usually connected to Ascension Star. More aptly because they have brought knowledge of cultivator techniques and differing views of the natural laws with them from their own universe.¡±

    Taking this pause in the Elder¡¯s words Skay chimed in with blazing eye¡¯s. ¡°Boy, they rescued us because they want our knowledge to help them advance their own understanding of what they call the ¡®natural laws¡¯, which are just what they call the laws of physics and mathematics and chemistry and basically all our scientific rules. We¡¯re here to teach them science!¡± Skay¡¯s face distorted as it became fanatical and a maniacal laugh escaped his throat.

    ¡°HaHAhaHaa. Boy just imagine it. From what I understand, this entire world is devoid of our commoner science. Though they have a vast number of magical techniques, they don¡¯t have our view or understanding. Everything they do is developed by a cause and effect trial by error, recorded and then passed down through the generations. Most of them don¡¯t even understand how exactly they¡¯re affecting the world, they only know that throwing some spirit energy around in a certain way, they do!

    ¡°When they develop their magic, it¡¯s through endless repetition like learning to shoot a gun. They find out how to hold it and aim it and shoot it and load it, but very few develop the knowledge of how it actually works inside and more importantly¡­¡±

    ¡°Ahem!¡± The Elder could tell Skay was just rearing up to an even longer tirade so jumped in quickly to escape that eventuality.

    ¡°As he says, we brought you here to learn about your world. Once we have learnt about these science, you all will be given a place in the city to live and enough riches to live how you please. My Gau Clan at least knows to pay a debt of gratitude and are aware it would be more productive to learn from you in a friendly environment.¡± At this point, he fell silent letting James process this.

    James cupped his chin frowning slightly as his brain went into overdrive. ¡®Interesting. So they rescued us to learn about our universe.¡¯ James cast a sidelong glance at the Mad Doctor Skay who looked ready to once again engage the poor Elder Gau.

    ¡®Well, they couldn¡¯t have gotten luckier than to pick up that madman if all they want from us is to pick our brains. Something doesn¡¯t sit right though. Why would he clarify that cultivation can be done at any age? Furthermore, why would he bother explaining about their world so much if all they want is for us to teach them about our world.

    ¡®Even odder is that before we came here how could they know our world developed sciences to understand the mysteries of the world?¡¯ Throwing a suspicious glance at the Elder, who appeared to be showing the most innocent expression he could conjure, James grew even more bewildered.

    ¡®If what Dr Skay said is true and their world has no truly advanced technologies, then how are we even communicating? Surely such a cosmic coincidence can¡¯t occur.¡¯ James stopped his thoughts for a moment to ask about the communication. Before the Elder even got the chance to answer Madman Skay interrupted again.

    ¡°Hahaha, boy you¡¯re not as dumb as you look! You¡¯re right, genuinely mysterious don¡¯t you think? I¡¯ve been informed that every major city in this world has a ¡®Monolith¡¯. Not only does it implant this world¡¯s common language as your primary language in your mind, it even inserts measurements like distance and time.

    ¡°Although you still have the English language locked up in that fart factory you¡¯ve been calling your brain, you won¡¯t be able to use it inside the influence of the Monolith. Everything you¡¯re thinking and saying is in an entirely different language. It just seems like it¡¯s your native dialect to you in your head.¡±

    James¡¯ face went white as he thought of the implications of this ¡°Monolith¡±.

    ¡®Mind altering? What else could it have put in my head? Perhaps Mind reading also!? Good god, what kind of degenerate invented such an invasive contraption? More importantly than that ¡­ If it¡¯s reading my mind right now who the fuck¡¯s controlling it?!¡¯

    Seeing James reaction Skay smirked. ¡°Just imagine what such an advanced device this must be. I suspect whoever invented it was likely a Stepper from a similar or even more advanced universe like ourselves. You shouldn¡¯t worry too much about it now, after all, there¡¯s nothing you can do to change it yet.¡±

    Seeing James reacting oddly the ever present Hao chimed in. ¡°If you¡¯re concerned about losing your past language you needn¡¯t fret, once you leave the influence range of the monument, your primary language will revert to your original tongue. You also won¡¯t forget the common language so you shouldn¡¯t worry over that either.¡±

    ¡®Worry?! Fuck worry, I¡¯m fucking freaking out!! GET OUT OF MY HEAD YOU PERVERSE FUCKS!!! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT¡­¡± For the first time in a long time, James couldn¡¯t assume a placid bored expression when the situation changed so dramatically.

    Instead, his face progressed to an ever more pale and panicked expression. In fact, his face was so white now, he looked as if he¡¯d been painted white.

    Seeing this change, everyone had weird expressions. After all, no one had ever seen someone react like this to the Monoliths. Mostly everyone would show some surprise or have little to no reaction at all just assuming it was entirely natural for this world to have mind altering Monoliths. After a moment like this, just as the Elder was getting a little worried, James shot up to his feet.

    ¡°How far do I have to go to escape the Monolith?¡± His face looked somewhat savage, and his eyes shot with blood as his face made a rapid recovery from white then going to the other extreme of an angry red.

    ¡°Escape? Hmm ¡­ well, the Monolith¡¯s effect here expands out to about 35km more or less.¡± The confused Hao supplied an answer for the somewhat stunned Elder.

    Never had the Elder seen something like this in reaction to a Monolith. He himself was a Stepper and had heard about the Monolith on his planet before escaping to Ascension Star, so he had no delusions about it as James did.

    What he and everyone in the world didn¡¯t know, was the Monoliths could indeed read minds, only they weren¡¯t connected to anyone. Instead, they were controlled by Ancient Spirits that were forged into the stone of the Monolith and had been created by an even more ancient cultivating Stepper in combination with some the greatest sages to ever live on this planet.

    They built them with a single goal. To illuminate miscommunication and open discussion, as well as to eliminate the need to learn every other universes language.

    There was a long and complicated love story in regards to this astounding turn of events. Regrettably, that too was lost in the long history of this world. The Monolith¡¯s themselves were the only remaining lifeforms with knowledge in regards to this mystery. Everyone else for millions of years has lost all knowledge of their origins, only knowing that they granted to the people the now considered common language of Ascension Star.

    All of a sudden James blanched and jumped as if someone had just poured ice down the back of his jumpsuit, then like an obedient child sat back on the cushions took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down. Then with a serious look stared at the confused Elder.

    ¡°What is the oath of the heavens?¡± James finally asked out of nowhere.

    ¡°Oh? The Oath you say?¡± The Elder showed his surprise and then chuckling shared a look with Hao.

    ¡°You must have heard some things from the servants, but only cultivators truly understand the oath. The natural laws of heaven and earth have many unusual aspects. It can bind a person¡¯s very soul to the meaning of their words making it a death wish to break them.¡± The Elder paused and didn¡¯t seem to plan on elaborating further.

    Hao then decided to fill the gap. ¡°The less conviction a person has in their oath, the greater the feedback from the heavens if it should ever be broken. For those with extreme conviction in their oath, at best they will retain a little of their cultivation and life but never be able to raise their cultivation again, to a cultivator this is essentially the same as being permanently crippled. For those who utter words with less or no conviction then at best they will still be breathing after they break an oath.¡±

    Hao¡¯s face then darkened. ¡°At worst an Oathbreaker won¡¯t just kill themselves, but have a curse fall on their bloodline and anyone as far removed as five or six generations. However, that also varies with the oath itself.¡±

    Then after a pause, the Elders mysterious look at James intensified when he finished with. ¡°Should you ever choose to try and cultivate and make an oath to the heavens you too will understand how all encompassing it is. Only cultivators are bound by this law of the heavens though because it requires spirit energy to swear an oath, commoners like yourself can make whatever oaths they like to whomever they like and face no retribution.¡±

    Finished speaking on the matter he waved a servant over with a tray of cups and teapot then proceeded to drink from a freshly poured cup.

    James took a cup by sheer habit as his mind raced then stopped to a halt as he decided ¡®Fuck¡¯it! Now¡¯s not the time to worry about that issue. I should worry more about the Gau Clan¡¯. After placing his cup down, he came to a decision based on everything the Elder had spoken of today. He put on his poker face and decided to directly ask the Elder.

    ¡°Did you bring us here in the hopes we can cultivate and create powerful magic for your clan?¡±

    James question stumped the Elder as he and Hao shared a conspirators glance with each other.

    ¡°Oh? Hahaha boy, you¡¯re quicker than I thought.¡± Skay chuckled as he looked up from his pad and as if meeting James for the first time gave him an appreciating glance. If all those hints dropped by the Elder hadn¡¯t been like a flashing neon sign saying ¡®You should cultivate!¡¯ then James should dig his own grave and jump into it if he couldn¡¯t piece this much together.

    The Elder gave a wry smile and chose to begin explaining.

    ¡°You¡¯re not entirely wrong. Learning the history and knowledge of another universe takes time, and worse still is difficult for us older cultivators to apply to our practice. Especially now that we have already travelled our own path down the road of cultivation for so long.

    ¡°It¡¯s not as simple as just learning some things and applying them to your training. Cultivation is more a method of developing the spirit. We¡¯ve already trained our spirit in our own path, and unless we destroy our cultivations and start again from the beginning, then it¡¯s much harder to take others knowledge and change our own cultivation methods. You will understand why once you start to cultivate your own spirit.¡±

    Hao then jumped in to answer the next incoming question James had. ¡°Although learning practices from other methods of training are hard it¡¯s not impossible. The decision to encourage you to train with our clan was after you were brought here.

    ¡°Truthfully when we picked you up we¡¯d no intention to educate you because you¡¯re so much older than we generally begin training disciples. Nevertheless, your character was strong in the face of my spirit pressure, you¡¯re luck and fortune look to be quite good, and your world seems to have methods of understanding the natural laws that we¡¯ve never heard of or imagined. Had you not mentioned it we would have tried to subtly guide you towards it.¡±

    James began to ponder for a time, cupping his chin in his hands again.

    ¡®If I don¡¯t start cultivating then I remain a commoner. I don¡¯t think that would be too difficult. With my knowledge as an electrician, I can easily create electricity and other commodities related to my trade. Though it would be hard and very much a roughshod jump by comparison to my world¡¯s standards, I suspect I could make a comfortable living off it from other commoners.

    ¡®However, it¡¯s not every day that you get the chance to become Superman. Although I¡¯m sure Superman didn¡¯t skip-jump to fly. Additionally, I¡¯ve no intention of being such a good citizen, rescuing cats from trees and saving the world and such. More likely I¡¯ll cheat, steal and dupe everyone I meet. After all, money is king, or was king, I¡¯m uncertain in this world. My parents always warned me I was a bad influence on my brother. I bet he¡¯d love it here¡­ ¡®

    Shaking himself from his reverie that had veered off into a dangerous and depressing direction, he returned to the important part of his inner monologue.

    ¡®More important than becoming a superman is survival and based on the few disciples of the Gau clan I¡¯ve directly interacted with, commoners don¡¯t get treated well by cultivators at all. If I remain as a mortal instead of chasing the power of a god I will always be at the mercy of others.

    ¡®An ant under the feet of elephants. I can¡¯t accept that! I¡¯ve got this chance to become strong. So strong I can take what I want, crush who I want and fuck who I want! Now it all depends on just how much this chance will cost me.¡¯

    Some of James truer nature emerged in his thoughts, and a dangerous glint flitted through his eyes as he looked between Hao and Elder Gau then asked his final question before making this life changing decision.

 Chapter 5: Into the Forest

    ¡°From what you just said you won¡¯t necessarily be able to use our magic even with our knowledge and you can¡¯t change your cultivation direction without becoming a commoner again. What exactly is it that you want from us?¡± James¡¯ face was stern as he asked this.

    He knew the answer to this question could change everything. His so far easy journey into this world may come to a sudden obstruction. In this sense, he couldn¡¯t help question if his luck at being discovered immediately on arrival was good or bad.

    Elder Gau frowned slightly, only now did he realise this junior was far more cunning and far-sighted than other mortals he¡¯d encountered. It was apparent the Gau Clan wanted something, but most people would be blinded by the opportunity to cultivate with a powerful family Clan as a backer. They¡¯d be blinded by their greed for power and prestige in the cultivator world.

    ¡°We want you to swear an oath to our Clan once you¡¯ve cultivated some spirit power. You will swear your fealty to our Gau Clan and protect it should disaster ever befall it. You will serve our Clan and no other until death. In exchange, we will teach you about cultivation.¡± Answered the Elder.

    ¡°Should? Does that mean you¡¯re expecting a disaster to happen to the Gau Clan? And what happens to us if we don¡¯t show any advancement in cultivation or can¡¯t even cultivate spirit energy at all?¡± James¡¯ keen eyes squinted when he heard the Elders expectations.

    ¡°Naturally if either of those cases happens, you won¡¯t be able to swear an oath with spirit power anyway and will be given freedom to live in the city with the same conditions mentioned earlier. Given a house, some land, and enough riches to live comfortably in the city for the rest of your mortal lifespan.¡± Hao responded.

    ¡®That¡¯s good and all, but I can already guess how ¡®comfortable¡¯ my life here would be as a commoner, especially once they¡¯ve gotten everything they want from us. Perhaps if I can leave the city and travel to one of these Sects I can get a chance to learn about cultivation without having to swear over my life. However from what I saw on the way here and from what I¡¯ve heard of this world, travelling between cities without any power is beyond difficult.

    ¡®Unless I can fly at 60km/h like Hao, it would take forever to walk to another decent sized city. After all, in yesterday¡¯s discussion Skay mentioned this planet¡¯s circumference was half our sun¡¯s radius, and the only reason we¡¯ve not been crushed to death by gravity is because of some paranormal ¡®natural law¡¯.

    ¡®If that¡¯s the case 30km is nothing on a planet this size and cities will be separated by quite a distance. Its circumference alone is probably more than 7 or 8 times the circumference of Earth. That would be in the hundreds of thousands of kilometres.¡¯

    James scratched his head while doing some calculations, sipped some tea and then returned to his thoughts while Skay once again began to engage the Elder.

    ¡®I know the Elder said the greater population of the planet are mortal commoners like myself, but even with that, cultivators are everywhere. Even if just conservatively 1 or 2 percent of the population is cultivators that would likely be in the billions on a planet with multiple times the living space of earth and a history of humans living here measured in the millions of years.

    ¡®More important than that though is that anyone travelling without a cultivator is likely to be killed by these fuckin¡¯ spirit animals or worse they could be¡­ ¡® At this point in his rambling thoughts, he glanced at Hao mumbling something about how everyone knows what happens to the good looking ones when robbed by bandits. He then shivered, turned slightly pale and distracted himself in inner monologue again.

    ¡®I guess I have no choice though. In the end, as much as I fear death I¡¯d rather be dead than a slave bound to serve others by some perverse ¡®natural law¡¯ that controls my destiny. I will control my own fate!¡®

    Finished his thoughts, James gathered himself and began to deny the Gau Clan Elder¡¯s request to join their Clan. He stood up and clasped his hands in a bow then started to speak.

    ¡°Senior this junior can¡¯t¡­¡± James¡¯ face turned white as his body suddenly tensed and stopped in mid-speech. Then his face dropped from the apologetic smile he¡¯d just plastered on to reject Elder Gau, and his reflexive poker-face assumed its place. After but a second he threw a friendly and humble smile at the Elder and resumed his broken sentence.

    ¡° ¡­ wait to accept your offer. I can¡¯t speak for my companions but the opportunity to become a cultivator comes only once in a lifetime, and I most humbly accept. For that opportunity, I would give my life to the Gau Clan in the form of an oath and do my utmost for the Clan.¡±

    Dr Skay also decided to chime in. However, he showed no humble attitude and observed no courtesies of this world remaining seated drinking tea.

    ¡°I¡¯ll swear an oath to your Clan on the condition that you swear an oath to me. You will swear that as long as I¡¯m bound by my oath, your Clan will provide me with any resources I request within your means to do so and to never interrupt my research.

    ¡°I don¡¯t care for fighting, what I care about is knowledge, and as such I will swear to serve only the Clans greater good, and I will answer to no one but my own conscience and your heavenly laws, regardless of internal or external matters of your Clan.¡±

    James had to admit this old madman knew how to bargain. Indeed a clever old fox. However, the Elder had cultivated for hundreds of years and was no slouch in negotiations of this matter. He immediately countered with new conditions. After a good half hour of bickering between the two, they settled on an agreement.

    James spent this half hour taking mental notes on negotiations for future use. Having no experience in these sorts of talks he was aware that in the future he must be more careful to consider his words in discussions like these. After all, should he ever swear an oath he planned on keeping it would certainly come back to bite him in the ass.

    Although James pause earlier was noticed by everyone, it was completely forgotten after the hot debating of Elder Gau and Dr Skay. James also wasn¡¯t certain what to think of what just happened in that brief pause, but he was certain he¡¯d get to the bottom of it all once he had the chance to leave the Gau mansion. He¡¯d find out who was messing around with his head even it cost him his life!

    After this discussion was over James noticed Skay going through a series of conflicting emotions. If James had to guess it was because he had a million new questions for Elder Gau but also wanted to start studying this ¡®cultivation¡¯ and so was battling between what he wanted to do more. Elder Gau looked somewhat relieved when Skay finally made a sigh, put down his tea and made to stand up.

    ¡°I should get some rest. When I wake up I want to see your cultivation methods.¡± He then turned and followed a servant away to a guest room.

    Elder Gau let out an audible sigh as well when Skay finally began to leave. Shaking his head he made to stand as well.

    ¡°Little Junior you should find your lady friend and ask her what her decision will be. I¡¯ll send someone to the courtyard outside your rooms tomorrow, and they¡¯ll teach you how to begin your training.¡± He then turned and left the hall leaving James standing there being eyed by the ever present Hao.

    When James noticed even the servants preparing to leave, he realised if everyone left it would just be him and flying man, standing alone in the same room. Remembering the traumatic trip to the mansion, he quickly made a bow to Hao and chased after the back of Dr Skay before Hao struck up any conversation or even worse, the servants all left.

    As they reached their courtyard, James noticed Jessy sitting on a long stone seat near the slushy pond blankly staring towards the tree line of the forest. When he turned towards her, he couldn¡¯t help but over here Skay muttering ¡°because it¡¯s gotta be dark-matter¡± as he entered his room.

    As James walked towards the open courtyard, he briefly started to imagine what was happening inside that mad scientist¡¯s head. Then just as quickly stopped when his head started spinning. ¡®There¡¯s no way of even fathoming what that madman is thinking about.¡¯

    ¡°Oi, Jess! Jess! Jessy!¡° James hurried towards her a little worried when Jessy didn¡¯t respond at all. When he reached out a hand to shake her shoulder she jumped slightly and sharply looked at James.

    ¡°Damnit James don¡¯t sneak up on a girl! My fuckin¡¯ heart nearly blew a gasket.¡± Jessy¡¯s agitated response came as she returned her gaze towards the forest. She spoke with a British accent that was quite amusing to here when she blew her top swearing up a storm.

    Now Jessy¡¯s language might surprise some, but to James it was par for the course. Who ever said women had to be a damsel in distress with princess-like etiquette and friendly language? As a matter of fact, Jessy was the foulest mouthed women James had ever met. Which vastly conflicted with the scene she painted quietly sitting in this tranquil garden dressed in her elegant cheongsam. Her swearing only clashed even more with her polite sounding accent.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    Since this whole catastrophe started, he¡¯d not spoken with Jessy much, but he¡¯d always thought of her as a ¡®tough gal with an iron will¡¯. Her initial reaction in the sea-lab could be considered natural in comparison to James. After all who can say they¡¯d be able to experience a scene littered with the broken and mangled bodies of their comrades and even approach the level of functioning let alone functioning normally.

    In this case, James¡¯ stone heart and desire to survive was his saving grace, as he never even gave his mind a chance to process the situation of his peers. Had an opportunity appeared for his brain at that time, he was of no doubt he¡¯d be much worse off then Jessy had been.

    ¡°Jess, how¡¯ya hold¡¯n up?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m doing just great James. In fact, I¡¯m fucking fantastic. I only woke up on a fucking magical world after being sucked through some fucking magic portal.¡± At this point, she stood up and twisted to glare at James as a malicious and furious scowl disordered her beautiful features.

    ¡°Actually, fuck you James! If you hadn¡¯t played white knight and dragged me through some fucking fairy-gate to a place where people are fucking skipping through the air like pre-school girls, I might have had a chance to escape that fucking death trap base and go find my family or my boyfriend or anyone. But I can¡¯t now cause everything I know is over there, and I¡¯m fucking stuck here in fucking Mordor with you, you lifeless, dead-eyed, fucking, stone hearted, piece of shit!!¡±

    ¡°¡­¡± James wasn¡¯t sure what to say at first. Then slowly his face formed a frown until at last he too stood up furiously.

    ¡°Jess what the fuck are you talken¡¯ about! You¡¯d rather be dead?! You see all that shit that came through with us? There was a hull pressure pump not 10 foot from where we woke up. More than just we were sucked out from the base, so it¡¯s most likely imploded by now!

    ¡°Also, your parents are most probably dead! Did you not hear? The Holocaust, Jessy you bitch. Fucking Nuclear War. I¡¯ll wager if we¡¯d even managed to get off the base neither of us could go see anyone! Cause they¡¯re all fucking DEAD you crazy cunt!¡± In a huff, James turned and started striding back towards his room. After a few moments of silence Jessy finally reacted as her eyes watered up.

    ¡°Wait! James! I¡¯m sorry, James!¡± Jessy ran up to grab the back of James filthy jumpsuit with tears streaming down her face. With a loud sigh, James stopped. He knew he¡¯d overreacted just now. The pressure building over the last few days and all this ¡®strange shit¡¯ and all the death. His panicking inner-self betrayed the lazy expression he always carried on his face and the moment it felt safe enough and found a trigger it exploded.

    If he lacked any further self-control, he¡¯d probably have slapped Jessy and screamed his rage into the sky like a savage. Poor Jessy most likely was suffering much the same on the inside and allowed James to be her outlet. Although she¡¯d recovered somewhat from the experience in the lab, she¡¯d lost far more when they came here than James or Dr Skay.

    Dozens of close family and friends all gone, and worse still, she was now in a situation she couldn¡¯t even wrap her head around. She didn¡¯t understand enough of what¡¯s going on to comprehend what her next step should be!

    At the moment the only tie she had to Earth and the only rock to lean on was the ordinary looking man she once shared a workplace with. Although he was renowned as an ¡®apathetic emotionless robot¡¯, never showing joy or sadness in any situation she¡¯d heard some of the stories Fatty told about James.

    Outside of work, he was apparently an uncontrollable menace and godless rascal. Now this robot by day rascal by night was all that was still a certainty, and the only thing left she had to rely on.

    Jessy rarely felt the need to rely on anyone, but things had changed now, and although neither she or James would ever openly admit to it, they both felt each other to be a reliable constant they needed at the moment. Even though their past relationship was all work and could be called acquaintances at best, it was all that was left.

    James of course never even considered Dr Skay. After the short time they¡¯d known one another, James was convinced Skay was a single lab accident away from ¡®Mad Scientist¡¯ status. And if he was being honest, that accident quite probably just happened. He was even slightly worried about this world of god-like cultivators now that Skay had been unleashed here.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry James, your right. I overreacted and ¡­ and James ¡­ I think it would be better ¡­ forget it!¡± Choking back a sob she returned to the seat in the garden. James knew this trick well. He had a past girlfriend who often laid down the crocodile tears with a ¡®forget it¡¯ whenever they needed attention or wanted to avoid responsibility for something.

    Although James suspected Jessy¡¯s tears were fuelled by genuine grief and sadness, he was confident the abrupt end ¡®forget it¡¯ thrown out was like a hook waiting to nab him and drag him back.

    He couldn¡¯t entirely speculate the reason, but he had a few guesses. With his eyes flashing a crafty glint he then assumed an apologetic and placating expression as he slowly turned towards Jess who was crying into her hands leaving only enough room to notice if James came back in her peripheral vision. Jessy¡¯s eyes glittered hiding behind her hands when he began walking back. ¡®Gotchya bitch!¡¯

    James shrewdly sat down next to Jess and started to rub her back with some ¡°there there¡¯s¡± and some ¡°I¡¯m sorry I upset you¡¯s.¡± Meanwhile, his hand slowly decreased the distance towards her ass hanging over the edge of the stone seat. Jess continued to sob none the wiser until eventually her own inner thoughts on how to successfully tie this only source of comfort to herself abruptly froze when she discovered the placating had stopped and the gently rubbing hand was now suddenly squeezing her ass. Like a loaded spring she shot off the garden seat followed with an all-encompassing blush and whirled to glare angrily at James.

    ¡°You ¡­ You ¡­ You filthy rascally scumba¡­¡± Before she could finish, James jumped up with a bashful expression like a kid being caught stealing from the cookie jar then cupped his chin and started nodding his head sagely.

    ¡°You¡¯re absolutely right Jess! Let¡¯s forget that whole scene just now. After all, we¡¯re the only Earthlings here in Mordor. Trapped together whether we like it or not. Now excuse me there¡¯s something just over there I want to look at quickly.¡±

    Jessy understood at this point that she¡¯d been duped just so he could childishly cope a feel. Her mind spun with adjectives not meant for children which were quickly followed by her mouth spewing cusses not even adults could swallow, as she chased the already fleeing James towards the forest screaming about all the chivalrous virtues James lacked and fuming until her face was blue.

    After a short time of chasing she came to realising it had grown rather dark. It was then that she noticed they were on a trail leading into the forest. Looking upwards the canopy of trees blocked out the sun, and the path back was already crowded with tree¡¯s blocking the view of the mansion. When she turned back, James had already disappeared.

    Just as she was turning back to return with a gut full of rage, a chuckle from the forest and James yelled something that set her off again. ¡°Excellent muscle tone Jess. Hahaha, Very firm.¡± Remembering the scene when they first awoke in this world Jessy¡¯s freckles which had just calmed down, once again lit up like little LED lights along with the blush illuminating her face.

    ¡°That scoundrel! Lawless son¡¯ov¡¯a bitch! Touching me ass twice! I¡¯ll beat him within an inch of his life!¡±

    With such thoughts running through her mind she irrationally continued to chase him into the forest. Jessy was one to never forgive a grudge and more importantly she¡¯d never once allowed a man to take liberties of her she didn¡¯t consent to.

    ¡®The only mentally stable person to pass through to this world was a filthy pervert using a moment of weakness to molest me.¡¯ Naturally, she glossed over the fact she was mostly feigning the moment to gather some empathy from James. What her true intentions with that gathered empathy was, only she knew. After all, Jessy¡¯s mind was currently a twisted mess of contradictions.

    It wasn¡¯t long before she was entirely lost inside the forest. James as well was now completely lost. Both travelling in circles as they tried to follow the maze-like crisscrossing and branching paths in the woods. Without any signs or demarcating landmarks, they both unknowingly travelled deeper and deeper.

    Though a forest of only a few kilometres in width and length was normally of no concern if you were to walk in a straight line for an hour or so, this forest was markedly different.

    When Jessy at one point came to the same conclusion, she started running between the trees and brush trying to just walk straight out. She soon found, regardless how far she walked, she¡¯d always just arrive on a new cobblestone path and feel even more lost than before.

    What these two mortal earthlings didn¡¯t realise, was that this forest was encompassed by a pervasive spirit energy and the entire forest, once entered, was endless in all directions and there were only three ways through or out. That was to have a Gau Clan spirit compass, which naturally they had no idea even existed, have such an overbearing spirit power that they could simply shatter the pocket-space this forest existed in or for the forest itself to let you out.

    The Gau Clans back yard forest was actually a single entity. Every tree, shrub, flower and weed were interconnected beneath the ground. One primary root growing an entire forest of diverse plant life in a strange and obscured pocket-space.

    If Skay were to learn of this spirit cultivating forest, he¡¯d surely be out here digging up roots and putting questionable substances on the plant life to discover ¡­ well, everything he could naturally. If the forest were to know about its abysmal future when he did finally find out, it would probably lash out some vines and strangle these two interlopers the moment they entered.

    After nearly 4 hours of walking the three suns began dimming on the horizon, and James had long since realised the discrepancy of this forest and naturally came to the conclusion that it was related to some ¡®fucked up natural laws¡¯. He only hoped that there wouldn¡¯t be any gingerbread houses or towers with golden hair thrown out the window. He honestly couldn¡¯t handle any of that right now and should such a thing appear he would run immediately.

    ¡°Snap! Snap! Swish!¡°

    James nearly jumped out of his skin as the sound of twigs and branches snapping under foot was heard nearby. His head swivelled so fast the audible swishing of air was heard. James was already preparing to start sprinting when out from the trees came a young man wearing the customary anvil and hammer grey robes as he walked distractedly looking at an odd black block the size and shape of an earring box.

    ¡®No sword on this one?¡¯ James thought to himself as he relaxed slightly from his posture of being ready to sprint. By this time James was already associating the disciples with the sword embroidery with arrogant scum-bags. Seeing as both of the disciples with the sword pattern that he¡¯d met looked down upon him for being a mortal it wasn¡¯t entirely unfounded.

    With an ¡°Oi, mate!¡± James began approaching the distracted Gau Clan disciple.

 Chapter 6: Harvy and the Demon Spawn

    Harvy Gau was a minor disciple of the Clan. Being 3 times removed from the head family¡¯s bloodline he was treated like dirt. Resources that others were given he¡¯d have to work twice as hard to earn.

    He looked young. Perhaps just escaping puberty and considered a man at 18 or 19. However having trained spirit energy to the edge of the Spirit Barrier he naturally aged slower. In truth, he was nearly the same age as James. Interestingly enough, should he ever break through the Spirit Barrier, his ageing speed would halve again. Meaning by the time he looked twenty he¡¯d be well into his late thirties.

    Harvy wasn¡¯t his real name, but a name he acquired in a life threatening, spirit trying experience. It was a nickname given to him by the incarnation of the devil and had since stuck to him like shit to a blanket.

    This devil incarnate was indeed deceptive. He disguised himself as a mortal old man and pulled some other demonic creatures hidden inside mortals with him through a Gateway to Ascension Star. 4 days ago when he first appeared he remained incognito and had one of his demon spawn draw attention from him when they were first discovered.

    Being the lowest disciple present at the time, Harvy was the one tasked with bringing this harmless old man back to the clan. Little did he know, that this old man¡¯s body sired the soul of all evil and his mouth spewed the most putrid of lies and evil incantations.

    At first when he picked him up he ignored the old man¡¯s curses, thinking they were just harmless angry words. It wasn¡¯t until the devil began to curse his mother and his father and every generation of his family yet to be born and then every pet he¡¯s ever owned that Harvy grew fearful.

    As if some malignant tumour, the more he tried to block it out the louder it grew. When he thought he could take solace in his mind becoming numb, the cursing changed, as if conjuring all the despicable and foul energy of the world, his head once more began to fill with the Devil¡¯s curses, like some sickening natural law descending on him.

    The longer they travelled, the worse it grew. His blood surged, and the spirit energy in his body expanded and contracted in rhythm to the Devil¡¯s continuous chanting.

    Throughout this whole experience, the fiend began to name him Harvy and so the other disciples, laughing at his plight, also began to call him as such. This short trip was so psychologically traumatic that he spat curdled blood from his lungs every time the grotesquery on his shoulder reached a crescendo in his vile ranting.

    For two days his spirit pressure was dilapidated and dried out until the third day when he discovered it rising rapidly far beyond its past boundary until finally pushing against the Spirit Barrier only a single step from breaking through to the realm of a True Spirit cultivator.

    Ever since however, he was convinced the old man and his two compatriots were from a universe in which heaven and hell are switched and darkness reigns supreme. As such he made an effort to avoid all three of them.

    Today he was in the Endless Forest to gather some spirit materials and to test a Gau Compass that he¡¯d just finished manufacturing. As a disciple of the Gau Clan and furthermore a disciple of the Hall of Forging he was trained since the conception of his spirit energy in the art of forging spirit artefacts and weapons.

    As a minor disciple, he was given few resources to increase his spirit energy or practice his forging. Unlike sons and daughters of the head family, he had to gather his own. To make matters more difficult for young Cultivators like himself, a third of everything he collected or found in the Endless Forest had to be handed over to the clan.

    For the first time in his life, he¡¯d finally pulled a massive haul in the forest. Having found a Black-Iron vein deep in the forest, he knew he¡¯d struck it rich. If he could keep it to himself, he¡¯d be able to trade its location in the Endless Forest with the family and gain a better reputation and standing.

    He¡¯d for once be treated equally and be given resources instead of having them taken. That was the dream in his head at least.

    While following his compass back out of the forest, he heard a loud foreign chant in the middle of his distracted walking.

    Spinning toward the origin of the unfamiliar sound, with a deer in the head lights look on his face, he saw the young male demon spawn approaching him with a happy expression, which to Harvy looked truly sinister even though to James it was his most pleasant and friendly smile.

    Harvy was petrified. His body froze and knees shook. James was but a mortal and Harvy should be able to punch him to death with a single swing of his fist, but...

    ¡®Demon! Great Heavens, they¡¯ve come into the forest to wrest away my soul with their devilish curses and drain my corpse of blood. How did they find me?¡¯

    He was too afraid to think that rationally. All he knew, was last time he encountered one of these Steppers, his mind was nearly forced from his body by his own inner demons after being fed by the devil himself, and at the end of the ordeal, he lacked a prodigious amount of blood. Their chanted curses were like some vicious spirit attack on the soul.

    ¡®My knees, my legs. Why can¡¯t I move? Was that single demonic chant enough to freeze my entire body? Oh Heavens, I¡¯m shaking like a leaf. No! He¡¯s started some sickening demon incantation again. I have to do something! Anything!¡¯

    ¡°Hey, I¡¯m a bit lost in this forest do you...¡±

    ¡°Gree-Greetings D-D-Dark Liege! I-I-I ... Please, I beg your forgiveness. Don¡¯t take my soul! Please just-just let me l-leave. I-I¡¯ll pretend I know nothing of your hellish origins and never speak a word of it to anyone. I beg of you!¡±

    With a final cry, he dropped to his knees and kowtowed, smashing his forehead into the cobblestone path. Blood rushed down his forehead as he kept it pressed to the forest trail and prayed in his heart that the spawn of the devil would release him.

    James showed a baffled expression and then his stoic face came to the fore. From this whole spectacle, he realised two things. ¡®Wow. This guy is more fucked in the head than that depraved old man Skay.¡¯ he began to ponder to himself with his dead, expressionless eyes staring at Harvy.

    Harvy took a peek towards James and could see only those demonic eyes lifelessly staring back. To him, they seemed to steal all the colour from the world, and what had been a beautiful forest with light filtering through the leaf canopy, and wonderful smelling flowers with frequent chirping birds, all suddenly darkened dramatically.

    In Harvy¡¯s perception, the smell of the flowers turned from fresh and sweet to rotten and decaying. The sunbeams peeking through the canopy slowly decreased to the width of needle points until they completely broke apart like a snapped string. The once straight, tall and rich brown tree trunks became gnarled and deformed, looking as if afflicted with some sickness.

    To James, however, everything remained just dandy, and no great changes happened. Although he did notice the disciple in front of him growing visibly paler and his shaking even harder. Nevertheless, at the moment he didn¡¯t care what this nut-job was doing because he¡¯d just discovered something even more important.

    ¡®Interesting. So, I¡¯ve left the influence of the Monolith. It must be due to the forest. To meet a Gau Clan disciple here though, that must mean he has a way back. I doubt he¡¯d enter here not knowing a way out.¡¯

    James clasped his hands behind his back and looked up at the leafy canopy above mumbling to himself.

    ¡°When he spoke just now, I understood him. But he definitely wasn¡¯t speaking English, or any language I¡¯d ever heard before. That must be the common language.¡±

    James¡¯ brow furrowed slightly when he considered just how much power a Monolith had. To be capable of implanting a second language. It was utterly perverse.

    Poor Harvy, hearing James begin muttering in a strange language, felt his heart tighten and try to push its way out his throat. Darkness enveloped everything as he felt his consciousness begin to fade until a light face slapping awoke him again.

    James had by now remembered who this man was. He¡¯d seen him carrying Dr Skay back on the first day they came here and also by now figured out a little bit of what was going on in the man¡¯s head. This fellow apparently thought he was a demon sent from hell. He wasn¡¯t sure where this disciple got such a notion, but he a had a suspicion when he remembered Harvy¡¯s pale face and bloodied robe as he ran at his fastest speed through the grain fields.

    ¡®Old Skay you crazy bastard. Just what did you do to this poor sap?¡¯

    Then James had an atrocious idea. Perhaps it could even be described as malicious or cruel. His face slowly developed a wicked grin, which was the first thing Harvy saw when James crouched down to slap him awake from his daze. Trying out the common language for the first time without the assistance of the Monolith he spoke slowly.

    ¡°What is it? Your Name?¡±

    Harvy was so tensed up right now every muscle in his body was frozen like stone. As a born and bred resident of Ascension Star, Harvy had never heard or used any other language than common. So when he heard James trying to use it for the first time, it came out distorted and rough. To Harvy it sounded as if a voice was reaching out from the abyss.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    He then suddenly remembered a story of a creature of darkness called a Holtzier. It was an evil creature found in only the darkest and most violent places in the world. They were like undead ghouls with black talons for hands and feet. Although they had the body and face of a human, their teeth were as sharp as swords. Because they were a creature that was raised from the corpse of a cultivator that died a horrible death their voice sounded like the grating of iron chains.

    The most vicious part is when they trick you into giving them your name. ¡°Never reveal your real name to the creatures of the darkness, for should they hear it from your lips, it will become the chains that shackle your soul. You will forever be bound to those horrible creatures and your soul slowly fed upon, until nothing remains. Your chance to pass into reincarnation will be stolen, and your empty husk of a body will stay here on this mortal plane, cursed for eternity!¡± Or so the story went.

    Having this story flash past his mind, he hesitated a moment. ¡°Harvy! Dark Liege my name is Harvy!¡± He finally spewed.

    James grin grew wider, and he pulled Harvy to his feet and started to dust him off. ¡°Harvy, I came to the forest with someone else, and we got separated. I want you to help me find her and then take us out from the forest.¡±

    ¡°Yes yes! I can help you find this person and leave the forest. No! I mean ... Please, allow me to assist you.¡±

    Harvy loosened up significantly after hearing the Dark Spawns request. After all, it meant he would be keeping his soul. His eyes flickered with a crafty light for a moment. ¡®All I have to do now is wait for a chance to slip away and escape the forest.¡¯

    James then rested a hand on his shoulder and said in English while looking him in the eye. ¡°You poor unfortunate chump. To be so scarred and damaged by that loony Skay is your bad luck and my good fortune.¡±

    Harvy started freaking out again. ¡®Was that some horrid curse or some twisted dark spell? Oh Heavens, this can¡¯t be a good thing whatever it is!¡¯

    James then threw out a disarming smile. ¡°Tell me about the forest. Also, how do you find your way around the Forest? Is there some map or something? I guess also tell me what you¡¯re doing in here.¡±

    Harvy gulped. He wanted to lie. He wanted to say he just knew the forest well and could find his way anywhere. Seeing his reluctance and hesitation James smile dimmed down until it was a frown and started muttering again.

    ¡°There must be some secret to this forest he doesn¡¯t want or isn¡¯t allowed to share with outsiders. Or perhaps he¡¯s merely trying to think of the best way to pull one over on me? God, I hope he¡¯s not lost as well.¡±

    Harvy seeing this change in James started to sweat. ¡®Is he chanting some magic to see the truth of my next words or ... or ... can he see into my mind? Oh Heavens why me?!¡¯ Harvy started bowing to James, deciding he had no choice but to acquiesce.

    ¡°Ah! Ah! Mighty Devil Spawn I beg of you to listen! It¡¯s ahh ... quite simple actually. The Endless Forest ... hmm, well, it has existed here as far back as the Monolith stone itself. When our Gau Clan first settled in this town the ... ahh, townsmen thought it to be cursed because none had ever returned once entering. Our Ancestor was a prevailing forge master and err ... when he brought our Clan here, he recorded many notes on the forest.

    ¡°Some were lost when he ... well, disappeared in the forest and many are now indecipherable but ... err well, we still have some notes regarding a compass he designed. Using Black-Iron and a Spirit Stone found only in this forest, along with some secret clan techniques one can craft the ... ahh, compass.

    ¡°The compass allows one to ... erm, traverse the forest as they please because it will always point in the direction to the nearest Gateway, hmm well ... I suppose they can indicate at anything though really, as long as you, umm ... can properly envision a place in your mind when you¡¯re crafting the compass. Like when I created this new compass by envisioning the mansion to find the nearest return Gateway. Phew!¡± Finally finished explaining and gesticulating Harvy let loose a long breath as the tension he felt with James staring and mumbling also seemed to dissipate after the last word left his mouth.

    James was stunned momentarily. ¡®Well shit! A magical compass? Is this some cruel joke. Why didn¡¯t they warn us before hand, I mean the forest is like 100 meters from my bedroom damn it! More importantly, why haven¡¯t they noticed we¡¯re missing? I wonder if this magic compass can be used to find Jessy... ¡® Finishing that thought, he looked towards the little black box Harvy was holding.

    -4 Hours Earlier-

    James was quite sharp having clued into this strange happenstance. No one ever told them, because the disciple of the Sword Hall, Calso, who¡¯d brought James to the Elder, was also a cohort of Xanzu. Despite being tasked by the Elder with informing them of the rules in the mansion, he chose instead to try and win favour with Xanzu.

    He was also tasked with keeping an eye on their courtyard and making sure nothing happened to them until they¡¯d fulfilled their purpose. Hiding away in the shadows of a tree and busy listening to there fighting like some dirty prowler, he tried to think of a way to win more favour from Xanzu. When he noticed they¡¯d entered the forest he couldn¡¯t help chuckling to himself.

    ¡°Heh heh, fools. Now that they¡¯ve entered the forest no one will be able to find them. With any luck, they¡¯ll wander deep enough to meet a spirit beast and be devoured. I¡¯ll just tell the Elders that they walked in even after I warned them. Pity about the girl though. She¡¯d have been lots of fun.¡±

    With such things thought and muttered he left the shadows of the courtyard and proceeded to the Sword Hall to inform Xanzu.

    The Sword Hall was a massive and grand cathedral shaped structure positioned close to the centre of Gau City and its majesty was second to none. Although their rival faction in the clan, the Hall of Forging, had a compound of even greater size, it was almost entirely underground.

    In comparison, the little bit above ground looked to be a simple round courtyard about 100 meters in diameter. This courtyard was surrounding by a number of shops that had chimney stacks nearly 5 meters wide poking out from them and reaching 30 meters into the sky.

    When Calso got to the gaudy looking Sword Hall and reported these matters to Xanzu, instead of the reward and praise he¡¯d hoped for, he was viciously blasted out of the hall by a kick. ¡°You incompetent fool! I could care less for that disgusting mortal man, but that girl was to be mine! Must be mine! I don¡¯t care if you have to march to the centre of the Endless Forest, you will find her and bring her to me!¡±

    Xanzu swished the sleeve of his robe and turned back, as he was walking into the Sword Hall his voice echoed out. ¡°If you can¡¯t find her Calso, don¡¯t bother returning from the forest. Oh and if you meet that loathsome man. Kill him!¡±

    Calso slowly climbed to his feet with bloodshot eyes and ruffled hair while his teeth tried to grind themselves into dust. Although Xanzu¡¯s threat wasn¡¯t particularly reliable, he knew that this time he¡¯d definitely upset the Head families son.

    -Swoosh! And we¡¯re back to the present-

    On the top of the little box was a perfectly spherical, polished stone ball with a long red mark down one side and sitting in a half-spherical depression in the box, assumingly the line was pointing towards a nearby Gateway. The black box had some odd engravings and was only about the size of an earring box. Apart from the depression and the engravings, it looked unremarkable.

    James reached out a hand and took the box. Holding it, he had a vision of a very gloomy and rudimentary room within which he saw Harvy sitting on the single little bed masturbating furiously. The surprise of something so wretched invading his very personal thoughts caused him to jolt and drop the compass. On contact with the cobblestone path, the polished sphere jumped out of its little indentation and rolled away. He glared at Harvy who looked just as surprised and concerned. ¡°What the hell was that?¡±

    Harvy¡¯s face contorted into strange angles. ¡°Son of darkness I-I-I¡¯m um ... I guess you saw well hmmm ... When creating a compass a substantial emotional memory or hmmm ... Well, also a strong delusion that is attuned to the soul of the place or thing you want it to point to must be used, along with a little spirit energy. If someone with spirit power touches it, they see the envisioned memory. For example, this compass in my bag was created by Family Head Hao and is a memory of ... Well, the baker¡¯s son getting ... Err ... Hmm ... Well ... And then mine was made with the strongest mental image of the mansion I could conjure, which was er ... well ... Ahem!¡±

    Clearing his throat, he decided to stop while still living. James¡¯ eyebrows rose slightly when he heard you needed spirit energy in order to see the vision. ¡®Does this mean I have spirit energy? But how ... Could it be from when I first arrived and Hao had to throw me into the ice slushy? Also a strong emotional memory or vision. So I just have to think about something that I have a strong reaction to when placing that sphere to find it?¡¯

    Thinking this far James picked up the box and the ball which now had a chip and thinking as hard as he possibly could about a vision that truly shook his soul he placed the ball down. Following which nothing happened. His face sank, and he looked accusingly at Harvy.

    ¡°I thought you said this thing needed an emotional vision of something and then could point towards it. Why ain¡¯t it happening?¡±

    Seeing the soul devouring demon spawn start to grow angry, Harvy began to worry. ¡°Ah! Ah! Dark Lord plea ... please forgive this petty man for not explaining correctly. Well ... Um ... You need to apply your spirit power and can only think of things you know the location of ... And well, I guess people and things you know exist ... I suppose. Arhm ... Dark Sire if you¡¯re thinking of something you desire but have never seen or touched it won¡¯t work.¡±

    ¡®Damn! If I knew that I wouldn¡¯t have envisioned myself finding a mountain made of gold!¡¯

    Finally, James caught onto the ¡°I suppose¡± Harvy had uttered. With a suspicious face, he glanced at him. ¡°Why exactly do you ¡®suppose¡¯? If you can make this thing shouldn¡¯t you know how it works?¡±

    ¡°Err ... Well, that ... Hmmm ... Well only someone with an elemental affinity to the universal law of erm ... lightning can implant visions of anything that can be moved around. Which is why they¡¯re called the umm ... Lightning Seeking Spirit Stone. Anyone can envision places ... Err I guess?¡± Harvy tried to explain what he could on the matter.

    ¡®You guess huh? Lightning? As in electricity? If I have an affinity for anything, it would be that. Well then let¡¯s see if it can find that bitch Jessy.¡¯ Thinking such, James envisioned the memory he had of Jessy¡¯s arrival in the main hall yesterday.

    While he held the stone, his body began to warm slightly and his blood began to rush, as his vision slowly turned from memory to a depraved sexual fantasy. A strange and difficult to describe sensation, like an electric shock, ran through his body as he placed the chipped sphere into the little black box. After releasing the ball, it spun around a few times rapidly, until pointing in the direction of some trees and forest to his right. As he turned the little red mark remained stationary in its direction as the ball spun in its socket.

    James took a wobbling step back after this experience, feeling drained and tired as if all that extra energy he had when he awoke this morning was suddenly gone.

    ¡®Holy shit! Was that spirit energy? Why do I feel like I just gave a litre of blood?¡¯

    James held his head with one hand as he backed up to lean on a tree. Seeing James weaken considerably, Harvy¡¯s thoughts began to spin rapidly. ¡®This is my chance! If I can escape, he¡¯ll be trapped in the Endless Forest! Hahaha, genius! I just need to get far enough that his demonic spirit mantras can¡¯t affect me.¡¯

    With that thought, he started to slowly back away from the disorientated James. ¡°Harvy ... Mate ... you could have told me it would be so fucked before I did it.¡± In his confused state, he unintentionally spoke in English. Poor Harvy¡¯s feet stopped at almost the same time as his heart. Then his heart began hammering as he deployed a unique stepping pattern and disappeared like a gentle breeze into the forest.

 Chapter 7: Spirit Energy

    -Flashback! Zoom!-

    Alan (Fatty) Hayashi. Despite being of Japanese descent, he was born and raised in America where he lived his whole life a virgin of simple means. Having a stable build (fat), he was employed as a trade assistant to a mining corporation and later worked his way through an apprenticeship to become a qualified tradesman that could proudly sell himself as a Fitter Mechanic.

    After an accident involving the coincidental collision of a truck hauling soap, a lorry filled with pet food, park rangers van with some wild animals and an ice-cream truck, on a rainy night, in the middle of a deserted road ... Well in the end when Fatty was released from hospital his mind was filled with conspiracy theories, and in all his spare time he delved into a maddening degree of wild notions about a whole range of things.

    When he turned 23, he was offered a life changing opportunity to work for a satellite company that branched off from an unnamed multinational billion-dollar corporation. At first, it was a strange experience when he was shipped out to a sparse stretch of sea off the coast of Australia that contained nothing. That was until they reached a single white elevator floating on the surface of the water.

    Fatty, being ever vigilant of such things, jumped at the opportunity to investigate as his mind spun with a billion theories. However after a month when they were shipped back to the coast of Australia for leave time he had discovered nothing, everything seemed kosher in the lab, and it was just as advertised. A deep ocean aquatic sea-lab designed to help research the depths of the ocean where no man has gone before. But that never stopped Fatty¡¯s imagination from spinning, and once he discovered the base had a restricted lab, his theorising went to a whole new level.

    His imagined conspiracies, however, tended to create a distance between people and the only person on the base who¡¯d ever listen to him without being enraged was ¡®ol¡¯ dead eyes¡¯. That¡¯s what everyone called him anyway. Because he always had dead, lifeless eyes that stared straight through you when he looked at you, as if you didn¡¯t even exist. He was like a robot, showing little joy, anger or sadness and this was the impression Fatty had of him until they met each other departing the boat at Airlie Beach.

    When he noticed James standing on the pier, he almost didn¡¯t recognise him. For starters ¡®ol¡¯ dead eyes¡¯ was smiling and his face had life in it. He looked like an entirely different person than the silent robot Fatty had been spilling all his conspiracies to back in the base.

    When he approached him, even his voice sounded different, and a bright smile split his face upon seeing Fatty. ¡°Ha-ha, Alan you fat bastard isn¡¯t it great! We¡¯ve finally got some free time away from that claustrophobic lab. If you¡¯re staying in Arlie for your stint on dry land, you should join me at the casino tonight.¡±

    Then sliding a hand over Fatty¡¯s back and gripping his shoulder he leant in to whisper conspiratorially. ¡°I heard one of the strippers in the casino has it hard for virgins and even harder for slanty eyes. If you shout me $100 in chips at the tables, I can help you solve this conspiracy, heh heh.¡±

    With that evil sounding chuckle, he through a wave over his shoulder and started walking up the pier with his travel bag over his shoulder. Fatty didn¡¯t know it yet, but his entire worldview was about to change after the night he met this new James.

    The next morning with a blinding hangover in a hotel room filled with naked backpackers crowding the floor, Fatty crawled over naked women with trashy makeup to make his way to the toilet. Covering the hotel floor were empty bottles of every alcoholic beverage Fatty had ever seen, and some he¡¯d never even heard of. As he shuffled past the little TV table lined with rows of white powder and into the bathroom, his guts grew sicker.

    By the time he reached the ensuite he was already rearing back. Then without any other warning, he projectile vomited up the wall and over the sink, demarcating a clear line across the room from the sink to the doorway. After this momentary lapse in bodily control, the pounding headache and queasy guts forced him to his knees.

    Suddenly the shower curtain was thrown open to reveal James with an evil smile plastered across his face, balls deep in one of the dealers from the casino with her teeth biting into his shoulder as she spasmed on his cock. ¡°Fatty you glorious bastard! Don¡¯t forget you owe me a $1416. A bets a bet. Oh and I imagine the bill for the rooms are going to hurt, but since you offered to take care of everything last night, I¡¯ll leave it up to you.¡± Then with a swish, the shower curtain closed again, and the sound of wet slapping and muffled moaning resumed.

    After this whole ordeal, when they returned to the sea-lab, Fatty felt like a bird that just left the nest thinking before that it new, but only understanding when it could actually fly. He also felt incredibly cheated when he realised James had been leading him into one misadventure after another and goading him into bet¡¯s he couldn¡¯t win.

    -Zip! Zip! Back to the present--

    -Black Forest Mountain-

    ¡®Day¡¯s!¡¯ Fatty wasn¡¯t sure how long he¡¯d been lost in this forest, but he guessed in his heart it was days. The tree¡¯s overheard blocked all light, and he couldn¡¯t tell if it was night or day. He never knew which direction he was heading in because he could never see the sun. His slightly bloodied grey jumpsuit was now khaki brown with a multitude of various other coloured stains and a myriad of tears.

    The most eye drawing new development of Fatty¡¯s was his right hand which glowed a luminous red. He couldn¡¯t tell when it happened. Perhaps as a result of all the strange colourful mushrooms he¡¯d been eating or the occasional puddle of luminous acrid water he¡¯d been drinking. Regardless of the cause, the effect remained, and that was a glowing red hand.

    This might sound like a problematic inconvenience, but to Fatty it was a life saver. With everything around him being pitch black his glowing hand was his only saving grace. In fact, since it started glowing it had only grown brighter and brighter, and Fatty could now discern a good 40 or 50 meters into whatever direction he pointed it.

    Amusingly enough, after his hand started glowing, his night vision which had once been so remarkably poor that he accidently drove into an ice-cream van and created a massive ... well, needless to say, his night vision had now somehow grown dramatically better. So good in fact that when he covered his glowing hand, he could almost see 10 meters around him.

    Also interesting was that since he started eating things in the forest, he was now fatter than ever, looking to be on the verge of obesity. Inversely to his expanding waistline, he felt healthier and fitter than ever. Which was a stark contradiction to how he looked covered in dried blood, mud and other particulars no-one could guess at.

    One might think eating strange things in a dark forest would inevitably lead to eating something poisonous or deadly but in this case, Fatty had no worries. After his hand had started to glow, it¡¯d start flashing orange and begin to burn whenever it approached something he shouldn¡¯t put near his mouth. Which he discovered rather quickly after a torturous hour of painting the ass end of his jumpsuit brown and writhing on the ground in agony. Since then, he¡¯d never again tried to eat the berries with a texture and shape of an aged ball sack.

    ¡°Huff! Huff! Fuck I¡¯ve been running for what feels like half a day. I should be out of this forest by now!¡± Fatty puffed as he slowed to a walk as he moved between the trees.

    ¡®Fuck! Will I be trapped in this forest for the rest of my life? I have to escape! I can¡¯t spend the rest of my life eating suspiciously shaped berries and suggestive looking mushrooms. And Christ as my witness, if I have to drink from another glowing puddle that smells like horse piss I¡¯m going to... ¡®

    Fatty¡¯s thoughts stopped along with his legs as his eyes squinted to try and peer through the darkness. ¡®Light?¡¯ Was his first thought. He covered his hand in his jumpsuit and started to move forward. The further he moved, the faster he began running. Soon he was in a full sprint leaping over logs nimbly and darting between trees, which would have been humorous if watching any other obese man except he was sprinting so fast and jumping so high he could set Olympic records.

    ¡°HAHAHAHA! Mother fucking piece of shit forest, I¡¯m finally free! HAHAHA! Light oh beautiful light!¡± With a blood-curdling laugh, he launched himself through the tree line and into the blinding light of the setting sun. By the time he stopped running, he was standing at the edge of a poorly maintained dirt road running alongside a field of Golden Grain.

    Many thoughts ran through his head as his bright smile nearly split his chubby face from ear to ear. No conspiracies were running through his mind, and he had no great thoughts about what had happened to him so far or where he was because right now nothing else mattered other than having survived this nightmare of a forest.

    After a long pause and watching the sun slowly settle over the vast fields of grain, he could no longer hold his smile as his brain caught up to the fact three suns were settling onto the horizon. ¡°Holy fucking shit! I was right all along! I¡¯ve been fucking abducted!¡±

    -The Endless Forest-

    It was starting to get darker, and James still hadn¡¯t found Jessy. He was starting to worry that Jessy was lost really deep in the forest. Or worse still, that this compass was somehow broken. Pushing away all thoughts of his only life-saving device somehow malfunctioning, he continued on along the narrow cobblestone path.

    That was until the compass began to wildly spin in every direction like a leaf in a gale. This time he was genuinely worried. ¡®Fuck! Fuckin¡¯ thing is definitely broken.¡¯ Then without warning and before his inner thoughts could work their way up to a peak of foul language the compass just as quickly returned to its original direction.

    ¡®What in the fuck is pointing at now?¡¯ Thought James as he started moving forward again. After five or six steps the compass once again began to spin bizarrely until James roared a loud ¡°FUCK, you piece of shit stop fuckin¡¯ me around!¡± into the forest, and the mad spinning slowly came to a halt. Then the compass began to spin again only this time its spinning started speeding up until it was eventually humming and buzzing as it jumped around in its little metal box.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    ¡°James you piece of shit, bastard, motherfucker!¡± A loud yell accompanied the mad buzzing of the Spirit Stone as Jessy flew out of the forest looking significantly less well dressed than when she¡¯d entered. Her hair was frazzled, and the beautiful long cheongsam was now covered in a multitude of rips and tears, some revealing a bloody scratch or two. Her eyes were bulging and shot with blood vessels, and her once delicate face now showed a vicious and wild savagery. With teeth bared like an animal, she sprinted towards James with her hands like talons aiming to gauge out his eyeballs.

    Before she even got close James had started quickly backing away, his face deadpanned as he rapidly retreated down the forest path.

    ¡°Jess wait!¡±

    ¡°Argh! Just wait till I get my hands on you, you cock sucking...¡± Jessy¡¯s reply to his hasty retreat and beseeching plea was to speed up her chase as she started wildly swinging her ¡®talons¡¯ towards James¡¯ face and swearing even more violently.

    ¡®Holy shit, I think she might actually be trying to kill me.¡¯ James rapidly started dodging which was for some reason markedly easier than other times he¡¯d tried avoiding someone¡¯s swing. He soon found that it was actually so easy to evade her attacks that he could basically stand still and only lightly move his body.

    It felt like time around him had slowed down a little, and he had sped up a little, which was a mind-boggling sensation he began to enjoy as he started to reach out and slap Jessy¡¯s ass every time she missed.

    Jessy cottoned on to this and started throwing kicks and punches instead. James very quickly found those just as easy to dodge and decided to start increasing the power of his spankings as an evil grin slowly revealed some white teeth. He was now having a great time.

    Jessy, on the other hand, was close to a mental breakdown. Ever since young, she¡¯d trained martial arts in a dojo and never once had she met an opponent she couldn¡¯t even touch, in recent years she¡¯d rarely met an opponent she couldn¡¯t beat. To make matters worse, she could feel her ass swelling from the spankings, and the pain of every slap made her eyes water. Soon her tight little bum grew so mistreated it began to numb, following which she discovered to her chagrin, that she was starting to run out of breath.

    ¡®When did this dead-eyed freak ever have so much stamina? I never saw him once in the gym.¡¯ Jessy¡¯s rage only increased with every resounding slap on her ass and missed kick or punch. By the time she¡¯d run out of breath the skin James had been so careful on tenderising was now glowing bright red through the rips of her dress. Her face was flushed red as her ragged breathing rang out in the quiet surroundings.

    James was a little disappointed that the game had ended so soon. However as disappointed as he was he was even more excited at the discovery he¡¯d just made. For that short ... scuffle, he¡¯d felt that familiar sensation from earlier. The tingling of electricity running through his body. Just like when he¡¯d placed the spirit stone in the compass except not as magnified. He tried hard to remember that feeling and started swinging his arm through the air.

    ¡®It felt kind of like this ... no that¡¯s not right.¡¯ As James swayed his arm around, he tried to perceive that sensation like a jolt of electricity.

    ¡®Got it! That¡¯s what it felt like. Now let¡¯s try making it stronger.¡¯ Soon James¡¯ arm was like a blur swishing about in the air. While Jessy saw a blur of his arm, James saw something entirely different. The more he urged this power, the slower time around him felt and the faster his body moved. To him, his arm seemed to be moving only slightly faster than normal with a steady back and forth motion, but the sounds of the world and motion of the falling leaves all appeared to slow. It wasn¡¯t so dramatic as to approach time around him stopping but felt closer to one second becoming two or three seconds.

    ¡®This must be spirit power!¡¯ James concluded. It was, after all things considered, the closest thing to a logical explanation he could reach. His face bloomed into a foolish grin, and he tried ramping up the power further.

    Jessy only looked at him growing further enraged. To her, it looked like he was teasing her by practising his bum slapping technique right in front of her. Though she was inwardly shocked at the speed his arm swung, it only fuelled her growing hatred of James. ¡°James you piece of shit just what do you think...¡± James stopped all motion and then in the eyes of Jessy disappeared in a blur.

    The next thing she knew her ass was stung with a fresh slap and James was already standing back at his original position swinging his arm again. ¡°Bid gil¡± Came a high pitched garbled sound from James. Seeing Jessy¡¯s odd look when he spoke he quickly realised what just happened.

    ¡®Doppler Effect? The speed of my vocal cords has changed, so the sound wavelengths of my voice will be higher and firmly compacted together, like when the source of a sound is rapidly moving in the same direction the sound is emitting towards. Except with me, I¡¯m stationary, but my voice has been jammed into half the time it usually has so virtually the same effect is happening.

    ¡®If I pump spirit power into my whole body, naturally everything must speed up. Perhaps if I can control the energy in a particular area of my body I can control how strongly it affects that parts.¡¯ This was James¡¯ thought, and while swinging one arm, he started waving the other.

    Now James stood there both arms swishing about as one become faster and faster and the other became slower and slower. It wasn¡¯t long before one just looked like a streak of light, and the other looked like he was karate kid slowly painting a fence.

    Finally, he stopped. Looking at the darkening sky through the leafy canopy he sighed and mumbled to himself. ¡°No time to play around here, we should get back soon. God only knows what fucked up creatures start crawling around in here at night.¡±

    Jessy¡¯s face was going through a whole variety of expressions. Eventually, it returned to the infuriated expression of moments before, and she once again began preparing to explode at James. ¡°Dead-eyes you fucking scumbag piece of shit! Who¡¯s ¡®getting back soon¡¯? This spooky fucking forest never ends, no matter how far you walk! It¡¯s your fault for bringing us in here, and you just want to ¡®be getting back soon¡¯, as if some fucking magic genie will pop out of a tree and fucking lead you out. James you piece of shit, we¡¯re fucking lost in this forest, and we¡¯re never fucking getting out!¡±

    James just stood there quietly letting her finish her rant. Once she was done, he urged the spirit power in his body as he sped forward and flicked her ass with another slap. ¡°Bad Girl!¡±

    Jessy¡¯s eyes filled with tears from her painfully swollen bum once again being abused, and she was ever more incensed by James¡¯ action of treating her like a dog. James, of course, was fully aware treating her like a dog would only build the fires of her rage, but he had the way out of the forest, and he was going to enjoy himself for this short period of time by humiliating this uppity bitch a little.

    James made a wry smile as he pulled the Spirit stone out of the compass and once again closed his eyes to envision the Gau Clan¡¯s mansion before placing the ball back in. This time he felt only a small rush of spirit energy and didn¡¯t get dizzy or feel tired afterwards.

    ¡®Odd, last time it sucked half my fuckin¡¯ life out of me. Maybe because I used a sharp memory instead of a fantasy? Or perhaps because I wasn¡¯t trying to find a lost bitch and a place instead? Maybe both these things. I¡¯m definitely going to have to play with this little gadget when I get back.¡¯

    Jessy watched with a strange expression as James was playing with the compass. She¡¯d now come to the conclusion that the little black box he was holding must be some special way to get out of the forest. ¡®Why else would he give me that disgusting knowing smile before pulling that thing out?¡¯

    James then with a swish appeared in front of Jessy like a flash and only said: ¡°Don¡¯t resist if you want to exit the forest.¡± Grabbing her in a princess carry and holding the compass in one hand, he started sprinting with his spirit power in the direction it was pointing. Jessy screamed from the sudden shock of going from standing to forty odd kilometres an hour instantly.

    After about a minute of running, James¡¯ foot stumbled, and he almost fell face first with Jessy into the cobblestone path before rescuing himself in the last split second. Jessy, of course, got an even greater fright, but was too scared to say anything now that James had started sprinting again at some stupidly inhuman speed.

    She watched as the path and forest trees rushed past her like blurs and looked at James¡¯ face now carrying a somewhat relaxed smile and only breathing slightly harder as if out for a morning jog. ¡®Has he gained some magic power from this world? And where the fuck did he get that bloody box?¡¯ Her mind began spinning with questions and slowly the forest grew darker and darker.

    James eventually had to slow down to the average jogging speed of normal humans. Jessy made no move to get down from his embrace, and James was too busy concentrating on the path ahead in the darkness to suggest it, and so they stayed like that for another half an hour until the forest was enveloped entirely in the black of night and James could barely see a thing.

    Just as he was growing worried that the compass actually was broken, it began spinning around excitedly. His face split into a grin, and he continued on forward until he and Jessy could soon make out the lights of the Gau Clan Mansion between the trees.

    In the guest courtyard sat Dr Skay reading out some instructions from his black-pad. Standing near the slushy pond showing a multitude of disturbed and worried expressions was Harvy, who¡¯s continuously afraid and pale skinned appearance had turned to a deathly afraid greying skin tone. It almost looked like he¡¯d been so stressed out recently that his body was trying to shut down on him and only his one sliver of hope that he may yet still survive this living hell was keeping his heart beating fast enough to slowly move his blood that was rapidly trying to coagulate.

    After seeing the mansion James unceremoniously tossed Jessy onto the grass and started walking towards the guest rooms. Before she even had a chance to jump to her feet and begin berating him his figure blurred like a shadow and he shot into his room.

    ¡°At last! I need a shower and a change of clothes, and come to think of it, I haven¡¯t even had the notion of eating these last few days. I should definitely do that too. Now that I¡¯ve got a chance to unwind a little I wouldn¡¯t hate a scotch on the rocks. Oh God! I hope they¡¯ve got scotch. I don¡¯t want to end up drinking some fruity fuckin¡¯ girls drink, like wine or something!¡±

    James began mumbling to himself as he started moving about his room trying to find a shower. Instead, what he found was a large wooden tub sitting behind an opaque room separator. Hanging on the wall over the tub was a large barrel of water with an oddly shaped tap carved to resemble the head of a dragon. James sighed, and with a ¡®better than nothing¡¯ turned the tap to fill the tub.

    To his happy surprise, the water that came out was scolding hot. Too hot in fact! As he started closing the dragon tap the water coming out began to cool. ¡®Holy shit! No way! A fuckin¡¯ magic tap! Is this how everyone gets there hot water in this world?¡¯ As James stripped off his clothes and submerged his filthy body in the tub, he began to wonder what the implications of such a thing could be as he started scrubbing his body clean.

    ¡®Perhaps only wealthy households like the Clan have such luxuries. If that¡¯s not the case though, maybe it¡¯s the reason everyone here, despite having lived in this world for millions of years, are so backwards and never developed any higher science or technology. After all, once someone made a magic tap, few people would think of a hot water heater. Hell, I imagine the thought of how electricity is created has never even occurred to these superstitious hicks because they all believe it¡¯s some ¡®lightning element of the natural laws¡¯ like a group of pious zealots.

    ¡®Their entire society is based on who has the strongest fist and to be honest, with the possibility to rise up like a god above all other mortals, who other than that fucked in the head Doctor out there and focus entirely on science when that chance is laying in front of them. Even I occasionally forget myself and tremble with excitement to try and reach the heights of power in this world.¡¯

    James leveraged his way out of the now filthy bath water and began looking for a towel to dry off with. Discovering none he walked out from behind the separator and started combing the room. Finding nothing he had a sudden thought and soon his spirit energy flooded his body. He then began to step side to side rapidly until stopping on the spot.

    For the first time since arriving on Ascension Star, he glanced at his naked body and very quickly noticed some dramatic changes. Where once his belly protruded slightly, it was now flat toned abs and sculpted pecs. He stretched out an arm and flexed, watching as the before half decent muscles now bulged a little more than they had, as they tightened and released. His skin felt smoother and tighter, and all the muscles tone on his body had sharpened significantly. Even his bum was less flat and tighter looking.

    ¡®This must be the effects of spirit power!¡¯ He thought to himself with a proud grin spread across his face as he was playing with his body. His moment of self-inspection was rudely interrupted with the loud bang of the door smashing against the wall and in raced Jessy, face filled with madness seething and huffing like some Amazon.

 Chapter 8: The Initial Lab

    Before coming to James¡¯ room Jessy had been for a bath and changed into some short grey robes that reached down far enough to just barely cover past her lower regions. In her own room she¡¯d worked herself up into quite a fit of an anger, until at last she couldn¡¯t handle it and had to give him a piece of her mind. Before James could even register what was happening or employ his spirit energy she¡¯d launched herself across the room and grappled him to floor.

    During her grappling him to the ground he felt her slick thighs rubbing along his legs, her bountiful chest pressing against his and her soft hairy pussy pressed into his abdomen as she tried to pin down his hands. James didn¡¯t fully realise what was happening until her angry, seething expression was staring him in the face and his hands were pinned above his head.

    He looked down at her disorderly robe that was now slightly parted revealing the satin soft white skin and the substantial cleavage of her perky rounded breasts. He couldn¡¯t stop his biological reaction as his cock hardened and erected until it pressed against the crevice of her tight bum. Noticing his reaction Jessy couldn¡¯t stop her own reaction, as at this moment she finally realised she was lying half naked on top of his fully naked body. She felt his chiselled pecs under her breasts and saw the toned muscles of his arms stretched out over his head.

    Before she could react in time, James had flipped her over and pressed her to the floor in much the same position as she had him, except his hips sat inside her long legs and both her hands were pinned above her by one of his. She felt the shaft of his erection throbbing as it laid along her abdomen and his hot breath as he eyed her like a wolf. She tried to avert her gaze as her nipples hardened and her face flushed but he reached out his spare hand and cupped her chin pulling it back towards him. As her gaze travelled along his lean muscled body back to his eyes that were, for the first time since they¡¯d met, alive and filled with vigour as an evil grin spread across his face.

    The fingers of his hand then slowly travelled down her body, enjoying her soft skin, supple flesh and parting her robe to reveal her well-developed peaks and hard little pink nipples. Once it reached the cloth belt, that was the only still intact part of her short robe, it stopped for only a brief moment, waiting as if for consent. Although she said nothing she couldn¡¯t prevent herself from reflexively swallowing and without further pause James pulled the belt loose revealing her entire fit toned body and soft skin as white as jade that now had a rapidly spreading blush across it.

    His hand then began to travel back up her body along the ribcage and around the edge of her breast as he leaned in closely towards her. Without warning he forced a kiss onto her and she eagerly began to reply as their tongues battled and her hips started raising up trying to create some pressure on her clit as it rubbed along the shaft of James¡¯ cock.

    She let out a moan as he began to respond in kind and ground his cock along the length of her pussy. His hand began to roam along her body, circling and massaging a breast to then return to her toned thigh as he grabbed it for leverage while grinding his dick onto her. Soon he felt the hot juices flowing from her cunt and broke off the kiss. Leaning in further. With a whisper he told her ¡°beg me.¡± and began to lick and nibble along her ear as he alternated between massaging his erection on her now well moistened pussy and leaving the tip flattened between his abdomen and her clitoris.

    Jessy¡¯s moans only grew loader, and with every throb of the head of his knob, she grew more restless, until finally she couldn¡¯t hold back and started bucking in her frustration at being teased to the edge but prevented from tipping. While kissing and biting along her neck James chuckled cruelly and this time commanded her. ¡°Beg me!¡±

    At last she couldn¡¯t handle this torture anymore and her beautiful blushing face with all her little freckles only looked cuter as she bit her bottom lip then begged. ¡°Please James, I¡¯m begging you. I need it.¡± And with that said James evil grin spread once more as he let his cock slide lower until it pressed against her maiden head and he pushed.

    With a thrust, his throbbing erection buried itself into the depths of hair wet cunt and her lust filled moan echoed out in the room. James finally released her hands which quickly wrapped around his neck trying to pull him into her embrace and increase their contact as much as possible. Her skin was on fire as she thrust her hips upwards in an attempt to satisfy this growing urge. His girth filled her and every motion spurned her closer to orgasm as his dick grew harder and thrust in stronger in every passing moment.

    James felt her starting to tighten on his cock and endorphins began to flood his brain as their wild rutting quickly approached its violent conclusion. As his blood rushed faster and hotter he felt himself unconsciously using spirit energy and his mind crafted a wicked idea.

    Before they reached their ultimate goal James broke Jessy¡¯s hold on his neck and pulled out. He grabbed her leg and flipped her over then pulled her up onto her knees. Sliding forwards he repositioned his himself, with one hand firmly holding her breast and pulling her back against his hard chest as the other lined up his cock. Just as Jenny¡¯s mood was beginning to become impatient he thrust back inside of her.

    Jenny let out a loud moan and pushed back her hips to create more contact. James free hand reached around, and employing his spirit power began to madly massage her excited clit with lightning speed. It was like a high powered vibrator that sent shocks through Jessy¡¯s system. She felt James bulging inside her and then she began to spasm and shake on his enlarging dick feeling every nerve in her body ignite and every muscle tense as she started cuming madly.

    James felt himself rapidly approaching his climax as his cock swelled and his balls began to contract. When Jessy¡¯s already tight cunt started to tense and tighten further his spirit power rapidly traversed his body and his thrusting accelerated to an outrageous speed, until at last with a heavy grunt and Jessy¡¯s scream they both released their final climax and James filled Jessy¡¯s insides with his cum.

    <hr>

    Sweating and exhausted they both collapsed onto the floor panting.

    ¡°Holy Shit!¡±

    James chuckled lightly and began to speak at the same time as Jessy. ¡°That was alright.¡± ¡°Not the best I¡¯ve ever had.¡±

    Then realising that they¡¯d both just replied and neither spoke first, they looked to the door of the room to see Harvy gawking wide eyed with a massive tent in his robes and a sagely nodding Dr. Skay who took the opportunity to belittle Harvy some more. ¡°You see Harvy, that¡¯s how a real man does it. With your pathetic little pecker and that ghastly grey skin you¡¯ll never get a girl like this lass, if any girl at all. Even the dead ones would probably run at the sight of your petrifying face. You¡¯re a useless waste of space and...¡±

    As Skay begin to chip away further at that last little bit of will to live remaining in Harvy¡¯s body, James languidly stood and lethargically walked back to the water basin to clean himself. With a tired ¡°Let yourself out Jess.¡± he climbed into the tub and began to pour hot water on himself once again.

    Inversely to James¡¯ lethargic carefree attitude, Jessy was already rapidly trying to arrange herself and her clothes and a whole complicated array of emotions was flashing across her face. By the time James had told her to ¡®let yourself out¡¯ she was already quickly moving towards the door.

    Before passing the slowly ever more greying Harvy and the sagely nodding Dr. Skay spraying an endless barrage of dehumanising taunts, Jessy spun with a strange expression then firmed an angry scowl and yelled back into the room. ¡°This isn¡¯t over James!¡±

    ¡°Yes it is.¡± She hadn¡¯t turned back to leave before his lethargic reply came from behind the separator. She scrunched up her cute little face, stomped her foot angrily and marched out of the room with James¡¯ cum still dribbling down her thighs.

    By the time James had cleaned up again and found a fluffy cotton grey robe that seemed to be the norms of this cult ... ahh ... Clan, Skay and the surely dead by now Harvy had disappeared and his door was once again closed.

    With a long sigh he finally laid down on the marble bed and let himself fall into a slumber.

    The next day he once again awoke to the quiet chirping of birds and the warm rays of sunlight bathing his room in its glow. The first thing James did when he hopped out of bed was start playing with his spirit power. He couldn¡¯t quite control it fully yet as his almost face plant holding Jessy yesterday can attest to.

    He began with the waving motion of his hands like he did yesterday. One fast and one slow, trying to master switching between these motions instantly. Soon his hands began a bizarre series of rapid then slow movements.

    ¡°Well this¡¯s harder than I thought it¡¯d be.¡± James stopped after an hour of this, clearly displeased with his progress. With a sigh he got himself in order and left his room. ¡®Why¡¯s he still here?¡¯ James thought to himself while watching Dr. Skay excitedly lecturing the now very dead looking, still standing corpse of Harvy.

    He was so lifeless in fact, that the flies were busy making a little home for themselves inside his listless mouth and his eyes looked like they¡¯d turned to glass as he just stood there letting Skay lecture at him on his failings as man, human, sentient being and anything else that came to mind.

    After another good half hour of Skay lecturing Harvy, with James sitting nearby taking notes for future reference should he ever wish to torture someone to death, Skay slapped a palm on Harvy¡¯s back and gave him a sagely look. ¡°Now that you understand your place in the world go and fetch my equipment. There¡¯s a great deal of work to be done.¡±

    With that brief instruction the lifeless corpse began to, with great effort it seemed, shuffle in an increasingly rigid manner as it moved towards Skay¡¯s room. ¡®He¡¯s dead right? He¡¯s got to be dead right? Has Skay killed that poor bastard and created Frankenstein¡¯s monster? Don¡¯t tell me ... Zombie? Is this mad scientist the key that triggers a zombie apocalypse on this world? Holy shit!¡¯

    ¡°Boy!¡± Skay shouted. With a jump James awoke from his nightmarish day dreaming. His face became stone, and looking at Skay he asked in a cold voice. ¡°Dr. Franken ... Ah ... Dr. Skay, are you trying to create a zombie?¡±

    Skay¡¯s face become fanatical and his evil maniacal laugh rang out in the courtyard as he hunched forward rubbing his hands together like a Jew smelling money.

    ¡°Brilliant isn¡¯t it? Muhaha! My first test subject. If it¡¯s as they described to me and a person¡¯s talent in cultivation is a reflection of how strong their ¡®soul¡¯ is then if I completely crush this mans ¡®soul¡¯ to dust and his heart still beats will he not become a soulless cultivator? Should his talent not then be even less than a common mortal¡¯s? What will happen if his soul is crushed to dust and then he¡¯s reborn with a stronger drive and will than ever before? Or what if the lack of any soul, gives him infinite talent and creates some cultivating monster like when you try to divide something by zero. Will this young man rapidly begin approaching godhood? Muha, Muwahaha. Muwahahahaha!¡±

    ¡®Fuckin¡¯ hell! I completely underestimated this fuckin¡¯ nutjob. He¡¯s absolutely the most diabolical and evil man I¡¯ve ever met! In the future I have to keep a closer eye on him. It worries me that I may miss opportunities to take notes!¡¯ James thoughts on Dr. Skay¡¯s mad plan to crush Harvy into dust and observe from the sidelines were varied. He mostly thought it was genius though.

    James was fully aware the information gleaned from this experiment could greatly affect the approach he takes in his future training. Furthermore, a great deal could be extrapolated from the results of this test such as the nature of the soul in relation to its effect on cultivation and even its effect on the ability to martial ones spirit force properly.

    Naturally James was aware of the ethical nature of this experiment but ... Godhood. Even he was blinded by such desire. Besides he¡¯d never called himself a saint or kind-hearted or anything of the sort. When it came to achieving his own goals his heart was as if a mountain. Unshakable!

    ¡°Old Madman what other little experiments are you running?¡± James finally asked.

    Skay¡¯s face lit up with excitement at the opportunity to initiate this shrewd young man, with morals as degraded as his own, into the world of science. He grinned and beckoned towards James as he started moving in the same direction as the still ambling lifeless corpse of Harvy. In passing him Skay leaned over and whispered into his ear. The ambling corpse visibly shook and then grew more frail and gaunt at an alarming rate.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

    As James passed, he decided to follow the example of the Old Madman, as he to leaned in and whispered some unmentionable things to the walking corpse. After which the corpse¡¯s hair began to turn white like some natural law had descended and sucked dry all but the last few remaining beats of his heart.

    Although James and Skay made note of this new development they decided to ignore it for now and continued walking. The slow shuddering dead form of Harvy once again began its shambling forward momentum to complete its allotted task.

    James and Skay soon passed Skay¡¯s room and moved towards a single story detached building a good hundred meters away, across a flat green grassy field, approaching the forest¡¯s edge. When Skay opened the door to this building James was floored. In this mere 5 days they¡¯d been here Skay had assembled an entire Mad Scientist¡¯s Laboratory from the debris washed through with them. Random metal rods shot huge arcs of electricity about randomly, caged animals that somewhat resembled cute little blue ferrets with big adorable eyes, a currently empty human sized cage with a questionable nature of spikes sticking out of it everywhere, a dissection/operating table depending on Skay¡¯s whim, that already had stains of blood covering it and a whole multitude of various other Mad Scientist things from chemicals to beeping electronics and a great deal of miscellaneous. The lab even had the smell of fear, ionization from electrical arcing and a few other suspicious smells James couldn¡¯t quite put a finger on.

    ¡°Holy shit! Old Madman ... what, what is all this?¡± James was truly shocked. He couldn¡¯t even maintain a straight face as this was one of the most enlightening moments of his life.

    ¡°Science boy. Clearly it is science!¡± Skay replied with a wry smile.

    ¡°Science my ass! Look at those electric rods sparking everywhere. What the hells the point? They¡¯re clearly just there for fuckin¡¯ show and the ferrets Dr. Skay, Think about the children! Is that even real blood or did you just spill something on that operating table.¡± James face scrunched up slightly when he actually started to examine the lab in closer depth.

    Skay began to laugh evilly again as he pulled a little adorable ferret from its cage. He then gave James a wink and said ¡°Watch carefully.¡± and with that he reared back and launched the fluffy little ferret at a lightning rod.

    James eye¡¯s widened in shock as he watched the poor little bastard shooting an ark through the air until finally it reached with a meter of a metal rod and a huge electric arc shot out towards the hapless creature.

    It¡¯s great big beautiful moist eyes widened as that bolt of artificial lightning rapidly approached it and it¡¯s little toothy mouth opened wide swallowing the bolt down as if just some pre-dinner snack. It then latched onto the end of the rod and started scurrying up and down while arcs of lighting blasted away at it. The little ferret looked quite pleased as it bathed in all the electricity.

    James was dumbfounded. ¡°Fuck me dead! Am I seeing things? Did I just see that creature eat electricity? Oi, you old freak, what just happened ... what¡¯s still happening?¡± He blurted as he watched the little blue ferret frolicking around on the arcing rod.

    Skay¡¯s face split open into a shit eating grin. ¡°Yesterday, did you not discover your ¡®spirit energy¡¯ and ¡®elemental affinity¡¯?¡±

    James thought back for a moment cupping his chin. ¡°You mean when I placed the Spirit Stone into the compass? Did the Corpse tell you that? Well I suppose the answer is yes. But I truthfully understand nothing about what it is. In fact I only discovered my spirit energy by accident when I picked up the compass and saw a filthy vision of your Zombie Prototype pleasuring himself alone in his room.¡±

    Skay gave a solemn nod and then started moving about the lab pressing buttons, poking unmentionable looking at things and pouring various questionable chemicals on stuff as he started explaining. ¡°Yes, Harvy mentioned it after he returned from the forest. As punishment for leaving you behind in the Endless Forest he was gifted to me to be a lab assistant but once I had him in my grasp I realised since our first encounter his mental state had become significantly unstable, calling me Great Evil Lord this and Master of Damnation that, which is why I chose him to be the subject of my first ¡®soul¡¯ experiment.¡±

    Boom! A loud explosion rang out as Skay twisted a dial somewhere and the lightning rod released a stupidly large arc, shooting the poor little ferret across the lab. Once it landed it shook its now black soot coloured fur clean and excitedly started running back towards the lightning rod. Skay then continued on as he began do more unexplainable mad scientist things.

    ¡°Once I dragged the full story out of Harvy I remembered a conversation I had about the ¡®elements¡¯ with the Elder. In this world they have 4 basic elements of wind, water, fire, and earth. Which to us educated beings would be aptly described as the three forms of matter and photons or more aptly radiation. The element of wind is actually the laws of gases, water is fluids, earth is solids and in my opinion the most powerful of the three, fire, or in our world, radiation, which if powerful enough can just turn everything to plasma and be done with it.¡±

    At the mention of the fire element his voice sounded with a little bit of longing. Then after twisting some knobs he approached the happily playing ferret and started splashing a dubious mixture of chemicals on it before quickly returning and flicking some switches after which a whole multitude of extra lighting rods flicked out from the wall and they all started arcing wildly between each other. James couldn¡¯t tell if the ferret was writhing around in pain or ecstasy as it began wildly spasming inside the now very active electrical grid. Dr. Skay pulled out his Black-Pad and started making some notes while he continued explaining to James.

    ¡°In addition to the 4 basic elements was a number of rare elements. Space and Time both naturally being the same as our universe but vastly misunderstood in this universe and also so rare that they can hardly be found. The element of fortune, which I believe to be the equivalent of advanced probability mathematics and so rare as to only be a legend. Also there stand a number of other legendary elements like ¡®nature¡¯ or ¡®darkness¡¯ and such that have hardly ever been seen or discussed in this backwater city and were passed down only in stories or through the rumours of travellers. Then there was one rare one that was truly interesting.¡±

    At this point he spun to look at James with his eyes glittering. ¡°Lightning! If I had to guess, your job was somehow related to electricity in our world correct?¡± With a nod from James Skay spun back towards the writhing ferret before moving to mash some more buttons. The ferret grew more frantic in its spasms and suddenly began to emit a faint blue glow around its body in which little arcs of electricity started to jump across it¡¯s fur slowly growing larger the more the huge arcs from the rods lashed onto it. Skay continued on during all this while also still writing on his pad.

    ¡°Lightning or electricity, or more aptly, the flow of electrons. From what I was told, they believe your elemental alignment is set since birth. In my opinion that¡¯s a crock of shit! I believe your innate elemental affinity is a reflection of your understanding of the laws of a certain ¡®element¡¯ and your ¡®affinity¡¯ to the ¡®elements¡¯ is limited only by your understanding and knowledge. For arguments sake let¡¯s assume you¡¯ve completed school having done physics and chemistry. In physics you learnt the basics of how photons are packets of energy and the wavelength of the photon is a reflection of the energy stored by that little packet and in chemistry you¡¯ve learned about exothermic and endothermic reactions. In other words the way in which a system, object or whatever share¡¯s its heat. Just with this knowledge alone you¡¯ve suddenly qualified for the highest tier of innate affinity to the element of fire in this world and in fact you could just skip fire and go straight to the element of radiation, or rather light! As another example say you¡¯ve completed some elementary courses in the nature of space-time at university at one point or another. You understand the nature of space and time being a singular entity because what¡¯s space without time and what¡¯s time without space and yadda yadda. You¡¯re now a bona-fide cultivator of both the elements of space and time. In your case you¡¯ve spent half your lifetime studying and applying the fundamentals and some of the advanced principles of electricity. Now watch this.¡±

    Explaining to this point he stabbed a big red button that was just begging to be pressed and a huge current nearly blew the lightning rods apart as it surged towards the little ferret.

    Boom!

    A shocking explosion rang throughout the laboratory and the smell of burning hair spread as a smoke screen expanded out from the position of the little ferret and filled the lab.

    After a few minutes of coughing and wheezing and opening a window the lab slowly cleared. Where there was once an adorable little blue ferret now sat a ferocious and slightly bigger ferret that had static arcs shocking across it body hairs. The entire rodent looked to be charged up to the brink with all its little hairs standing on end. Seeing this, Skay split his face with a grin, then turned to James. ¡°You¡¯re going to have to catch it.¡± He nonchalantly said as he slowly backed away from it.

    James face turned stoic as he eyed the Mad doctor and then looked at the now very riled up rodent. Rolling up his sleeves he cautiously approached it and reached out a hand to grab it. The little ferret was a blue flash as it spat out some lightning and began running away. When the shock reached James, it started travelling up his arm numbing his nerves and making his arm jerk back, once it travelled through his body he started to convulse. He unconsciously deployed his spirit energy which quickly counteracted the effects of the lightning and like the tide of the beach swallowed the ferrets lightning discharge like a hungry wave before returning to where ever exactly it is that spirit energy comes from.

    James could now slightly guess at the reason why that Old Madman said ¡®he¡¯d¡¯ have to catch it and so began a game of cat and mouse in which a blue little shadow flashed around the lab firing off lightning everywhere and a much bigger grey blur ran around in chase, freezing every time he was shocked until he could fully deploy his spirit energy to quell the lightning. While this was going on Skay was humming to himself and writing away on his pad. He then once again began explaining just what the hell he was doing.

    ¡°Because of your ¡®natural affinity¡¯ to ¡®lightning¡¯ your spirit energy has begun to take on characteristics of that natural law. I suspect having your occupation you¡¯ve completed at least high school level physics and chemistry and perhaps some advance mathematics so you now have all the qualifications to attune to every basic element and a few rare ones. In fact, if I¡¯m correct, anyone can attune themselves to any natural law with a high degree of compatibility, required that they have at least some basic knowledge of how it works and have still not solidified a ¡®True Spirit¡¯. Ahh but I¡¯ll get into that when Hao comes to teach you how to cultivate later.¡±

    At the moment James was half listening as he raced madly around the laboratory knocking things over everywhere as the little blue rodent continued to evade him. His lifeless dead eyes would probably have frightened the ferret provided he didn¡¯t have long strands of his hair trying so hard to distance themselves from each other due to static electricity. They almost stood directly upwards like some kind of Super Seyan. By this point in time the ferret was treating this as a fun game and continuously dodged and jumped the moment before James could reach it and throwing it¡¯s lightning all over the place like some kind of twisted science fair project.

    Skay of course wasn¡¯t worried and continued on. ¡°These ferrets are actually quite an interesting little species apparently native to the Endless Forest. Strangely enough when I approached the Elder and started asking about them he immediately offered them to me. They apparently are born with no natural elemental affinity and rarely ever evolve to the point of having formed a ¡®True Spirit¡¯ which is what you¡¯re now seeing. By continuously subjecting it to a natural law and throwing a few interesting chemicals I¡¯ve worked up from stuff in their herb garden that kept it alive through the process, I¡¯ve successfully ¡®taught¡¯ it some of the laws of how electricity behaves granting it an elemental affinity and allowing it to progress in whatever path of cultivation spirit beasts like itself progress on. This is only the first subject, mind you. Hopefully if Harvy doesn¡¯t snap anytime soon or break the ¡®Spirit Barrier and solidify his ¡®True Spirit¡¯ he can volunteer to be the first human test subject. Muwhahaha!¡±

    James finally understood what the whole purpose of this experiment was. Though he wasn¡¯t certain about what this ¡®Spirit Barrier¡¯ or ¡®True Spirit¡¯ was he¡¯d already formed some guesses based on the context. However after this chat he felt quite a bit more knowledgeable about natural affinities.

    At present he felt that lightning gave him a sharp rise in speed and processing capability that made the world look as if the rate of time passing had halved, and allowed him to move explosively at nearly three or four times his normal max speed. He wondered what sorts of effects his spirit energy would have if he could incorporate every possible attribute he could think of. Suddenly he wondered what kind of monster the Old Madman was going to turn out like if he started cultivating. Having his vast and wide reaching knowledge of the universal laws he could surely develop any number of strange and wonderful ¡®elements¡¯.

    While he was thinking about such things he¡¯d finally cornered the ferret after a long game of cat and mouse. When he started closing in for the capture it started panicking then reared up as all its hair bristled and charged arcs started dancing off it like a lightning storm brewing as it opened its mouth and fired a massive ball of electrically charged particles nearly twice its own size, directly towards James. ¡®Holy Shit! Is that a fuckin¡¯ plasma-ball?¡¯

    Before James had a moment to escape it¡¯d already arrived in front of him. The sheer degree of power in this ball was so huge that any gaseous matter that made contact, seemed to light on fire and fuelled an unusual reaction spitting out bits of super-heated plasma as massive amounts of electrons went into a chaotic state and the gases in the air began to become liquid fire.

    James felt every hair on his body raise like pins dancing on a magnet. His eyes hyper-dilated as his spirit energy flooded into every part of his body and he leapt to the side just in time to escape contact with the rapidly fired, flaming, electric ball of death. However unable to escape totally unscathed as a massive arc shot out stunning him as he fell to the ground like a slapped fish.

    Skay¡¯s eye¡¯s bulged out as he was taking endless notes of data and watched the plasma ball rapidly pass through a wall as if it didn¡¯t exist leaving only a basketball sized, slowly melting hole in the wall of his lab like a new window to the outside. When he turned back he saw the ferret lying passed out on the ground from this huge release of it¡¯s energy and James slowly trying to stand as his body kept jerking and twitching occasionally.

    When he finally collected himself and turned to look at Skay his usual poker face seemed to have developed a strange twitching in his right eye. James himself couldn¡¯t tell if it was some kind of nerve problem or he still hadn¡¯t fully recovered but he damn sure knew the next time the madman roped him into his lab he¡¯d make sure not to be enlisted for another seemingly harmless experiment such as this.

    Interestingly he felt his spirit power was surging madly like an over filled dam as it unconsciously began leaking out into his body. His muscles bulged and contracted constantly as it ran through his body and he felt himself stiffening and relaxing endlessly.

 Chapter 9: First Lesson on Cultivating

    After a short time of cleaning up the lab, with James choosing to avoid contact with anything remotely suspicious looking, his body finally began to calm down and he and Skay returned to the courtyard.

    In the paved courtyard was a handful of odd gadgets like strange looking cameras and metal antennae on tripods, which seemed very poorly wired together with a mish-mash of bizarre electronics sticking out of them and connecting to a single advanced looking laptop on a wooden desk running some undecipherable program.

    An ancient looking corpse with gaunt wrinkled grey skin and long snow white hair sat hunched over on a seat in the courtyard. If this corpse had even a single breath of air left to take no one would ever be able to tell as its dead glassy eyes just stared straight ahead peering into the void between life and death.

    ¡°Harvy stop fucking sitting around you useless piece of crap I need you to...¡± The moment they arrived Skay left no time for the corpse to enjoy this moment of peace in death and it jolted as if shocked by an electric current the moment Skay began lashing at his soul and giving out instructions.

    ¡°Hmmm. I¡¯d have thought he¡¯d actually be dead by now. Old Madman how long do you think it¡¯ll take before his heart actually stops beating?¡± James asked as he observed their science experiment rigidly trying to stand up like some rusted piece of machinery fighting frozen joints.

    Skay looked over his Black-Pad then walked up and took Harvy¡¯s pulse. After a moment a strange look passed through his eye¡¯s and he began poking and prodding his slowly moving cadaver.

    ¡°Muwahaha. His heart seems to have slowed it¡¯s beating to within an inch of death long ago my boy! In fact whatever¡¯s still moving this lifeless corpse is beyond even my ability to comprehend ... momentarily.¡±

    With that, Skay started searching through a bag on the floor filled with an assortment of random equipment rescued from the debris of the base, until he pulled out what looked like an adrenaline syringe. He then unceremoniously and with no warning pulled the cap off and stabbed in into the chest of the very dead looking carcass.

    In just a few moments the corpse¡¯s body reacted and for the first time since yesterday James noticed it blink and then rubbing its eyes it started mumbling about a nightmare until it looked down and saw the massive syringe being pulled out of its chest by Old Skay. The tiredness in his dazed eyes quickly reverted to fear and as the adrenaline fired up his body¡¯s life signs again the flickering candle flame representing his soul dimmed to the size of a lit match.

    James made no effort to try and discover just what must be going on inside the head of poor young Harvy and instead made his way towards Jessy¡¯s room. As he passed by he noticed a servant moving towards their guest rooms from the mansion pushing a cart holding a series of bread¡¯s, roasted meats, fruits and nuts and a whole variety of other foods.

    Unable to stop himself he diverted towards the servant and politely took control of the food cart then knocking on Jessy¡¯s door in passing yelled. ¡°Jessy you bitch! Breakfast in the courtyard.¡±

    Thus without further ado a constantly enraged Jessy joined the ever stoic James and the endlessly cursing Mad Dr. Skay in the courtyard and for the first time the trio sat together and began to discuss their plans.

    As they ate James chose to distract Jessy from her rage by informing her of some of the things he¡¯d learnt of this world so far followed by the upcoming decision she¡¯d have to make in regards to if she wanted to start training with the clan.

    Jessy and James politely chose to ignore last night¡¯s brief tryst because they both knew inside even before it¡¯d begun that such a thing was entirely a stress relieving event and in no way matched their emotions regarding each other.

    For James, who was in the past rather randy already, that incredibly brief and forceful love making event relieved more built up tension and stress than an entire day of drinking fine liquor, bathing in a spa and enjoying fine foods.

    In much the same manner, Jessy felt no great emotional changes towards James after the incident and readily recognised it as her seeking an outlet for all her pent up emotions and stress.

    They both refused to admit to themselves or each other that thanks to James¡¯ new found spirit energy it was the most explosive orgasm they¡¯d ever had, but with their present opinions of each other they would probably take that secret to their grave.

    It wasn¡¯t too long after they¡¯d finished eating that Hao, whom James had recently learnt was actually the present Family Head, who essentially controlled the Clan, arrived at the courtyard carrying a series of small books illustrating a whole manner of oddities.

    Before they began, Jessy and Hao began a short debate regarding her conditions for swearing an oath until at last they settled on a deal in which she would be assigned under the direct supervision of Dr. Skay and answer only to him as a lab assistant. James cringed slightly when the Old Freak brought up this possibility and he then laughed coldly inside when Jessy jumped at the chance to avoid full blown servitude to the clan in exchange for assisting the good Dr. Franken ... Dr. Skay for as long as his oath remained in effect.

    Once they began scanning through the books the trio noticed a few contained odd breathing patterns that when maintained normally, allowed your mind to wield significantly greater control over your spirit power. These where referred to as breathing techniques and are one of the most important things any early cultivators must learn about and practice.

    The reason being that once you learn to calmly enter a state of meditation and ¡®enter your spirit realm¡¯ as it was described by Hao then the quality of your breathing technique combined with your innate martial and elemental talent would affect the rate at which your body began to gather spirit energy from its surroundings.

    When he was a explaining this he gave a strange look at James causing him to shiver and continued to explain.

    ¡°Also in this world there are a great number of naturally occurring plants and materials that spend hundreds to thousands of years and sometimes even longer spans of time innately absorbing the Spirit Energy of their surroundings. Cultivators like us can refine their innately absorbed spirit energy and rapidly increase our cultivation progress. The battle for cultivation resources is incredibly fierce.

    ¡°In the future you may come a across a strange number of oddities, born from an inanimate object or some plant and animal life absorbing spirit energy and developing spirit properties. Many fall into collective categories such as Spirit Beasts, Spirit Herbs, Spirit Plants, Spirit Minerals, Spirit Stones and some other various terms I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll eventually hear about later.

    ¡°For example the Golden Grain Fly¡¯s that you swallowed in route to the city are a difficult to catch Spirit Animal that generally have absorbed spirit energy for tens to hundreds of years. Having eaten them is also considered a great fortune for young cultivators even in the True Spirit Realm but in your case would have been a death sentence had we not had the Extreme Yin Pool on our mansion grounds.¡±

    At this point James face blanched a little and then his eyebrow rose slightly. ¡°You called it a ¡®Spirit Animal¡¯ is that somehow different from a ¡®Spirit Beast¡¯?¡±

    Hao nodded his head a few times and said some ¡°Good Good¡¯s¡±. He quietly considered how rare it was to be teaching a quick disciple for once.

    Although being the Head of the Clan and rarely taking time to personally teach disciples he made an exception this time solely because of little ¡®Jay¡¯ as he¡¯d intimately started calling him in his head. If James were aware of this he¡¯d immediately throw everything aside, pack a bag with some of his equipment launched through the Gateway and start hiking in the direction of the next closest city, spirit beasts and bandits be damned!

    Hao then continued on in his lecture. Narrowly avoiding letting his inner nickname for James spill out with a shielding cough. ¡°You¡¯re right little Jayhem! junior, Spirit Animals are creatures that have started gathering Spirit Energy but have yet to develop any true consciousness. They¡¯re just wild animals with no true thoughts of their own and only instinct. Depending on the animal they may eventually break through and develop a soul but the level of cultivation needed for such a thing varies drastically based on the life form. The Golden Grain Fly for example will probably never develop consciousness even if it flies around absorbing spirit energy for a million years and even after its cultivation has risen significantly. Those little blue Forest Hoppers on the other hand are born with a soul and considered Spirit Beasts from birth. As such the more energy they gather the stronger their soul becomes until they can form a True Spirit. Although considering how weak their species soul is and their total lack of affinity to any element, it¡¯s rare to see them evolve their cultivation.¡±

    Finally he returned to explaining some of the books. Including the breathing techniques and a number of books on different visualisation techniques for meditation to ¡®view your spirit realm¡¯, there where a number of ¡®martial¡¯ techniques. Martial in the sense that they describe methods of applying spirit energy within the body to achieve amazing feats of power and help a cultivator affect the natural laws in their surroundings. Similar to if you could move stuff with your mind, pointing your finger at it when you move it would be a useful ¡®crutch¡¯ that allows your mind to achieve the same effect for half the effort.

    There were a great number of basic techniques for applying spirit energy within the body from kicks and punches to odd methods of stepping that increased your running speed or agility in battle. Some of which James had noticed when arriving. There was also one more interesting martial book that described the spirit aura which was that strange pressure he felt weighing down on him the first time they met Hao and his disciples.

    According to the literature and Skay¡¯s explanations after examining it, your aura is essentially the manifestation of your spirit energy outside your own body, without the use of a martial technique. Its control and power is limited only by the sheer force of your will-power and the amount of spirit energy you have at your disposal. It¡¯s most interesting use in James¡¯ opinion wasn¡¯t the ability to pressure others or even to manifest your element outside of your body, but it¡¯s use to shield you from damage if worn like an armour over the skin. If your aura can cover fifty square meters when you release it and can pressure a commoner to the ground imagine how much damage reduction it would have if compressed to the thinness of a piece of cloth and covering your body.

    The moment James had this thought he swore to himself he¡¯d find a way to achieve this goal. Although the book mentioned it to be almost completely impossible James refused to let some book tell him how to live his life. He¡¯d master this life saving technique no matter what!

    While James was excitedly envisioning himself wearing invincible body armour Skay was going absolutely ballistic over the meditation techniques. He was constantly writing notes in his Black-Pad muttering about ¡®brain chemistry alterations¡¯ and ¡®self-hypnosis mind altering¡¯ along with various other phrases James chose to try and ignore.

    Jessy on the other hand was madly in love with the martial technique books as she flushed with excitement imagining herself beating James into a sloppy paste with the Pressure of the Sea punching technique or the Thousand Crushing Waves kicking technique, it almost looked like she was getting a sexual thrill out of the idea.

    Seeing their fanatical reactions Hao then smiled and pulled out three elongated pink fruits that looked like bananas except with the soft pink skin of a peach. Throwing one to each Jessy and Skay he then slowly approached James with a very strange look in his eyes and after licking his lips he began explaining. ¡°Before you each start choosing techniques you¡¯ll need to eat this Spirit Fruit. It¡¯s a quite common fruit with a very gentle spirit energy used to give enough spirit energy to a mortal for them to test their elemental affinities. Now Junior James just slide your mouth over it and take a bite.¡± Hao started approaching James with the phallic shaped fruit at waist height and thrusting it forwards along with the motion of his hips.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    James visibly paled and couldn¡¯t back away fast enough. His dead eyes stared at Hao and he coldly replied. ¡°I won¡¯t need it. I¡¯ve already got spirit power so should be fine to test my affinity without it.¡±

    Hao was visibly upset at missing this opportunity to live out one of his twisted inner fantasies but said nothing as he dejectedly slid the fruit back into his robe. With a cough he brushed aside this rejection as he then pulled out three equally cut lengths of pale withered tree branches and handed them to the trio.

    ¡°Cough! Well then, this is a branch from a spirit tree called the Tree of Elements. What you have to do is try and envision yourself pouring some spirit power into the branch.¡±

    Skay started poking, twisting and bending the branch in all sorts of ways as he started mumbling aloud. ¡°Interesting. So we just envision our spirit power. I suspect the manner in which a person envisions a foreign power greatly affects the nature of their affinity. I¡¯ll have to run some tests...¡± finally he looked at James and grinned. ¡°Boy, you¡¯ve already proved that you have the lightning element so if my guess isn¡¯t wrong then you most likely envision spirit power as some sort of bioelectrical energy produced by your body which acts exactly like normal electron flow electricity correct?¡±

    James eyed this Mad Scientist suspiciously but still nodded an affirmation.

    Skay¡¯s grin towards James grew somewhat madder. ¡°Boy, this time, try and envision everything you know about some other law. Say gases for example and envision your spirit power acting as a gas.¡±

    With that said Skay¡¯s expression changed as he started to envision something of which James didn¡¯t even want to guess while staring intently at his stick.

    James then glanced down at his own branch and started to envision his spirit power as a gaseous nebular inside his body. Like a gas it filled its container with every particle trying to separate equal distance from the others. He imagined how it acted when under pressure and when released from pressure and envisioned it flowing through his body like tempestuous storm clouds until finally he began to release it into the branch.

    Soon the branch grew healthy and thick from its pale withered state into a rich green colour and a gale force wind blew out around him like a mini-cyclone pushing everyone back. The drooling broken zombie that stood nearby fell flat on its back like a rigid tree falling to the ground. Jessy and Skay were both forced back a good 4 or 5 steps and even Hao, who was standing the closest and had a level of cultivation James couldn¡¯t imagine, was forced back a step.

    Hao¡¯s eyes glowed brightly after the mini-cyclone dispersed leaving the rather very ruffled looking James standing there holding a green stick. Soon the stick once again withered back to its pale dead state.

    To say Hao was surprised would be an understatement. In all his hundred or so years of life and all the elemental affinity tests he¡¯d seen he¡¯d never once seen a Tree of the Elements branch react so strongly. Even the strongest wind element reaction he¡¯d seen from a spirit barrier disciple was only enough to shuffle his robe a little and said strongest was considered a genius amongst his peers in the Clan.

    Hao¡¯s shock didn¡¯t end there however, as very soon the stick in Skay¡¯s hand lit up with resplendent bright light and the rays of the sun intensified to shine down upon Skay like some holy being descended upon the mortal world. All other light was dim in his presence as he glowed with resplendent white light. It was so moving that had Skay not been wearing an absolutely evil, shit eating grin and his filthy lab coat, he might have been passed off as some sagely Angel.

    Hao¡¯s eyes bulged forth from there sockets as he watched this reaction from the element testing branch.

    Jessy having seen the mind blowing results of these two decided she wouldn¡¯t lose. Having been a hydraulics fitter in her past world she tried her best to calm her mind and imagine what the nature of her spirit energy was, just as she was starting to envision it like ultra-high pressure fluid James walked up behind her.

    He then started whispering dirty secrets and erotic tales into her ear. Jessy¡¯s face flushed red, lighting up her cute freckles as she tried to block him out. After a few moments of getting her worked up he pressed closer against her back wrapping his hands around her waist and started whispering more fervently. ¡°Imagine your spirit energy is like your unbridled lust Jess. Think of all your hot desires and needs rushing around your body like a storm of desperation. An untameable, uncontrollable desire. Think about your spirit energy as all the pent up sexually frustration you¡¯ve ever had, all your twisted sexual fantasies and all your wildest sexual experiences.¡± While whispering these filthy thoughts into her head his hands began to roam her body until finally just as she was about to lose her focus he snuck a hand into her robe and employed his lightning fast hand speed while rubbing her pussy and whispering even more fervently. ¡°Now Jessy! Pour all your uncontrollable suppressed sexual needs, desires and fantasies into the stick!¡±

    As the sudden shock of having her pussy openly molested in public and all the filthy, hot thoughts James had been filling her head with, she unwittingly let out some spirit power into the stick. It was just a tiny little bit, but the moment it left her body she felt some sick sense of fulfilment and then it rushed out like a breached dam into the stick. The moment the branch started growing from its withered state James started shooting backwards, grabbing the doctor on the way.

    Skay was dumbfounded as James just suddenly manhandled him without warning while retreating away from Jessy rapidly, but before he could make a fuss he saw a pink glowing translucent flame envelope Jessy and a sweet hypnotic aroma filled the air around her causing even his old and withered loins to stir.

    By the time this phenomena ended, James had already dragged Skay back a good forty metres and his eyes were gleaming brightly as he began to laugh madly then leaned in to whisper conspiratorially to Skay with a hand held tightly over his shoulder. ¡°Hahahaha! Did you see that, you crazy old goat?! I had this thought while you were explaining the elements but it didn¡¯t truly come to fruition in my mind until you shared your thoughts on how one¡¯s method of envisioning their spirit energy was the trigger to its nature. What if it isn¡¯t just a matter of ones understanding of natural laws like physics or chemistry that affects your affinity? What if every law you can think of, even the abstract laws of greed, wrath and lust can be envisioned when you¡¯re thinking about your spirit power. Who better than a 21st century, beautiful, sexually repressed young lady to envision their understanding of lust and desire as spirit power! The only reason these ¡®emotional¡¯ laws are so rare is because all these backward superstitious hicks have believed since the dawn of time that there¡¯s only 4 major elements and all the rare elements they could never understand because they weren¡¯t born with it so they don¡¯t even try!¡±

    As he was speaking with Skay, Jessy was going through a number of interesting emotions. She felt a quite ashamed of herself for starters. Followed by incredibly horny. But most importantly the feeling she had as her spirit energy was released was beyond comprehension. For that entire short moment she couldn¡¯t move a muscle because her entire body was tensed in a shuddering orgasm. Never did she imagine that releasing her spirit energy like this would be such a life changing experience and all past orgasms were just a shadow of this one true glorious release.

    On the other hand Hao who was a man of many suppressed sexual desires instantly stained his robe with cum when the fluctuations of Jessy¡¯s natural law spread out. The only thing that stopped his knees from buckling under the intensity of his climax was his staunch will power as he cycled his own spirit energy through his body to try and eliminate the effects.

    The previously lifeless corpse that had earlier been knocked over by James was now flipping out uncontrollably on the ground as the already large splotch on his robe continued to expand. Clearly he was still in the midst of an orgasm even after Jessy¡¯s natural law had dissipated. In fact it looked like his orgasm was so prolonged he was in pain as his hips kept violently and rigidly thrusting into the air like someone was defibrillating his crotch.

    Skay¡¯s eyes filled with madness as his laughter slowly progressed from a low chuckled to a maniacal laughter that echoed across the mansion grounds sending shivers through even the Elders.

    So maddened by his lack of foresight on this subject, he immediately pulled out his Black-Pad and began deleting and re-writing notes furiously.

    James returned to the courtyard with his element stick as his mind spun furiously. ¡®Just how many things do I understand well enough to exhibit such a strong reaction? The element of wind is a reflection of the laws of gases and how they react. I learnt the basics of the three forms of matter in high school but it was still enough to get a strong reaction out of the stick. If I did the other two forms of matter ... or rather the other two elements of earth and water I could probably display a similar feat of understanding. What about lightning. I understand electricity better than anything. If I actually used it on the stick I¡¯m afraid I might actually be engulfed in a bolt of lightning from the sky and blown away as ashes.¡¯

    At this point he looked upwards at the clear blue sky and the three ever stable suns. ¡®No that¡¯s unlikely, there¡¯s no clouds out. But what if I could create clouds? That would be a combination of two natural laws. Liquid forming a gaseous vapour and then condensing so perhaps I¡¯d even need heat or radiation or whatever ... but it¡¯s still just liquid particles acting like a gas so perhaps It would be possible to achieve the same result with just the water element, perhaps it just needs more spirit power? Then again, even if wanted to, I don¡¯t know if I can activate two separate elements simultaneously and I can¡¯t even materialise my spirit energy outside my body yet.¡¯

    Everyone started to gather again in the courtyard. As Jessy was getting ready to blow her top at James for interrupting her during her element discovery, Hao was ready to start congratulating everyone on having such extraordinary talent and rare elemental affinities and the now once again lifeless corpse chose to remain lying down lifelessly. Before anyone could interrupt him though, James just tucked his stick away into his robes and started waving his hands around madly. First he needed to understand how the wind spirit energy effected his body and as such chose to try and circulate his spirit energy envisioning it as a gaseous nebula.

    Soon, swishing could be heard as his hands sped up drastically and then he started jumping around in a chaotic manner strafing here and there and quickly shooting forward then backwards. It truly looked like he¡¯d gone mad. Meanwhile, inside his head he was trying to catalogue the changes he felt while under the effects of this new spirit energy.

    ¡®What the actual fuck? It feels like my body has become so light that if went sky diving I could just gently fall to the ground without even a parachute. Note to self, schedule in for skydiving. Hopefully they have like ... Flying Spirit Beast airlines or something. Interesting. Although it¡¯s nowhere near as fast as when I use lightning spirit energy my speed has somewhat increased. Perhaps that¡¯s a result of the weightlessness? I feel a great deal more nimble than when I¡¯m using lightning so I guess more agile? No significant feeling of time dilation but it does feel like my reaction speed is a little higher.¡¯

    As this testing continued Jessy and Hao began to stare at him oddly until suddenly they saw the madman Skay also swishing his arms around madly and running back and forth.

    After another few minutes of this they both stopped about the same time. Looked at each other strangely and then began excitedly discussing their results and completely ignoring everyone else as if they didn¡¯t exist. By this time Jessy had reached her boiling point and marched towards James with and accusatory wrathful expression.

    ¡°James, you piece shit! You fucking dead eyed bastard! You ruined everything! Now I¡¯m stuck with some weird fucking spirit power! You bastard!¡± Jessy began her rant. She then started poking a finger into his chest which was close to becoming a fist poking him in the eye socket.

    Before her rant had even warmed up yet though Hao jumped in to defend his wet drea ... ahh disciple. ¡°Little junior Jessy. You can¡¯t blame junior brother James for the nature of your spirit energy. After all your natural affinity is born with you at birth and no one can change that. Also I don¡¯t know why you¡¯re so upset! Even though I¡¯ve never heard of a spirit energy like yours before it¡¯s one of the most powerful I¡¯ve ever encountered. To attack the soul directly like that, sigh, even I couldn¡¯t completely maintain my control and that¡¯s just the power of it at the Spirit Barrier Stage. If you were at the same cultivation level as I am, I doubt I¡¯d have remained conscious, let alone standing.¡±

    James face changed to an innocent and offended expression as he started a guilt trip for Jessy. ¡°That¡¯s right Jess. You should be thanking me. I¡¯ve helped you unlock your true hidden potential. With your natural affinity as a sluuu ... With your affinity to the nature of desire you¡¯ll be an unbeatable opponent to anyone that¡¯s ever even had the notion of sex.¡±

    Skay then began nodding sagely. ¡°Mmm ... yes, yes, the boys absolutely correct young lass. In fact, later on you¡¯ll have to come to my lab so we can ahh ... test your spirit energy. Ahem. I¡¯m sure Harvy will be glad to help you.¡±

    At the mention of its name the dead body they had all been standing over while discussing this suddenly had a flicker of life in its glassy eyes. Jessy however immediately snuffed it out like stomping a roach to death. ¡°Not on your life. I don¡¯t want your pet zombie anywhere near me.¡±

    They corpse¡¯s eyes slowly dimmed again and it returned to its seemingly eternal rest in the middle of the courtyard.

    After a great deal of discussion on the true meaning of gratitude Jessy was ruthlessly pressured back. Although James and Skay both new she had simply been an unexpected lab rat for them and they were definitely in an ethical grey zone here, this was Ascension Star and there was no one she could complain to even with Hao standing right next to her when it happened. After all, neither he or Jessy were aware of the intricacies the mad pair had just discovered regarding elements and spirit energy. Even if they were informed she could still do nothing because either she could just envision a new element or Hao would step in to defend James because ... well, for reasons...

    After this short interlude they gathered back at the pile of books with Hao looking decidedly worried. ¡°Unfortunately I only have a meditation technique and breathing technique that aligns with the element of wind. Junior brother Skay¡¯s element of light is quite rare even in our entire Empire and I¡¯m not even certain what junior sister Jessy¡¯s element is.¡±

    After saying as much Skay stepped forth. ¡°You don¡¯t need to worry about that. Just let me borrow all these books and I¡¯ll work something out.¡± He then walked over and kicked lifeless body, gave him instructions and then he and James returned to the lab.

 Chapter 10: Harvy the Ghoul

    James spent the majority of his afternoon in the lab playing hide and seek with the little Forest Hopper trying to get better control of applying the instantaneous speed produced by the lightning element and also some time jumping up and down from the building testing his weightlessness from his wind element.

    After a few hours Skay finally finished whatever mad experiments he¡¯d been busying himself with then came out to find James rapidly sprinting away from another lightning/plasma ball rocketing through the air in the empty field outside the lab.

    Little Blue as he was now being affectionately named was all tuckered out again as he crawled up into a little ball for a nap and James was once again rolling around on the ground from the backlash of an arc off the plasma ball. His fluffy grey robes were now scarred with dirt, rips and burnt pieces. James soon managed to stand taking in a deep breath when he saw a pretty severe burn from the lightning arc on his shoulder.

    Skay payed no attention to James¡¯ injuries as he pulled him back into the lab to the screen of a computer. James scanned the screen for a short moment and when all he could see was gibberish he puzzled his brow and looked at Skay. ¡°Old Madman what am I looking at?¡±

    Skay had a scary grin split his face as he stared at the computer screen flashing with all sorts of computer code and other nonsense.

    ¡°These meditation techniques are just different methods of self-hypnosis. Essentially they all boil down to two things, one of which is to allow yourself to look into your ¡®Spirit Realm¡¯ or inner realm which apparently is where you¡¯ll see the Spirit Barrier and also where the majority of your ¡®Spirit Energy¡¯ congregates until you mentally call on it. I¡¯m fairly certain now that the Spirit Realm is actually your own subconscious mind. I suspect the Spirit Barrier is actually like a natural self-defence mechanism to the invasion of your spirit energy. What I find most amusing is that your subconscious is actually using your own spirit energy to build its wall. So the more energy you generate the stronger this wall becomes, until eventually you can¡¯t fit anymore spirit energy into your subconscious and it¡¯s all compressed and trapped inside this wall. Once this is done your spirit energy growth stagnates. At this stage you have a chance to break through the Barrier by consolidating a True Spirit.¡±

    Skay then flipped open one of the books on the workbench to reveal what looked like a whole bunch of words all written in a chaotic nonsensical sequence.

    ¡°Now I¡¯m still uncertain about the true spirit process but it doesn¡¯t matter yet. What is certain though, is that these meditation techniques don¡¯t just allow you to observe your spirit realm! Their chock full of a whole mishmash of laws pertaining to whatever elemental affinity you practice. By chanting them in your head and slowly trying to comprehend them as you meditate you can increase your understanding of your element.

    ¡°That isn¡¯t important to us however because our prior knowledge and methods of learning about the laws of the universe is completely different and reaches down to a quantum level that I doubt anyone on this planet can even conceive the existence of. Although I¡¯m curious how exactly they came up with this bizarre method to pass on information that too is irrelevant for the moment. What is relevant, is that right now this computer is compiling the perfect meditation technique based on all these samples supplied by what¡¯s¡¯iz¡¯name and a whole bunch of compiled knowledge from Earth¡±

    The screen then began flashing madly and he rushed forward to start typing some new gibberish James couldn¡¯t understand and continued talking.

    ¡°Now I¡¯ll bet your thinking a whole bunch of things about, why can¡¯t you just use any one of these techniques to enter your psyche and look at your spirit realm? It¡¯s true that you could but you would have forgotten the most important part of the meditation technique. It¡¯s drawing spirit energy into your body from the surroundings. Your no doubt wondering what spirit energy is as well, but you¡¯ll know when I know. Now watch this.¡±

    Skay pulled over two very nice upper-class chairs he assumedly stole from the mansion and sat down. James followed suite and the old madman punched a button and leaned back to also watch the screen as it began flashing random images and colours and started making a bunch of strange and unnatural sounds. James¡¯ pupils slowly dilated like he was on drugs as he stared at the rapidly flashing computer screen. He and Skay both began to drool and froth from the mouth while violently seizing, their glazed eyes unnaturally fixed to the screen.

    After a short few minutes the flashing and sounds ended. James rapidly awoke from his daze and wiped the drool dribbling down his chin. Then his face lost all emotion and he looked at the mad Dr. Skay who was completely off in his own little world muttering descriptors like ¡®incredible¡¯ and ¡®amazing¡¯ with his eyes closed.

    Before the chance came to yell accusingly at Skay and start violently rehabilitating the old madman a sudden notion struck him. With a thought and intention to do so, he felt himself having an outer body experience and soon found he was standing in a vast white space that appeared to be infinite. Overhead roiled a gaseous nebula like floating clouds, with great arcs of lightning firing off randomly throughout it.

    In the centre of the nebula sat a nucleus of tempestuous blue lightning like snakes all slithering around each other in a great ball. Surrounding this scene was a thick bubble that looked like a great plastic dome. Relative to the size of the dome the nebula and nucleus filled barely a third of the space.

    James intuitively knew what all of this was. It was his Spirit Realm, or some subconscious layer of his inner psyche. ¡®Strange, I thought my subconscious mind would be filled with all sorts of my sins and desires and prejudices and stuff. ¡® As he flew around inside this strange space he tried to touch the great big bubble that covered over everything.

    His ethereal looking hand pushed into the side of the dome causing it to flex out like some stretchy skin layer. The further he pushed, the more it stretched until finally he couldn¡¯t move outwards a inch. Slowly the stretchy barrier¡¯s resistance started to grow as it pushed him back. Realising he wasn¡¯t going to be breaking it anytime soon he decided to go and look at this nebular and nucleolus.

    As he passed into the nebula he felt the familiar sensation of wind natured spirit energy flowing around him. With a wave of the hand it all started spinning and eventually a massive twister filled with lighting formed in the centre of his dome. With another swish, the lightning nucleolus exploded into numerous great streaks of lightning violently shooting around within the barrier.

    With another thought James returned to the driver¡¯s seat in his body. Dr. Skay sat there looking at him with a massive shit eating grin. ¡°Well? How is it boy?¡±

    James was still a little dissatisfied that the nutjob subjected him to another of his twisted experiments, especially because it was ¡®fuckin¡¯ around¡¯ inside his head but he couldn¡¯t deny the results and so just gave a disgruntled. ¡°Harrumph! It was interesting. But how do I meditate and gather energy?¡±

    Dr. Skay¡¯s smile just grew even more evil looking as he moved back towards the computer and started mashing buttons. ¡°Well, you¡¯ll eventually need an appropriate breathing technique. All these breathing techniques are once again designed to operate the best with certain elements but I get the feeling, that like me, you won¡¯t be stopping with one or two elements. So it will take a lot longer to generate an all-purpose breathing technique that grants the best control of all the energies we collect.

    ¡°Unfortunately, we may have to forgo more than a set number regardless. Until then we¡¯ll just have to rely on the meditation technique as it is and operate it by focusing on the intention to speed up our energy draw rate. It will be slower, but with your affinity to your elements it should be faster than this Gau Clan¡¯s pathetic little piss-ants without a breathing technique. Which reminds me.¡±

    Skay stood up, opened the door and started yelling loudly. ¡°Harvy! Harvy you fucking disgusting degenerate get in here!¡± After about ten minutes a very, very slowly moving shadow of a former young man shambled into the lab. The withered, white haired, frail, grey skinned zombie eventually was forced into a seat where its dead eyes stared straight ahead. James quickly got up and backed away. ¡°Oi! Oi! He¡¯s actually dead right?! He¡¯s definitely dead this time. I can actually smell him rotting away just sitting there. What in the fuck is moving his body around?¡±

    Skay started inspecting his mobile corpse. Finally with an ¡°Oh?¡± while checking his pulse, Skay stepped back then started grabbing a number of glowing substances from nearby. He didn¡¯t even look. Just grabbed a bunch. Tilting the rotting bodies head back he started pouring them in. He even grabbed a few extra not glowing but equally dubious looking substances and threw them in just for good measure.

    Once finished, he stepped back and flipped down his 15 lensed glasses which James had started calling his Spider Eyes. Seeing this sort of action, James began to question which he was more of. Mad or Scientist?

    Once his Zombie started making choking garbled sounds from it¡¯s throat Skay nodded as if satisfied. Flicked through his lenses a few more times then put them back on his head. ¡°Nah! He¡¯s fine boy. Now hold his body still. I suspect when he observes this meditation hypnosis his body might just overreact and it could ruin him.¡±

    James walked forward and hugged his arms around the stinking corpse in the chair from behind, holding his breath and thinking to himself. ¡®Ruin him? He¡¯s already fuckin¡¯ ruined. What¡¯s left inside this rotting husk to ruin you crazy old fuckin¡¯ sicko!¡±

    Although he thought these things, he said nothing, this whole fiasco was already essentially condoned by him when he joined in and turned the poor guys hair white ... an added incentive was, he didn¡¯t want to be the next Harvy mindlessly ambling around the place only moments away from starting Z-day.

    Skay realigned the rigid body to be looking at the screen then mashed a button quickly backing away. Following the flashing screen and sounds the corpse just sat there. Then after a minute it began violently shaking about as a rainbow of iridescent foam sprayed from, literally, every orifice.

    Once the zombie calmed down, the glowing rainbows stopped flowing and one of the really nice looking chairs was thoroughly ruined James stood up and quickly jumped back observing the decaying corpse.

    After a few short moments the empty lifeless eyes finally began to move. Then the rest of Harvy began to move, stretching out as if he¡¯d just woken up from a very long sleep that should most definitely have been an endless sleep. He rubbed his eyes sleepily until Skay appeared in front of him flicking through the lenses of his spider eyes again then poking and prodding.

    After flipping out his Black-Pad he pressed a button and began making a voice entry while still diagnosing Harvy who was just sitting, quietly staring back. To James that was very disconcerting considering the Harvy he¡¯d met had always been ... broken.

    ¡°Soul Experiment zero zero two, post fluid ingestion of ... some things in the lab ... also post hypno-memory implant. Technique in question is codename Godly Insight. Both the unknown liquid ingestion and memory implant occurred in a death like, catatonic state. Subject¡¯s mental cognition levels have vastly increased from his prior levels. I imagine if I could measure his spirit energy growth rate then it also would be significantly increased. All his vitals are abnormally low and making no signs of recovering to normal human functioning levels but ... appear to now be the normalised state for the subject.

    ¡°I suspect his body will most likely remain in this ghoulish form permanently. Make a sub-link to current notes on localised species classified as undead. Subject appears to have somehow regained life signs despite having had his will completely crushed to dust. Results of initial test to discern if the soul effects cultivation ... inconclusive. Make a side note, see Elder Gau about future ... volunteers.¡±

    Skay then pulled Harvy up from his seat then began pushing him outside the lab to the field, meeting no signs of resistance as Harvy willingly shambled along very obediently, both followed out by the now very curious James. The madman then began talking to his pad again as he passed an element stick to Harvy.

    ¡°Begin new project file. Codename Ghoul. Link to results of Soul Experiment zero zero two. Firstly, testing recognition. Harvy do you know who I am?¡±

    When asked this question, the constantly observing Harvy dropped to both knees and kowtowed in a very respectful manner. ¡°This puppet of yours could never forget you, my Dark Lord.¡±

    James¡¯ eyes opened wide when he heard this. Very quickly his face become as cold and emotionless as the Ghouls. ¡®No fuckin¡¯ way! Don¡¯t tell me that crackpot is actually the fuckin¡¯ devil? Did he fuckin¡¯ send Harvy¡¯s soul to hell and retrieve a demon subordinate or some shit? Just what in the actual fuck is going on?¡¯

    Skay showed a strange smile. ¡°I see. How much do you remember? I want a detailed recounting of everything you remember as far back as you can, to the moment you awoke in my lab.¡±

    The ghoul showed no emotions and sat up into a seiza position then explained his life in detail. James found it entirely uninteresting. It was classic story of wimpy kid with a good heart, bullied by everyone, disappointed his family etc. etc. He spent the hour playing with Little Blue until Ghoul reached the part when they were patrolling in the fields and encountered the ripples of James¡¯ Gateway anomaly.

    The most interesting part of his story to this point was how he referred to all of his time before meeting Skay as ¡®being lost¡¯ or ¡®before the Dark Lord reached out to me¡¯ as if implying everything now was different and he served only Skay in his madness with some pious mad zealotry.

    When he got to that point he described his time being psychologically tortured by Skay as falling into the true nature of despair, anguish and finally death. In death, he learnt of his purpose in the world. To assist the Dark Lord in whatever he desires. Or some such. James somewhat lost interest when the Ghoul began fanatically worshiping Skay. He just assumed something had gone very wrong with Harvy¡¯s brain and because Skay had been the greatest and most life changing influence to ever happen to him, when he was suddenly resurrected from death certain weird things happened inside his head. James was no quack and made no effort to understand for the moment. He would perhaps look into it later.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    His interest wasn¡¯t flagged again until Skay began to continue with his monologue to his pad. ¡°It appears apart from the painting of all his past experiences in the light of recent fanaticism the subject is fully in charge of his faculties with some curious exceptions. Next test is to determine subject¡¯s cultivation. Harvy you should have already been pushing against the Spirit Barrier when our experiment began. What is your cultivation now?¡±

    The Ghoul closed his yellowed dead eyes and then opened them with a strange gleam and even more fanatical look. ¡°Master my barrier is showing signs of cracking, but I haven¡¯t yet condensed my True Spirit.¡±

    ¡°Oh? From the little I understand, to begin breaching the barrier a person must first coalesce their spirit energy into a True Spirit. I was told ¡®In order to breach the barrier you must first condense your spirit energy into a formless shadow of your own self.¡¯ To already be breaching it without a True Spirit to break the barrier, hmm ... Is it possible to simply keep filling the insides or your barrier even once it¡¯s full? No that doesn¡¯t sound reasonable, once it¡¯s stretched to its limit you can¡¯t force any more energy into it. Perhaps ... some sort of interference from outside the barrier?¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes started to gleam as he discovered more and more interesting curiosities. James put Little Blue down and approached. He too was thinking rapidly. ¡°Is it possible his own subconscious mind tried to break it¡¯s own barrier even after it¡¯d built the thing?¡±

    ¡°Mmm, it¡¯s possible. But to what end? It¡¯s trying to prevent the spirit energy from expanding. Why would it purposefully try and release it. In addition the barrier is a creation of it¡¯s own design, it should be able to essentially dissolve the barrier instantly.¡±

    James cupped his chin in his hand. Finally after another moment of thinking he snapped his fingers. With an odd smile. ¡°Old Madman, I reckon that his barriers damaged precisely because it¡¯s controlled by his subconscious. When this poor bastards conscious mind left his body to escape its torture, his subconscious automatically started shutting down along with his body. After 2 day¡¯s of being trapped somewhere between life and death, boom, he¡¯s brought back to life. The damage to his subconscious is clear in that he¡¯s now convinced we¡¯re his Dark Overlords.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes brightened and mad laughter rang out between both him and James. ¡°Very likely you¡¯re correct boy! If the Spirit Barrier Realm can be considered an inner battle between the armies of the conscious mind and subconscious mind, then if the general takes irreparable damage his soldiers too will falter. Brilliant deduction boy.¡±

    Skay then tapped his pad again. ¡°Record that conversation and link to Project Barrier Breaker and Project Ghoul. Begin recording test results for the elemental affinity testing. Harvy, your previous element was very weak Earth affinity correct?¡±

    ¡°Yes Master.¡±

    ¡°Good, today we¡¯re going to change your major element, and leave your weak earth to the side. Take that stick from the Tree of Elements but don¡¯t channel spirit into it yet. When you¡¯re ready, instead of however the hell you¡¯ve imagined your spirit energy before, I want you to envision everything you¡¯ve experienced in your recent re-birth. Take all the feelings and sensations you felt and are feeling now and try to envision your spirit power as the same as what those experiences made you feel. Feel for spirit power to give you the same sensation you felt at the most powerful moment. Then when you¡¯re ready, release it into the stick.¡±

    James hearing all this took a step back and placed his hand on Skay¡¯s shoulder. The moment he saw the stick reacting he gripped and shot away. After his past experiences with this testing he knew the stick multiplied the reaction of the element very briefly and being too close was just wishing to get bitten. As they shot away from Harvy they both watched as the pale withered branch began to form into ash and blow away on the wind.

    At first they thought something was wrong with the stick, until a dark aura like a black shadowy mist pervaded the area around Harvy. All the grass in a 30m diameter with Harvy as the epicentre began to blacken and die. James had just escaped this pervasive aura of death as the wilting grass had rapidly approached him. While James face was stony and cold, Skay looked like he was about to erupt in whooping with joy. He was so excited in fact that he was shaking.

    It wasn¡¯t long before Skay couldn¡¯t handle it anymore and burst. ¡°Hahahaha. Fuck! That¡¯s fucking fantastic! Boy, do you want know something that¡¯s been bothering the shit out of me? How do people in this world become so powerful at controlling the heavenly laws when the don¡¯t understand them in such detail as us? From what I¡¯ve been able to deduce these people have no fucking idea! So then, where does their control come from? It comes from the one thing we don¡¯t have and haven¡¯t accumulated. Experience!

    ¡°I can tell you in gruesome detail what happens when you die, but I sure a shit can¡¯t tell you what it ¡®feels¡¯ like to die. I wouldn¡¯t be able to tell you what the experience of dying is like. Because I¡¯ve never fucking experienced it! Harvy that fucking waste of space just got a reaction from the element of death with no theoretical knowledge and just experience, and even with all my theoretical knowledge and observations of death, I am forced to admit that I doubt I¡¯d be capable of creating that kind of reaction when testing for it because I¡¯ve never fucking died before and never felt the sensation of death.

    ¡°I never mentioned it earlier, but I found discrepancies between what I expected from your rat and what it actually achieved. I see now that I was wrong in my assumption, it wasn¡¯t just learning about electricity from me shocking it, I suspect the majority of its affinity came from the ¡®experience¡¯ it had with lightning not just what it had learnt.¡±

    At this point he took a few deep breaths to calm down and swung his line of sight back to James who was now madly thinking about the applications of this. ¡°I suspect that perhaps the reason my affinity with lightning is so powerful is also because on Earth I¡¯ve been shocked and electrocuted countless times. Was this theory driven by your tests on teaching Little Blue? If so ... are you about to suggest we should begin subjecting ourselves to these ¡®elements¡¯ so as to train our affinity with them? You¡¯re not about to have me stand in a thunderstorm are you?¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes glittered brightly and he tapped his tablet. ¡°The Subject has unlocked his potential in the element of death, I¡¯m suspecting it was created by his incredibly close encounter with almost becoming a completely lifeless corpse as attributed by his now permanent disfigurement. Create a Sidenote. Begin monitoring the weather more closely for any rain. Link note to project ¡®Zeus and Thor¡¯s Lovechild¡¯.¡±

    Stabbing the pad again and flicking it so It rolled up, he put it into his lab coat. He then turned to Harvy. ¡°Harvy what level of spirit power does a cultivator need to swear this ¡®Oath of the Heavens¡¯?¡±

    ¡°Master, this disciple has heard any spirit power above a half-filled spirit realm would be sufficient.¡±

    ¡°Good, then swear an Oath of allegiance to the Dark Brotherhood! Your oath should consist of...¡± Skay¡¯s face warped weirdly as he began to describe to Harvy what the oath was that he wanted him to swear.

    Hearing this James¡¯ face also warped and his breathing became a little harder. ¡®This mad fucker is planning on starting some twisted evil cult!¡¯ James¡¯ face then lost all colour and expression when Skay got to the part about the brotherhood¡¯s members. ¡°Harvy, remember the brother hood is small now and only consists of me and Guild Master James, and although you serve me in the cul ... brotherhood, James is the true master do you understand?¡±

    James inner voice was screaming and raging! ¡®You old bastard! Since when did I become the leader of your fucking cult! Just what the fuck are you planning?¡¯

    Moments later an unusual scene happened as bright lights, light breezes and a gentle warmth fell on Harvy from the sky like the natural laws descending. In fact it ¡®was¡¯ the natural laws descending, as Harvy¡¯s oath was registered and the strange laws of this world acknowledged.

    James now began to panic a little. The last thing he wanted was for himself to be dragged into some messed up cult by the Old Madman and posted as the ¡®Overlord¡¯ of said cult, while Skay gets off as just a ¡®Vice Guildmaster¡¯ or some shit.

    James¡¯ cold angry voice rang out. ¡°Just what the fuck are you doing? You fucked in the head old bastard. What makes you think I¡¯m just gunna join your sick fucking cult? And don¡¯t say it isn¡¯t when, hell it even sounds like a fuckin¡¯ cult!¡±

    James blew his top at Skay as he was no longer able to control his fury at having been duped and not even getting the chance to escape. Harvy¡¯s oath had been uttered and he now fully considered James to be the boss of his Master and the true Evil Mastermind behind everything that had happened to him.

    Skay chuckled dryly and turned to look at James lifeless dead eyes staring back at him. ¡°Boy don¡¯t worry so much. The most important thing now is resources. We¡¯re well behind in terms of cultivation in comparison with others our age. The thing we need most is resources! The best way to do that is to initiate some Gau Clan disciples so that you can use them for all the mundane things like gathering materials and cultivation resources.

    ¡°You¡¯re the leader of our guild because I believe you¡¯ll be spending more time in the outside world. I, on the other hand, will spend almost all my time here researching. In fact as long as I don¡¯t run out of things to study I may never leave this place, so it would be better for you to ¡®take command of the troops¡¯ as they say and take care of all those outside things. Also, Harvy now has a powerful element which will be of significant use to you when you go gathering resources.¡±

    James was incredibly suspicious of the Old Madman¡¯s explanation, but for the most part it made sense. ¡®He¡¯s not wrong, having some knowledgeable or strong subordinates ... or any subordinates at all really, would be a massive help in collecting and hunting for resources. I guess I don¡¯t dislike the name. Dark Brotherhood sounds very much up my alley.¡¯

    He started to get a little bit excited at the idea of creating a Guild actually. Although it sounded like a cult it¡¯s not like they were making any sacrifices to gods or other weird stuff. ¡®Although ... if all our subordinates end up like Harvy.¡¯ James quickly shook this thought aside. The benefits at the moment outweighed the disadvantages. If they had to cross a few more ethical boundaries of his old world that would be fine. As long as it moved towards his greater goal or benefited him, he believed he was not entirely averse to completely stepping past those ethical grey areas into true evil.

    Finally he accepted that the situation had already progressed to this stage and he could only roll with the punches now. His face loosened a little and he crossed his arms pondering to himself. ¡®First we need more intelligence. Although it seems like it might take a while to gather enough spirit energy, eventually we will be assaulting the spirit barrier. We need to understand what the True Spirit realm is and how to get there, and every realm after that. From what I understand we probably can¡¯t unlock new elements after we consolidate the true spirit so before then we need to manifest as many different spirit energies as possible. I doubt we are the only people in the world who understand how to unlock more than one element.

    Reaching the end of these thoughts he looked at Skay and with a nod consented to the creation of the Dark Brotherhood. ¡°Fine you crazy old bastard. I can see some use in creating a guild. We¡¯ll have to work out how members and that shit works later. For now we should try and come up with things to trade with the clan so we can gain resources and then try and learn some more about this world. On top of that we need to find a way to help raise our spirit energy as fast as possible.

    ¡°I¡¯ve no intention of keeping an oath to the Gau Clan and I think I know a way to break it so we also need to test that before the Elder or Hao that sick bastard find out we¡¯ve gathered enough spirit energy. I¡¯m going to try and train my control over my current elements and later we¡¯ll try to start accumulating some more element affinities. I plan to get the 4 major elements at least. You do whatever fucked up things you do in your lab and try and get that breathing technique finished, we¡¯ll meet back here tomorrow morning for Hao¡¯s lessons. Little Blue let¡¯s go.¡±

    James finished his instructions to Skay then beckoned to the little lightning ferret. Having spent most of the day playing with James it had grown rather attached to him and very quickly ran up James¡¯ leg to sit on his shoulder as he walked away from the lab.

    For the rest of the day James was shooting around the courtyard and wildly swinging his arms about like some crazy. Occasionally he¡¯d stop and start muttering to himself, then he¡¯d start a whole new series of motions.

    As he trained he started trying to use both spirit elements at once, which he very quickly found to be incredibly difficult. Tring to ¡®envision¡¯ his spirit energy as two separate things simultaneously was beyond the limits of his mental aptitude.

    Just doing it for a minute or so strained his mind so badly he was forced to stop from the massive headache he was building up. When his head finally cleared up after ten minutes he tried again, and for a minute he managed, until finally, he once again succumb to the pressure of his head aching.

    James closed his eyes and entered his Spirit Realm. He noticed a substantial difference in the level of activity and quantity of his spirit energy. The gaseous nebula and lightning had both reduced significantly and looked to be nowhere near as excited as they were when he last came here, presumably because he¡¯d been using them in his body.

    With a wave of his ethereal hand and a thought he started manipulating both elements inside his spirit realm at once with no strain or backlash. ¡®Interesting, inside my spirit realm I can control them separately and simultaneously, however I wish. Lightning and Wind. Technically, would it be more apt to call them Electron Flow and Gaseous Particles?¡¯

    As he had this thought he was suddenly struck with a new idea ¡®Now I think about it, if there¡¯s no atoms to travel through how could lightning make a path anywhere. It is after all just the light show created when a stupidly excessive number of excited electrons start jumping through a whole bunch of gas atoms until they reach the ground. I wonder if I could create an element that represents the flow of electrons through the gaseous particles?¡¯

    With this concept in mind, James reached out his ghostly spirit hands and called forth a great bolt of lightning into his right hand. Then grabbing out with the left hand he seemed to pull away a section of the nebula which spiralled down into a mini-twister in the palm of his left hand. He stood there in his spirit realm, a great bolt of Lightning in one hand and a whirling twister of Wind in the other. ¡®Well, I¡¯m not even sure what will happen but, here¡¯s to hoping.¡¯

    With that thought he pushed the lightning bolt into the twister and a massive boom rang out. His mind was blown out of his spirit realm and he fell backwards onto the ground holding his head. A few moments of groaning and rolling on the ground later, he finally climbed up into a sitting position, his eyes were shot with blood and filled with madness. Then he slowly calmed down and entered his spirit realm again.

    ¡°Holy fuckin¡¯ shit!¡± James uttered when he reached his spirit realm. There still remained the green gaseous nebula and the blue nucleolus of lightning, just as they were before. No great changes had happened there.

    Regardless of his two elements that remained basically the same, he instead stared at the white ground inside his dome, right in the centre. There appeared a green twister of liquid fire. ¡®Plasma?¡¯ James thought to himself. It was the only thing he could think of.

    Plasma is created when gas atoms are excited to the state in which their electrons leave there orbits. Which is very much the case when we see lightning naturally occurring, as electrons in the gas particles are super excited and separate from their original atom creating photons, or as we see it, light. When all these electrons have built up to a frenzy they then try to find the closest place to relieve that energy, which generally turns out to be the hapless ground or some part of a cloud. Once one electron starts jumping atoms, all the rest follow through those same gas atoms creating a streak of light and that is the phenomenon we know of as lightning. Just a massive arc of plasma through the sky.

    Now that James had tried to combine his laws of electron flow which he had ¡®envisioned¡¯ as lightning and his element of wind which was his laws of gaseous particles he created the ¡®True¡¯ element of lightning. Plasma! The superheated 4th state of matter.

    James mind boggled at the implications of this. ¡®What if I can combine all my elements into one single element? Would that not be the element of god? The resultant answer of the greatest question of the universe. Where did it come from and why is it here? It comes from the coalescence and interaction of every natural law and it¡¯s here cause I damn well made it!¡¯

    His mind spun endlessly and he was on the verge of going mad from his fantasies. Eventually he forced himself to calm down somewhat. ¡®Perhaps I¡¯m jumping the gun a little. Plasma is considered the fourth state of matter and is the resultant of one of the stages, gas, and electron excitation. Which means most likely I won¡¯t be able to achieve similar results with liquid or solid states. If I were to apply electron excitation to liquids or solids they would most likely only act as conductors. If I ramp up my lightning element enough I may be able to boil water or melt steel, again, I wouldn¡¯t consider that to be a new element but rather the result of two elements interacting to create an element I already have control of. I suppose after I unlock earth and water I can only begin to accumulate more abstract elements like the emotional ones or perhaps darkness and light. I¡¯ll have to have a think about how to envision those ones.¡¯

    Having finished his thoughts he began to play around in his head with magic. Once night fell and the servants delivered some food he went to bed full of expectations of tomorrow¡¯s lesson from Hao.

 Chapter 11: The True Spirit?

    The next day everyone gathered in the courtyard. Jessy looked rather ragged today. Apparently she¡¯d been dragged into the lab at some point for her hypno-memory implant and experienced some things she¡¯d have been better off not ever having witnessed.

    According to Skay, she very willingly jumped at the chance to join the Brotherhood. The face she made when he said that showed a great deal of grievance however, so James decided to take it with grain of salt.

    The now ever present Harvy was lifelessly standing in a very ghoulish manner nearby with flies crawling over his yellowed eyeballs. He didn¡¯t even seem to notice though and nobody wanted to approach him to let him know because he smelled dead, so he was left like that.

    Once Hao arrived, Skay dumped out all the books he¡¯d borrowed yesterday and then he and James launched into a discussion with Hao about cultivation realms.

    Through their discussions James and Skay only grew more enthusiastic, whispering and muttering with each other every now and then like two old house wives gossiping about that bitch who¡¯s been ¡®hitting on their man¡¯ while sitting right in front of said bitch drinking coffee.

    Jessy the poor girl only grew more confused as the discussion progressed. She didn¡¯t understand all these weird terms like spirit power condensation or true spirt formation.

    She gleaned a few clues in the beginnings but soon felt so lost her head started hurting. Eventually Hao had to leave and the duo returned to the lab. Jessy, feeling incredibly left out, chased the boys to their lab. When she arrived they were crowded around a computer screen pointing at something and laughing in the exact same way. Madly.

    The lighting of the lab was very dim until James slammed a hand down on a button and the lab began to be bathed in blue flashing lights and ¡®zzt zzt¡¯ sounds from a spot hidden behind a curtain. From where she stood, she could only see a strange shadow being bathed on the other side of the curtain. From where James and Skay stood they could see whatever was happening on the other side and whatever it was it only made their sickening smiles grow wider.

    Slightly curious but mostly apprehensive, Jessy approached the pair while they discussed and finally got a glimpse past the curtain. There, in a metal wire mesh ball, was a very wet little blue ferret writhing around with a green wire attached to him leading to the ground. The ball was suspended by a green rope made of vines and the little round metal cage it was trapped in was surrounded by a multitude of metal rods all shooting massive arcs of lightning onto the cage from every direction.

    ¡®Torture! My god! There torturing that poor little animal to death!¡¯ Jessy, with that single thought, ran forward and smashed the big red button James had just pushed, cutting off the lightning.

    ¡°James you disgusting piece of shit. I knew that dried up old fuck was mad but I never thought you¡¯d be so fucking disgusting as to electrocute such an adorable little creature. Have you no shame?!¡±

    While yelling at James she started moving forward and pulling the rods away from the cage to get in and free the little ferret.

    James wicked smile fell when Jessy pushed past him towards the cage. ¡°Jess you bitch, what the hell is shame? Can I eat it? Can I sell it? If I can sell it, I probably sold it a long time ago! Who needs something useless like shame? Also Jess, I wouldn¡¯t...¡± before James finished Jess had already reached the little blue ferret but the moment she parted the wire mesh cage and touched it Little Blue let out a loud screech and Jessy was shot back across the room like a rocket, smashing into the wall of the lab.

    Seeing Jessy slumped on the floor shaking and trying to get her feet under herself James put a very innocent and confused expression on his face. ¡°Should I have started with don¡¯t touch the ferret and discussed shame afterwards?¡± He very shamelessly asked Dr. Skay.

    Skay of course, being as mad as he is, chose to play along as well. ¡°Shame? Can I eat that?¡±

    Once the little ferret had been rudely pulled out of euphoria by Jessy it started screeching and shaking the cage, until finally the ghoul had reset the rods. James then smashed the big red button again and laughed madly with Skay as the flashing of the lightning painted their faces especially malevolent.

    Jessy only now truly felt like she¡¯d stepped into a whole new world as she climbed to her feet watching the ferret role and jump around inside the cage and James and Skay laughing in their madness. ¡°What the fuck is actually going on in here?¡±

    James and Skay ignored her and once their laughing died down James leaned back, sitting on the bench and looked to Skay with his arms crossed. ¡°I doubt Little Blue will ever gain the element of True Lightning because he¡¯s already entered the True Spirit stage and it¡¯s too late to try and teach him the wind element. He¡¯s fairly close now though just when he uses all the spirit energy he¡¯s accumulated in his body in one go. Hmm ... We can perhaps try it on one of the other forest hoppers? For now though, let¡¯s just leave him in his cage to soak up all the electricity. With any luck he can push half way through to the Spirit Palace in at least a month. If we design a better method of creating electricity than these old reverse engineered pressure pumps we may be able to speed that up.¡±

    As he spoke Skay was rummaging around in a wooden box filled with an assortment of strange and wonderful gadgets he spent the whole night building. Finally he pulled out James¡¯ Gau Compass and passed it back to him. ¡°I finished having a look at your compass last night. Spent almost half my time on the stone actually and still barely understand it. What I do know though is it¡¯s a superconductor. Basically zero energy loss in energy transfer, like excited electrons aren¡¯t even given a chance to jump into an atoms orbit and just get pulled forward. It¡¯s almost as if this material isn¡¯t so much conducting electricity, as it¡¯s allowing it to bridge a space between both ends. Bloody thing doesn¡¯t even heat up or create electro-magnetic waves but can release energy pulled through it at any position on its surface. Makes it very dangerous.

    ¡°The danger is outweighed by the pros though. If we were to make a cable out of this it could essentially carry an infinite level of current and voltage to any location instantaneously. This material is truly mind blowing and if I really wanted to understand it I¡¯d need another 20 years working by myself. More aggravating is how exactly it fucking find places. If I had to guess it tracks a location by some kind of magnetic frequency that your mind subconsciously records when it memorises a place. That¡¯s why the stronger your memory when you envision a place the more accurate the compass is. The reason tracking items or people only works with lightning elements is because it needs to charge its little black-iron box up to create a strong enough electro-magnetic field that it can sense the changes in position. Or something. That¡¯s only my best guess. That would mean the more lightning affinity spirit energy you pump into it when placing a vision the more accurate it will be. Long distance tracking with it would almost be impossible though. It would probably work if I hooked you up to nuclear reactor and we made it an even bigger box and had a bigger spirit stone.¡±

    Finished with his explanation on the properties of the Lightning Seeking Spirit Stone he turned to the Ghoul. ¡°Harvy, get ready, I want to examine every possible reaction your body makes when you condense a True Spirit and break your Spirit Barrier.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Master.¡± Harvy nodded and moved to the operating table. Stripping off his clothes he laid on the table in only a loin cloth and Skay started attaching a bunch of electrodes all over his body then placed a mesh cap on his head. Jessy seeing this wandered over to James who was in deep thought and gave him a push.

    ¡°What exactly are they testing over there James?¡± Jessy asked. She too was curious about the stage in cultivation in which a breakthrough is supposed to be achieved as eventually she hoped to reach that stage.

    ¡°Brain waves mostly. Also physiological reactions during breakthrough. We¡¯re trying to understand exactly what happens when your conscious mind condenses spirit energy then attacks and defeats you subconscious mind. If our theory¡¯s correct, either you lose and remain sealed at the spirit barrier until you can break it or you break it and gain true conscious awareness of your spirit realm.¡± James then pointed over to a monitor with 4 wavy lines and one blank line similar to a heart monitor. Then continued to explain.

    ¡°From what the old madman¡¯s explained to me the first few initial stages of cultivation can be described as taking full, conscious control of your own mind. When you¡¯re running around or trying to control spirit energy inside your body that is considered the duty of your conscious mind and reflected in the Beta brain waves which is this top line, the most active line when you¡¯re awake. At this level you essentially can only slightly control spirit energy inside your own body and can¡¯t materialise it or manipulate it outside of your body. This line is also the weakest in magnitude but highest in frequency.¡±

    He then pointed at the second line on the monitor. ¡°This is your Alpha wave, it has a lower frequency than your beta waves but has a higher magnitude. We believe it reflects your Spirit Realm or rather the gateway between your conscious mind and subconscious mind. It also spikes when Harvy used his spirit energy so I¡¯m of the opinion this level is a part of your subconscious that assists your conscious mind in controlling spirit energy. This is also where spirit energy is accumulated and the reason its storage area seems so limited is because your subconscious mind has created a barrier to prevent the spirit energy from effecting it and messing up your head. Or so we believe. So far we still don¡¯t know what spirit energy is but we can tell it¡¯s not any form of matter or energy we¡¯ve observed on Earth. Skay¡¯s convinced it¡¯s ¡®dark-matter¡¯ and I¡¯m slightly inclined to believe him. How exactly it came to be that a person¡¯s mind can gather and control this dark matter is beyond me, so for now were still calling it spirit energy.

    ¡°In addition to protecting the subconscious, we believe the barrier creates an opportunity for the conscious mind to gain control of all the spirit energy it¡¯s collecting in the Spirit Realm. If you manage to crack the barrier and still haven¡¯t gained sufficient control it can affect your subconscious mind much like poor old Harvy over there.¡±

    When he said this far he looked at the ghoul on the operating table saying ¡°yes master¡± and singing the praises of the Dark Lord. He then quietly sighed, shaking his head and looked back to Jessy. ¡°Normally such a situation is incredibly rare because your subconscious builds its barrier to be greater than the relative strength of your spirit energy and thus limits its growth until you can consciously keep it under control. We¡¯re not sure if everyone¡¯s spirit realm is the same size but we suspect its size is a reflection of the combined strength of your conscious and subconscious mind. Some people may step into the True Spirit Realm vastly more powerful than others, but again, only a theory for now till we have some more subjects.¡±

    He then pointed at the third wavy line. ¡°This line represents Theta waves and is considered to be your subconscious mind. This guy¡¯s job is things like breathing and keeping the heart beating but also other things like your own superstitions, fears, joys, prejudices and assumptions. Your subconscious mind keeps a track of all these mundane things for you and influences your conscious mind with them in your day to day life. Although we doubt we can just delete our prejudices or alter our own character once we break through to the subconscious in later realms we suspect we gain an incredibly fine degree of control over other things.

    ¡°The journey of realms between the barrier and the level in which our subconscious mind and conscious minds assimilate each other is the most important however and considered the foundation of one¡¯s power much later into their cultivation, unfortunately Hao couldn¡¯t tell us much past the 3rd realm which is the Spirit Palace.

    ¡°Now back to our realm, once you break through the barrier there will be nothing holding back the progress of gathering as much fuckin¡¯ spirit energy as you want because your Spirit realm is infinite. The catch being that you have to be able to control it and not let it influence your subconscious mind. If that happens it¡¯s referred to as cultivation deviation but we don¡¯t know shit all about that yet apart from Harvy¡¯s ... Ahhm, condition.¡±

    Jessy¡¯s face scrunched up cutely and her eyes spun around in her head as she tried to wrap her brain around all this stupid sounding science stuff. Finally she couldn¡¯t help asking about the True Spirit. ¡°James, you¡¯ve told me the spirit barrier is a shield your subconscious mind makes to protect itself. What about the this true spirit thing? When Hao described it he said you had to condense your spirit energy into a true spirit. What in the fuck does that even mean? He says it like it¡¯s something we should all just know!¡±

    James had a smile split his face and then started patting Jessy¡¯s head like a dog. ¡°There, there Jess. I know not all of us finished high school.¡± He then spun around and walked back to the computer to sit on a chair before Jessy even had the chance to try and scratch his face off.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure by now you¡¯ve entered your spirit realm a few times, played with your energy and noticed, when your there you¡¯re just a ghostly, ethereal body with no other sensations than what feeling your spirit energy gives you. No doubt even in that cute little head of yours you¡¯ve discovered that it¡¯s a great deal easier to control energy in your spirit realm than out here trying to control it in your body. I believe that it¡¯s because the conscious mind simply isn¡¯t strong enough to properly control the spirit power straight away and requires practice much like anything else in regards to your body, think of it like muscle memory if you want.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    ¡°I also believe the true spirit is a reflection of your subconscious and once you merge with it in the spirit realm it will assist you subconsciously with your control. The old madman¡¯s of the opinion that it¡¯s not to do with practice and subconscious control but is because the subconscious mind is purposely limiting your conscious minds ability to control spirit energy outside your spirit realm and once you merge with your true spirit it releases that control.

    ¡°The reason I mention that is because regardless of which theory is correct, your control of spirit energy, even in your spirit realm, is based off both your knowledge, experience and understanding of how the element operates, which is gained from either learning about it second hand like going to school or memorising their meditation mantras or learning about it first hand through experience. It seems learning about it through first-hand experience greatly increases your level of control in comparison to second hand.

    ¡°Amusingly, control over ¡®your¡¯ element can be trained by gaining more knowledge on how it affects the human body. Or it could simply be trained by constantly creating twisted sexual fantasies in your head and having an excessive amount of depraved animalistic sex. The more you feed your lust the stronger your control will grow and the faster your spirit power will grow in meditation.¡±

    At the mention of her spirit nature, and worse still, the way to train her control of it, Jessy could hardly contain her shame as her face blushed bright red and she averted her gaze towards the floor looking quite upset. Seeing this, James frowned then got up from his chair, took two steps forward and slapped Jessy across the face.

    It wasn¡¯t a hard slap but it was enough to rock her head back and bring tears to her eyes. Once she regained her footing her rage rocketed to the sky and she prepared herself to strike out and beat James into pulp. ¡°James you piece of fucking shit! Just what the...¡±

    James then blurred and slapped her again. ¡°Shut up! Jess, do you not fuckin¡¯ get it? Your element is the fuckin¡¯ reflection of your inner nature. If you¡¯re so bloody ashamed by yourself you¡¯ll never become a strong cultivator. If you can¡¯t even fuckin¡¯ muster the willpower to accept who you are and strive forwards your shame will tie you down like a bunch of fuckin¡¯ shackles and chains.

    ¡°If you don¡¯t have the strength of will to accept your own true nature then you will never even approach condensing your True Spirit and you¡¯ll never fuckin¡¯ get a chance to break your spirit barrier. You¡¯re like a spoiled fuckin¡¯ princess that can¡¯t fuckin¡¯ accept that deep inside your just a horny bitch and even if you had another element, this one will most likely always be your most powerful. Show some self-respect for your true feelings! Otherwise, get the fuck out of our lab and stop wasting my time explaining all this shit!¡±

    Finished his tirade of monologue he swished the sleeve of his long grey robe and sat back down in his chair watching Jessy¡¯s reaction with a dissatisfied face. In the corner of his eye he saw Skay giving him a huge thumbs up while stabbing a suspicious looking shiny rod covered in cables and some glistening liquid into the general area of the Ghouls bum. James almost couldn¡¯t contain a straight face as he laughed maniacally inside both because of the poor ghoul getting probed by the madman and because they¡¯d just stepped into the next phase of Project Cockgobbler.

    Jessy¡¯s face became complex again until eventually it settled into an angry looking contemplation and then finally settled on a resolute expression. Once she¡¯d calmed down she could see some sense in what James had said, besides, as far as she knew she couldn¡¯t change it even if she wanted to, so why not just accept it. Once she came to this conclusion she decided to urge James into finishing his explanation of the True spirit. ¡°I¡¯m sorry James your right. Please finish your explanation.¡±

    James put on a gentle smile like a proud parent, gave a sharp nod and a ¡®good good¡¯ then continued speaking. ¡°Good, let¡¯s not haf¡¯ta have this conversation again. The Dark Brotherhood doesn¡¯t support mortals or freeloaders. Now where was I? Hmm ... Ah, right! The reason I spoke about your spirit nature and spirit power control, is because when you create your true spirit your actually taking part of your spirit energy that you¡¯ve been accumulating and creating a new spirit body in your spirit realm. This spirit body is a reflection of your affinities and subconscious mind and was described to us as ¡®a shadow of your soul¡¯ or something.

    ¡°Once that happens, and you merge with your brand new spirit body, your control over the spirit energy in your Spirit Realm increases dramatically and you can even gain better control outside your body. To such a degree actually, that you can fuckin¡¯ materialise your elemental spirit energy as natural laws and shit.¡± James grew a little excited at this point just imagining being able to start training a spirit aura. After a short sigh of longing he continued.

    ¡°Essentially, we think you¡¯re fusing your alpha brain waves and your beta brain waves or rather fusing your conscious state of mind and your meditative mind together leaving you in a state where your mind is constantly in both states. Consciousness maintains the benefits of being in meditation and vice versa. So far this is our theory on the True Spirit and the Spirit Barrier.¡±

    At this point Jenny started scratching her head confusedly. James sighed, shook his head and then tried to explain more simply. ¡°What it means, Jess, is that the true spirit is made from your control over your spirit energy and once you make it you step into it, go through a whole ... thing, and then use your brand new spirit body to control the rest of your spirit energy and break open your barrier.¡±

    Jessy¡¯s face scrunched up like she¡¯d just been insulted and gave James ¡®the look¡¯. ¡°I get it, bastard! Don¡¯t treat me like I¡¯m an idiot! So you fuse your brain waves into one and it gives you enough control over your spirit energy so you can break your barrier.¡±

    James gave a sagely nod then stood up when he realised Skay was nearly ready. Harvy now looked to be in a rather sorry state with needles stabbing into him everywhere and cables running all around the place. Once he¡¯d finished, Skay excitedly moved towards James and started watching the screen with Harvy¡¯s brain waves. He pulled out his Black-Pad and started writing some notes, hit a few buttons then gave a loud yell. ¡°Alright Harvy you can begin consolidation of your true spirit.¡±

    Harvy gave an ¡°mmphf!¡± through the ... whatever that thing in his mouth was, and then closed his eyes to enter into his Spirit Realm. The moment he closed his eyes the alpha brain waves rapidly started decreasing in magnitude and the beta brain waves inversely began to increase dramatically in magnitude. Finally after a short time of this they mostly levelled with exception to an occasional flare in magnitude from both brain waves simultaneously.

    This repeated for a good hour or so until eventually the alpha and beta brain wave magnitudes both simultaneously went through the roof and Harvy¡¯s body began to spasm and shake on the operating table. Jessy reached out a hand and pointed to the bottom most line which was now no longer dead flat but jumping about dramatically as well. ¡°What brain wave is that one meant to be?¡± Jessy asked naively.

    Skay¡¯s face changed and his fingers become a blur of light across his pad as he explained. ¡°That would be Gamma waves lass. They¡¯re usually dead flat because hardly any brain activity operates at this frequency but when they do react it¡¯s because the Ghoul is having a moment of enlightenment and his brains going through the roof processing it. This suggests the act of fusing with your True spirit really does create an experience that vastly increases your control and understanding of your spirit energy.

    ¡°I¡¯ve never seen Gamma waves this dramatic, I suspect our boy Harvy¡¯s flash of insight may only be so powerful because of his already heightened control over death. That indicates that the level of control used when creating your true spirit may actually affect the level of control you gain after fusing with it. That would suggest my initial hypothesis that your subconscious was limiting you was wrong and give more credit to the boy¡¯s hypothesis that the subconscious mind assists you once you merge with its shadow.¡± Skay then glanced at the smug looking James and gave a harrumph.

    After another good half hour, Harvy¡¯s brainwaves settled back down, only this time the magnitude of his alpha and beta brain waves was mostly synchronised even though there frequencies weren¡¯t.

    James cupped his chin as the wheels of his mind spun crazily. ¡®So it appears that instead of merging the thought patterns they remain separated but operate at the same level of magnitude as if they were both the main state of mind. Is that like creating a copy of yourself inside your head? Hmm that doesn¡¯t sound right. Wait, old Hao mentioned that your true spirit was your true inner nature and a shadow of you soul, so I suppose it¡¯s like your soul? Does that mean your conscious mind remains in your Spirit realm and out here in your body simultaneously? Like literally being in two places at once. How does the mind even process that?¡¯

    His building level of questions was driving him mad but he knew he couldn¡¯t go over and slap Harvy around a bit to describe the True Spirit realm properly to him. If this sudden synchronisation of spirit realm and consciousness is just the moment he was fusing with his True Spirit then that meant Harvy had still yet to break open his barrier.

    Soon the trio saw his alpha and beta waves going through sharp dramatic changes in their synchronised magnitudes. Harvy started sweating profusely and all the muscles in his body started to tense and shake like he was under some enormous pressure. This continued on for a short time until at last his body relaxed and his brain waves started to drop in magnitude slowly.

    When James looked over he saw that Harvy, that undead bastard, had passed out before he could even start answering the million questions he had. Skay was even more pissed off than James was and his swearing and cursing scared away every living thing for a few hundred meters around the lab.

    Jessy just stood there confused having absolutely no idea what all these changes in brain waves meant. She only guessed that from James¡¯ and Skay¡¯s frantic slapping and shaking, trying to wake Harvy, while shouting questions, meant that he had most likely succeeded.

    Regardless of what they did, Harvy appeared to be in a comatose state for now so they left him on the bench with all the various equipment that was still stuck, stapled or jammed inside. They then huddled together again like children sharing secrets in the playground and began to discuss.

    Once they started, Jessy was once again left out and could only try to go play with Little Blue who¡¯d let himself out of his lightning cage. She very quickly realised her mistake and come to acknowledge that even a ferret can hold a grudge, as she backed away from the hissing and screeching ball of fur that was clearly still rather upset with her for interrupting it earlier. James looked over his shoulder to see Little Blue getting ready to unleash a bolt of lightning. ¡°Blue, don¡¯t pick on the silly girl, come!¡±

    Little Blue glared at Jessy once more before scurrying over and once again climbing onto James¡¯ shoulder. Jessy then ended up sitting there for another 2 hours until falling asleep while James and Skay had a back and forth that went through every conceivable swear word in the English language and then a few other languages for good measure.

    One of the things they¡¯d discussed earlier was the nature of spirit energy in your spirit realm. When James enters his spirit realm he sees the spirit energy separated into different states of lightning, plasma or wind all exhibiting the properties he¡¯d envisioned them with when he began to use them. Although his lightning wasn¡¯t actually ever directly envisioned it was created more from an intuitive feeling and understanding and so James felt no issues with how it appeared in his spirit realm. The tornado of plasma also was much the same because in his mind that¡¯s how he¡¯d have imagined it if he was directly aware of what he was trying to create. In this sense he felt his subconscious mind must have stepped in and helped him out.

    That being said, during their discussions James raised the issue of how it was described earlier that filling your spirit barrier was similar to pumping gas into a canister until it was so condensed you couldn¡¯t fit more. ¡°If that was the case how then can you possibly further condense it into a True Spirit?¡± When they both thought back to this assumption on their part they felt like idiots. They quickly began to remedy that assumption by making a whole handful of new hypotheses until they settled on the fact that they had no idea what spirit energy actually was and had no way to guess how exactly it operates. At some point James said ¡°It would be good if we could measure the rate at which we draw in primal spirit energy. I suspect it¡¯s not an issue of the container being too full but an issue with the pump not being powerful enough. If we could increase our rate of intake, or I guess the pressure rating of our pump then we may be able to fill our spirit realm with even more energy and give us a drastic advantage over others in the same realm, and perhaps even future realms.¡±

    Once he said that Skay¡¯s eye started twitching. ¡°What the fuck is fucking primal spirit energy?!¡±

    James of course was also surprised at this random thought he¡¯d carelessly blurted. Then he began to explain his thoughts. ¡°Well think about it this way. When you ate that fruit and it granted you some spirit energy did you feel your body grow warm? From your face I¡¯m going to assume you did. Well then take a moment and consider where exactly our elemental spirit energy is coming from. In my mind its generated equal to my level of control in each element. For example my lightning element has the greatest control and when I¡¯m in my spirit realm I can ... sense I guess, that it¡¯s the most abundant. Inversely, although the plasma is so fuckin¡¯ powerful it actually scares me a little, it¡¯s the least abundant.

    ¡°When I meditate, they all grow at rates equal to my control of them, the moment I use some in my body the other two slow down and the one I used speeds up to catch up to the others. If I use too much the other two stop generating entirely, unless I consciously try to speed them up when I meditate but the point is they don¡¯t decrease.

    ¡°Leaving aside for the moment that if you have multiple elements your subconscious tries to maintain a set ratio between them, the total lack in decrease of my other elements to equalise spirit energy ratios suggests that once spirit power has been ... I want to say refined? Into an element, then it¡¯s permanently that element and there¡¯s no inter change between them. If that¡¯s the case then where the fuck am I drawing spirit energy from when I meditate if my other two elements aren¡¯t generating from wind, because I sure as fuck don¡¯t see any plasma tornados or lightning anywhere that I can be drawing spirit energy from!

    ¡°Hell, even Hao himself told us that cultivators draw spirit energy from their surroundings and cultivation resources. If that¡¯s the case I suspect our inner realm is filling with primal spirit energy at a set rate constantly and that rate increases when we meditate. The increase, I reckon, is tied to a person¡¯s ¡®talent¡¯ which in my opinion is just a neat packaged way of saying willpower and elemental affinity. More importantly than that however is that if our elements don¡¯t interchange then the spirit power you ingested from that fruit had no element and was only converted to your light spirit after you envisioned it in that fashion. By the same token if my spirit barrier is made of spirit energy that our subconscious is stealing to build it, then why isn¡¯t it aligned with any of my elements? Thus I¡¯ve started calling this spirit energy with no element that I¡¯m drawing in and refining, primal spirit energy. Pheww.¡±

    After that very long explanation James felt somewhat out of breath. Old madman Skay also seemed to be out of breath as he began panting harder and harder. Slowly the veins in his eyes bulged out and he began berating and screaming out through the lab. ¡°You stupid brain dead mother fucker! How fucking blind could you possibly fucking be! You¡¯ve been doing this for 65 fucking years and the fucking boy barely out of diapers is fucking picking up your fucking mistakes, you stupid old...¡±

    As his self-criticisms bounced around in the laboratory he ran to the computer and started madly typing and clicking.

    Once their discussions had gone on for nearly 4 hours the lifeless cadaver suddenly sat up from the operating table. When James and Skay noticed this they both immediately stopped what they were doing to rush over and rain down a shit storm of questions onto their ghoulish slave. This then continued on into the night mostly because Harvy had difficulty explaining anything in a way that they found acceptable.

    Before the time they realised it, the sun wasn¡¯t setting but rising. Strangely enough they didn¡¯t even feel remotely tired. They both considered this a side effect of spirit energy that your subconscious mind automatically did for you, much the same as the fitness of their bodies increased. The mad old doctor had even appeared to slowly be aging backwards these last few days.

 Chapter 12: First Blood

    -Lost Village-

    Lost Village wasn¡¯t actually lost, it would be more accurate to call it Forgotten by Everyone Village. The reason it¡¯s called lost village was ironically lost to time and the some 500 odd residents didn¡¯t particularly care what the town was called. It was quiet and out of the way, a good 25km from Gau City and within the influence of the monolith.

    As long as they joined the great harvest twice a year they could be paid a gold coin for every full wagon of grain they can deliver to the Gau City silos. On the odd occasion if a villager should accidently catch a grain fly they can receive 4 gold pieces from the Gau Clans Sword Hall.

    The Golden Grain Fly may have given James a hard time but that was only because he ate them in the dozens. In normal cases they can assist in a short spurt of instant spirit power growth but their greatest attribute is the power to assist in cultivation. In other words eating one can help increase the speed at which your Spirit Realm gathers spirit energy. The time varies person to person but generally if the Fly has lived for a good long period they will increase your spirit growth rate by nearly half again for anywhere up to a month.

    James, unfortunately, missed out on taking advantage of this chance seeing that he was too busy being in a coma to meditate and consolidate the strange energy that would have granted him the cultivation bonus. He did however get a massive influx of primal spirit energy, or at least to a spirit barrier realm it was massive. Regardless of James¡¯ misfortune within fortune we¡¯re not in Lost village to talk about James, instead we¡¯re here to visit an old friend of James¡¯ who recently stumbled into town.

    After a rocky start with the townspeople when he strolled in smelling of a multitude of strange things and looking as if he¡¯d been chewed up and spat out by some vicious creature, he managed to score some rest and a job in the stables shovelling shit. It was also the only place in the entire town where the smell he was generating was slightly offset by the smell of his work place and sleeping arrangement.

    He was paid 5 coppers once he¡¯d finished in the stable and he was also given a horse brush and something that resembled a rock that smelled of soap, then thrown into the horses bathing trough to clean himself. After that whole thing and covered in the bite marks of horses that took exception to the smell, he returned to the stable and slept the night away in a deep sleep on some mostly clean hay.

    When dawn awoke him from his slumber the first thing Fatty realized was that he was hungry. So hungry was Fatty, that he was almost prepared to climb into a stall and start gnawing one of the horses to death just to satiate this hunger. Once he finally managed to get control of this urge he walked back out towards a grain paddock and madly started consuming raw grains off the stalks. He ate as much as 5 full grown men and only then was he satisfied. He¡¯d been so hungry upon waking up that taste didn¡¯t even matter.

    Fatty¡¯s hunger never used to be this gluttonous. He used to eat a bit more than others but it was never like this before. However ever since the forest experience this level of hunger ¡®felt¡¯ normal and his mind was too busy on other things to discern any major change in his diet. When the need struck him he just knew he had to eat!

    After this quick snack fatty wandered the village and managed to use 3 coppers to have a villager tailor some cloth into a great big poncho to replace what little of his jumpsuit still remained. When he first started walking around the village he was worried that people would question the nature of his glowing red hand. Opposite to Fatty¡¯s expectations, everyone treated it as par for the course and even seemed somewhat respectful and maybe a little fearful towards him.

    At one point, a boy playing in the street bumped into him while he was walking and when he reached out his glowing hand to help the boy up a villager ran out and flying jumped into an incredibly impressive sliding kowtow with his forehead grinding through the dirt. Other than being impressed by the man¡¯s ability to slide nearly 4 meters on his knees with his forehead pressed to the ground Fatty was more surprised when the man started calling him mighty cultivator and merciful lord while simultaneously rebuking the child for upsetting the powerful lord practitioner and then had him on his knees apologizing and begging leniency as well.

    Fatty being a conspiracy nut decided something was afoot on this alien prison/enslavement/breeding world and began asking questions. Once he started he couldn¡¯t stop himself and asked nearly everyone in the village every question he could think of.

    Although Lost Village was tucked away in the middle of grain fields in a nice quiet area the villagers still knew a little bit about cultivators and explained everything they could. Once he learnt all of this he made the decision to try and get to this Gau City that he¡¯d heard about. The next day he set off with nothing but his glowing hand and great big poncho. He took no rations because the entire area around Gau City within the 35km radius of the monolith was covered in grain. Fatty no longer cared what he ate. As long as his hand didn¡¯t flash when he went to stuff it in his mouth he¡¯d eat anything.

    And so Fatty travelled towards Gau City at a level jog looking like a bouncing meat ball. Interestingly it was later discussed by many locals that a strange pestilence had popped up in the southern fields, where entire patches of grain into the tens of square meters would just disappear every now and then for no rhyme or reason. When it was investigated by Gau Clan disciples they found nothing but barren patches with debris of grain stalks scattered about appearing to have been chewed on but they could never find a creature capable of eating that much grain.

    -Madman Laboratory-

    James and Skay had discussed and argued over many things for many hours. Finally they felt they had a clear idea of what they needed to achieve for the best results when they stepped into the True Spirit realm.

    The first thing they decided on was to gather cultivation resources. When they discussed this Harvey chimed in about a sizable vein of black-iron he¡¯d discovered in the endless forest. If he used a Gau Compass they could investigate it properly and maybe use the rewards for such a discovery to accumulate some resources from the clan.

    So that¡¯s what they decided to do. Skay stayed behind in the lab to complete the breathing technique they needed to gain better control over their spirit elements as well as speed up their cultivation. James took the Ghoul and the Slut into the forest with a bunch of odd tools given to him by the old madman.

    It wasn¡¯t too difficult to find with Harvy leading the way and only took a few hours for the ragtag team of the Dark Brotherhood to reach the ore vein. When they reached a small valley in the forest they branched off from the cobblestone paths that apparently stretch out across the entirety of the Endless Forest. On arrival at the base of the valley they found a number of dirty black stones scattered around the area and a cliff face reaching upwards with a long dirty black streak through it.

    ¡°Dark Lord and Lady this black streak is the edge of the vein of black iron-ore. I don¡¯t know how far it reaches into the earth but for it to be so big here must mean the vein is quite large. At least, that was my assumption when I first discovered it.¡± Harvy gave a respectful bow with his fist cupped towards James and gestured to the dirty black streak across the cliff face.

    James took out a black pad they¡¯d recently found in the wreckage they¡¯d come through with and flipped it open. After pressing on it a few times then handed it to Jessy, who was essentially just here to be his assistant. Also she was bored, not knowing what exactly to do with her time, she actually volunteered.

    Once he¡¯d handed it to her he took off a backpack and pulled out a small box that resembled the base of his compass with a number of wires and electronics he¡¯d recently soldered onto it. He then began plugging the wires into the pad.

    Once he was ready he nodded. ¡°Alright looks like we¡¯re set. I hope that old madman¡¯s program actually works. Just for a test ... Harvy bring me one of those ore rocks.¡± James pointed at the biggest black rock he could see near the cliff base. It looked more like a boulder and was close to 2 meters in height and width. He could have just walked over to it but he took a perverse delight in giving Harvy unreasonable tasks.

    Harvy didn¡¯t even question the order and walked up to the great big boulder. Circulating his earth element he dug his hand into the boulder like it was tofu. With a great huff out, he poured his power into his legs lifting the boulder. Great heavy steps thumped the whole four meters over to James and then dropped the stone to the ground.

    James and Jessy were both rather surprised. He expected to be given the chance to berate his zombie servant a little but instead had no choice but to praise him. He decided to take the middle road though because he didn¡¯t want the ghoul becoming too full of himself with praise like some spoilt dog that gets a pat just taking a crap even if it¡¯s on the carpet.

    ¡°Harvy, I thought your earth element was the weakest it could get. I could understand it being a little more powerful now that you¡¯ve consolidated your true spirit but how did it become so fuckin¡¯ stupidly powerful. I¡¯ll be honest I wasn¡¯t expecting you to lift that boulder. I just wanted to fuckin¡¯ yell at something. Now fuckin¡¯ explain yourself!¡±

    James¡¯ middle road quickly joined back onto the first path of berating despite a great deal of effort on his part to hold it in. However no one could ever say he wasn¡¯t honest with his employee base.

    Harvy had no great reaction to this and his lifeless dead eyes remained lifeless and dead he simply made a bow to his Evil Overlord and explained. ¡°Master this servant believes that death is closely related to the earth. It was explained to me by Vice Guildmaster Skay, in the cycle of life and death all things eventually return to the earth in one form or another. When I meditated on this insight I gained enlightenment from my element of death and my understanding of my earth element grew.¡±

    James cupped his chin slightly. ¡®So even abstract notions like this can affect the level of control we have over our elements. Fuck that¡¯s bizarre. There¡¯s still so much we don¡¯t understand about the laws of spirit energy control. Fuck we can¡¯t even figure out a way to measure it!¡¯

    Having thought that far James put away the notion of abstract thought affecting control and walked the whole step to the rock. After placing his hand on the rock he stared intensely at it for a good fifteen minutes. Finally he figured out how to pour spirit energy into it through his hand. Although this was close to materialising spirit energy outside his body he was in contact with it and wasn¡¯t trying to control his spirit energy once it¡¯d left his body. He had a sneaking suspicion this was similar to how all those martial techniques worked and allowed even barrier realm cultivators to affect the natural laws in their surroundings.

    After another 15 minutes he¡¯d finally got the hang of it and looked over to Jessy who¡¯d been rather quiet since he berated her for not being able to accept her inner nature. Jessy was watching him and when he looked over she looked down at the pad and pressed some buttons. After a moment a 3D depiction of the rock appeared on the screen with a whole bunch of measurements next to it from size to purity.

    When she saw this she couldn¡¯t help but gasp. ¡°Wow ... Can¡¯t believe it actually works.¡±

    James strolled over and looked at the screen as a smile split his face. He too was inwardly a little surprised. Skay had told him the black-iron had an absurd level of magnetic sensitivity and even greater levels of electromagnetic activity when a current passed through it. With that in mind he designed this little box and program with James to use the magnetic fields created by the ore to determine its purity and quantity.

    James was a little sceptical at first but now he was a believer. ¡®Just how much is locked up in the head of that fuckin¡¯ madman to be able to implement this kind of geological surveying with a bunch of rocks he¡¯d never seen before.¡¯

    Once James was finished he approached the dirty great skid mark on the cliff face and placed both hands on it. With an intention, his lightning element surged out like a wrathful tidal wave into the ore and little snakes of lightning flickered about on the cliff face. After about half an hour of constantly pouring in energy, James staggered back and fell to the ground pale as a ghost. He¡¯d poured literally every bit of lightning element he could conjure into the black-iron deposit and was now feeling the backlash as his other two spirit energies roiled and shook inside his spirit realm.

    Without even worrying about the survey result he sat into a cross-legged position and began to meditate to increase his recovery rate. Once it was half way restored he finally climbed up. He began to question the nature of how his spirit energy increased. From his observations he suspected his maximum spirit energy level always increased at a set rate while meditating and spirit energy below this ever rising maximum value could be quickly regenerated after being used.

    He believed this gave greater credence to the theory that your subconscious was stealing energy to reinforce the barrier. When you weren¡¯t raising the maximum spirit energy and just recovering then the barrier took no energy and this allowed you to recover quickly. The massive deference in the speed of recovery and the growth rate of your maximum spirit energy made James think that the amount of spirit energy your subconscious used to build its barrier was inordinately higher than what it left for refinement into an element. He suspected if his barrier wasn¡¯t being simultaneously built then his progress in the growth of his maximum spirit energy would be an order of magnitude faster than at present.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    When he discussed this thought with Skay later they finally understood why the level of control over your elements was so important in breaking the barrier. It was because the barrier eventually contained a massive difference in energy from what you had at your disposal and the only way to break that overwhelming power was to be able to control your element to the level in which you could overwhelm greater power with less.

    Skay¡¯s comment basically summed up their conclusions. ¡°In the analogy of two armies battling one another. It¡¯s like an army of a million peasants being attacked and dispersed by a hundred thousand trained and tried cavalrymen.¡±

    Once his moment of introspection finished they had a look at the ¡®map¡¯ generated on the pad. James could think of only one word to describe his feeling looking at all the figures next the image. ¡®Mine!¡¯

    He immediately claimed this ore vein in his head. The vein was so massive, even with him pumping spirit energy into it for half an hour their makeshift device could hardly see the ends.

    From the figures he was reading it looked to reach back into the cliff face and underground for tens of kilometres and beyond the box¡¯s ability to detect. More important was what was spread out through the vein. Patches of very bright areas which had quality and quantity values through the roof. James was more concerned with what was in the centre of these patches though. It looked like a little solid dot and its purity values were greater than 100%.

    ¡°Above 100%! Is that spirit essence deposits?¡± James said aloud to himself. He thought back to a conversation he¡¯d overheard between the Elder and Skay back when he first woke up. The elder made a reference to spirit ores that develop an essence. The essence was described as the true core of an ore vein and held the same properties as the rest of the ore, only magnified!

    In the case of black-iron spirit essence James was assuming it was even more sensitive to magnetic fields and can create an even more dramatic magnetic field when current is passed through it.

    When he considered that possibility, he began to think of some weapons he wanted to develop later. Then quickly stopped once the thought that their contraption was broken occurred to him.

    After packing up the black-pad and surveying device the trio began marching back out of the forest. As they left, a man¡¯s form materialised from the shadow of a tree behind them.

    Calso had an odd expression as he watched the group moving back along the path following a compass. How long had he been combing the forest for these filthy commoners? Finally they just walked straight past him and led him to a valley with a huge black-iron deposit. He couldn¡¯t believe his luck! Xanzu was sure to reward him.

    There was one problem though. How was he supposed to announce this to the Elders? For starters he couldn¡¯t just say he happened upon it in the forest because right now he was meant to be watching over them in their courtyard. If he came back and started shouting about this vein now, then he¡¯d surely be punished for neglecting his duty.

    Worse than that, was the fact that these filthy mortals would most likely tell someone the moment they got back. He had to stop them! Besides, he was already ordered to bring the girl and kill the boy. He¡¯d been in the forest for 3 days and Xanzu was surely already getting impatient. This ore vein would be his saving grace when he brought back the girl.

    With those thoughts in mind he raced ahead to find a place to ambush them. Once he¡¯d found a nice dark looking area along the road he blended into the shadows to wait. The moment he saw them he prepared himself and then launched forth from the shadows towards Harvy who he knew was just a weak little tripe from a lesser family branch.

    James had been leading the party back towards the mansion when he felt a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach intensify, like he was being watched. He didn¡¯t pay much attention to it at first because he was distracted by the task of surveying the deposit. Once they left the valley the feeling only grew stronger though and finally he couldn¡¯t ignore it as he started looking around every now and then as they travelled. Jessy didn¡¯t seem to notice anything and Harvy was unreadable because ever since they kille ... Ahh, since his rebirth they¡¯d never seen him make any expressions and his face just always looked dead.

    Finally James couldn¡¯t shake the feeling and just as he turned to ask if Harvy had the same sensation, a black shadow flickered past his periphery. His lightning energy slowed the world down but even with that he could only see a blur of a man¡¯s form shooting towards Harvy. Before he could turn completely a loud ¡®thwack¡¯ sounded out and the Ghoul was sent flying off into the forest like he¡¯d been smashed into by a truck!

    James wasn¡¯t much of a fighter in his past life because his nature once he got riled up was unpredictable. He knew if he got into a fight he may not be able to stop himself from killing someone. This world was different though and Harvy was his property! As his spirit power flooded his body, he slid the compass into his robe as he shot forward at full speed and launched a punch at the momentarily stationary Calso. Before it landed, Calso started stepping oddly and James¡¯ punch flew through nothing as Calso dropped low and shifted his position around to James¡¯ side.

    When James saw his punch swinging into nothing he tried to pull his weight back but underestimated his speed with lightning spirit energy. Before he could control himself a massive force collided with his chest and he was launched ten meters through the air to roll along the cobblestone path until he came to a stop.

    ¡°Hahaha so you¡¯ve got a little bit of spirit power now! This changes nothing! You¡¯re still a pathetic weak piece of scum and know nothing of the world, like a frog trapped in a well. Your woman and your black-iron will all be Xanzu¡¯s. Hahahaha! Unfortunately, you won¡¯t be alive much longer and I won¡¯t be able to savour your face when your women is claimed by someone else!¡± Calso was taking great delight in goading James a little. It felt good to release his pent up stress from the last few days in the forest.

    James pulled his hands underneath himself and pushed himself up slowly, spitting blood from his mouth. As he crawled up to his feet he was now truly worried. He hadn¡¯t expected to run into someone trying to take his life. He knew Xanzu would eventually be a pain in the ass but he didn¡¯t expect him to try and have him killed.

    Jessy, who had only now realised something was going on, was enraged. ¡°Just who the fuck is his woman! I don¡¯t fucking belong to anyone you piece of shit scumbag. You go tell your boss he can get fucked!¡±

    Calso just grinned when he heard this. ¡°You don¡¯t have a choice you little tart! Power rules over the weak. If Xanzu wants you, there¡¯s nothing you can do to change that. You¡¯ll be his little fuck doll whether you like it or not! Hahaha!¡±

    Calso laughed madly. He seemed to greatly enjoy crushing these pathetic weaklings.

    James had been ecstatic earlier. He never imagined that this world would be so awesome. He¡¯d only been here a short time but apart from the incident in the beginning he¡¯d not only been basically free to do whatever he wanted, he¡¯d even found a massive store of riches out in the forest, in the form of black-iron ore.

    He quickly realised how na?ve he¡¯d been. Hao and the Elder had said many times that the strong ruled in this world. If you had something that you wanted to keep you had to be strong enough to keep it. He¡¯d also greatly underestimated the power of their martial techniques. He should have been well and truly faster than this Gau disciple. Even Harvy who was now in the True Spirit realm couldn¡¯t keep up with James¡¯ speed but with his movement technique this disciple had evaded his punch and even taken the opportunity to counter attack.

    All these thoughts ran through his head as he slowly stood up with a great string of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. He was truly enraged now. He¡¯d never been so angry.

    He shot forward like a bullet but before he¡¯d even closed the distance Calso waved his hand and a gust of wind blew forward throwing James off his feet.

    His chest was pounding and the sharp pain in his side and his struggles breathing properly suggested he had some broken ribs. But all his pain was drowned out by his all-encompassing rage.

    All his life he¡¯d been proud. He had pride in his knowledge and took pride in his adaptability and survival instinct. But now someone was trying to kill him and worse still, damaged his pride by shooing him away with a wave of the hand.

    He stood up again and his face was deadpan. His eyes were clear without ripples and looked to be staring straight through Calso. No emotion was on his face but inside he was a cacophony of rage and a little worried that he may not survive this encounter.

    As they stared at each other, Calso¡¯s malevolent grin slowly turned to a scowl. James was only slightly confused until beside him appeared the ghoul with half his chest caved in giving off a black mist like steam. He smelt even more strongly of death than normal.

    He ghoulishly shambled up and paused next to James then gave a bow and turned to stare at Calso.

    ¡°Dark Sire, I apologise for failing to protect you from this disgusting degenerate. Please allow this slave to tie him down while you escape to the mansion.¡± With that said Harvy¡¯s body lowered slightly as he prepared to engage Calso.

    James didn¡¯t ask if he was okay seeing as half his chest looked caved in, but instead just continued to stare at Calso while asking. ¡°How strong is he? More importantly, can you beat him?¡±

    ¡°Master this subordinate is uncertain. His spirit energy is still in the True Spirit realm but I can tell it¡¯s much stronger than mine. He also has strong martial arts from the head family. I may not be his match.¡± Harvy replied.

    Calso¡¯s face had long since returned to a smile. He could see Harvy looked half dead. He was surprised Harvy had even made it to the true spirit realm. Everyone knew Harvy was one of the dregs of the clan and never had the talent or will power to force his way through the spirit barrier. He also wasn¡¯t sure what to think of this strange element that stank to the high heavens.

    He knew however that Harvy was the clan wimp and never learnt any strong martial arts. Better still, he could sense his spirit energy was greatly stronger than Harvy¡¯s. He was assured that even if he fought with Harvy, he could kill him easily and remove this witness. In fact he was surprised his sneak attack hadn¡¯t killed him earlier. It was one of his most powerful wind techniques.

    Seeing as he was confident in killing them whenever he wanted, he made no rush and let them struggle in their death throws.

    James smiled grimly realising what Calso was thinking. ¡°Harvy his wind movement technique makes it difficult to hit him even for me. Do you thinks it¡¯s possible for you to tie him down enough I can make contact? All I need is to touch him. Once I can do that I doubt even your family head could fight back.¡±

    Harvy realised what his master was talking about. He¡¯d suffered at quite a number of experiments from James and was fairly certain he knew what James was thinking. He nodded his head. ¡°Master, this servant will try his best.¡±

    James smile grew colder. ¡°If you fuck¡¯it up Harvy, even if I¡¯m about to die, I will drag you soul into hell with me.¡±

    He didn¡¯t think it was physically possible but somehow Harvy¡¯s face managed to pale even more from its disgusting greyish state.

    James then looked over at Jessy and began speaking in English. ¡°Jess try to keep some distance. If an opening appears try and get close to him and pour your spirit power into his body. If the actions too fast though just keep back.¡±

    Jessy only nodded her head. She knew this situation was serious and no time to start a verbal battle with James.

    As she backed away slightly James and Harvy both started to creep forward. Calso, seeing they would attack together just had a deranged grin and was crazily laugh in his heart. ¡®Foolish bugs! I¡¯m going to enjoy crushing you under foot.¡±

    After a quiet moment of staring at each other, James and Harvy both suddenly shot forward. In the eyes of Calso, Harvy looked to be almost sliding across the ground his feet surrounded by dirty brown glow, like he was ice skating across the ground. James was more worrying though, even in the eyes of Calso, James just looked like a grey blur.

    He made to wave his sleeve to knock James back and slow Harvy¡¯s advance. Just as his gust of wind was agglomerating out from his body, Harvy slammed his hands down and the earth around Calso sank like quicksand.

    Calso was forced to stop channelling energy into his gale force wind and made to jump up to escape the sudden sink whole of sand.

    The moment he lifted off the ground the grey blur of James appeared beside him and reached out to grab.

    Before his hand reached, Calso waved his arms in mid-air applying another wind technique. His body swiftly escaped backwards like a leaf on the wind.

    As he shot backwards James fingers just barely brushed past Calso¡¯s extended palm. The moment they touched Calso felt his entire arm suddenly tense up and spasm then grow numb.

    James gave a ¡°tsk!¡± Clicking his tongue, then shot after the retreating Calso.

    Calso was now slightly worried. He was starting to feel a little pressured by these ants. The more he thought that the angrier he got. When had he, a true spirit disciple of the clan¡¯s Sword Hall, ever been pushed back by some foreign mortal stepper? Worse still, Harvy¡¯s spirit energy control was greatly more attuned then he thought it would be. To instantly create a sink-hole more than ten meters from where you¡¯re standing isn¡¯t a task just any true spirit cultivator can accomplish.

    Most worrying for Calso was, whatever the hell that previously weak mortal¡¯s element was. Whatever it was, it had just numbed his entire arm from a simple touch and even pumping in his own spirit energy to expel James¡¯ energy only resulted in the beginnings of a distracting pins and needles.

    Growing wary of the tag-team he retreated a little further trying to get a chance to get feeling back. He was now greatly apprehensive. He was already slightly wary of moving on all three of them together but the glory of discovering a spirit ore vein was too much to pass up. To make matters worse he got cocky when his sneak attack had damaged Harvy. To his consternation Harvy was acting as if he¡¯d never even taken any damage at all.

    Harvy was in quick pursuit, now covered once again in that black mist as he charged directly from the front. Meanwhile James shot around from the side of the arm he¡¯d just touched hoping to grab at another chance from his Ghoul¡¯s distraction.

    ¡°Pathetic scum!¡± Calso roared, then pulling back his good arm his spirit energy surged and a pressure spread out from him. He initiated a strange martial technique and as his punch shot forward from his hip a great wind blew towards the rapidly approaching Harvy. The moment this punch lashed out James raced forward to try and grab Calso again. The moment he reached Calso the wind wave reached Harvy and before he could react he was thrown back like a kite with its string cut.

    Just as James hand was about to touch Calso¡¯s face, he gave a great roar and his body spun in a strange fashion throwing out the stunned arm like a whip and smashing into James¡¯ face sending him rolling along the ground.

    ¡°Hahaha. Scum! You thought you ever had a chance against me. I¡¯ve been fighting for resources since I was a boy! You thought some ragtag team with strange elements is enough to fight someone with real experience? You truly know nothing!¡± Having said that, he began moving his arm around as feeling slowly returned to it.

    Just as he moved forward to stomp James¡¯ heard into the ground Jessy jumped out and crouched over James in protective way with tears streaming from her face and began to beg. ¡°Please stop. Please ... I ... I ... I¡¯ll do anything, I¡¯ll go with you to Xanzu! Please just don¡¯t kill him!¡±

    Calso just chuckled grimly, reached out and grabbed Jessy¡¯s arm. As he touched her, her face became stern and lost its pleading look. In that moment his mind blanked and an uncontrollable desire and pleasure simultaneously rushed through his body as if every sick depraved sexual fantasy he¡¯d ever had was fulfilled instantly.

    His eyes rolled back into his head and his knees buckled as he collapsed under the power of an overwhelming climax.

    James climbed up from the ground and watched the violently twitching and hip thrust Calso on the ground.

    His cold dead eyes watched for a moment longer till he reached out a hand and placed it on Calso¡¯s forehead. He then unleashed the full unbridled power of his plasma element and a complex series of emotions spread on his face as Calso¡¯s body violently twitched around on the ground. Jessy went forward to pull him away, but feeling all the hair on her body stand as she reached out, she wisely chose to avoid touching James. An odd smell permeated the air as smoke rose up from the red skin of the Gau disciple until after five minutes of this, his body burst into flames.

    James fell backwards onto the ground and stared up at the tree canopy as his mind finally caught up with his body and pain flooded his vision until he passed out.

 Chapter 13: Death Row

    -The Lab-

    When James awoke he dazedly looked at his surroundings. When he realised he was laying half naked on Skay¡¯s questionable operating table he was instantly worried. As he made to climb up he quickly decided this was a bad idea as the pain in his chest and ribs flared.

    With a soft grunt he laid himself back down and quietly contemplated on his recent encounter. He came to realise two things. Firstly he needed power to live in this world. The fact that cultivators could just kill anyone they wanted made that all the more apparent.

    Although that was a stretch of the truth it wasn¡¯t a wrong assumption. If you didn¡¯t have a powerful backer and weren¡¯t strong enough to protect yourself, anyone with a stronger backing and greater strength could end your life when they pleased. Who was going to question someone that could kill you with a stern look? That¡¯s the problem with power.

    Second thing he realised was that he needed to be more careful. He nearly lost his black-iron vein because he wasn¡¯t careful enough. Although it¡¯s hard to know when someone with such a higher level of power is tailing you, that doesn¡¯t mean it¡¯s impossible. Looking back he knew something was wrong long before they got to the iron deposit, but he wasn¡¯t careful enough to explore the sensation in his excitement to gain riches.

    As he lay there watching the ceiling of the lab he thought a great deal about what happened. Then his eyes widened slightly at what he¡¯d done. He¡¯d just killed man with his own hands. It was in the heat of the moment but he still just snuffed out the life of a walking talking living being. To make his emotions even more confused he was sure he¡¯d do it again, even if his fur hadn¡¯t been stroked backwards by Calso. At this thought he rolled to the side as his guts churned and he spew out a mouthful of vomit. His guts churned and his skin felt cold but he couldn¡¯t deny that thought.

    That¡¯s right. In his mind he was confident, if the situation was different he¡¯d most likely kill that man in cold blood. Or any man for that matter. Not because he felt nothing while taking a life, he felt a great many conflicting emotions from the act, but he knew he¡¯d do it again in sound mind because Calso was a threat to his life and well-being.

    He started to wonder why he¡¯d never had such deep emotional conflict to Harvy¡¯s situation. After all he¡¯d essentially killed him at some point. He had to admit that Harvy¡¯s situation was slightly different and he felt less responsibility because it was the Old Madman who had degraded Harvy¡¯s mind to such a state. Although he perhaps could have stepped in to help Harvy, he felt the damage was already done, he also couldn¡¯t refuse his curiosity.

    After a good while James heard the sounds of voices as Skay and Jessy walked into the lab arguing loudly. ¡°Now look here lass. I don¡¯t care what your opinion is. Harvy¡¯s my lab assistant. No! My creation! I don¡¯t care if its God himself come down from on high. If some little shit thinks he can destroy my creation I¡¯ll fucking crush¡¯em! I warned you to leave this matter alone ¡®till the boy awoke but you had to go play with the ants nest and they¡¯re not just crawling up your tight little ass now, they¡¯re fucking crawling up mine!¡±

    Skay¡¯s enraged voice echoed around the lab as he strolled towards James. Jessy wasn¡¯t going to take that tongue lashing lying down and began to retort.

    ¡°But it¡¯s wrong you perverse old fuck! How is it that they think they can just send someone to kidnap a person or kill whoever just on a whim. That Xanzu motherfucker has another thing coming if he thinks I¡¯ll just be his little tart. And its James¡¯ fault! He shouldn¡¯t have murdered...¡±

    ¡°Shut your mouth lass! You think this world is ours? You think they have police and lawyers and courts? This is a world based on power! James did the right thing killing that man. Hell I would have killed that motherfucker if I was in his shoes! In this world there¡¯s only the strong and the weak. If you think things aren¡¯t fair then go become the strong and protect the weak. This is a world of the fist girl! Do you understand? The courts they have are kangaroo courts and might makes right!¡±

    Once he finished he turned around to see James staring at them while they argued. ¡°Haha! Boy you¡¯re finally awake! That¡¯s good. Your braindead lass here has gone and stirred up a hornets nest by whining to an Elder and now that fucking lad of Hao¡¯s is pushing to lynch my lab assistant because he had to take the wrap for killing that piece of shit in the forest!¡±

    James had basically figured out what happened from their arguments and was already trying to formulate a plan.

    He slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position, despite the pain in his chest. As he did his breathing coarsened. He coughed out a small mouth full of blood but just wiped it away with the sleeve of his robe.

    Skay helped him sit up and looked rather worried when James spit up a mouthful of blood. The whole reason he made James their guild leader was because he was terrible with this inner politics crap in the clan and more accurately just terrible with people in general having the twisted mind he did he couldn¡¯t quite think like other people did. These few days he and James had worked together and he found a reliable man who could keep up with him and most important he could see a kindred spirit in James. A man after his own heart, who had the lack of a moral compass and a fast mind.

    If this was their past world he¡¯d want to take James as a prot¨¦g¨¦, but in this world where everything was different, he considered him an equal in their field of research. After all, a great deal of their present cultivation theories were conceived by James.

    James saw Skay¡¯s concerned look and chuckled dryly. ¡°Old Madman, stop your worrying. I ain¡¯t dead yet. Fill me in on what¡¯s happened.¡±

    -1 Hour Earlier-

    As you¡¯ve surely guessed by now, the whole shitstorm was stirred up by Jessy on their return from the forest. The moment the incredibly damaged and beaten Harvy had placed James down in Skay¡¯s lab Jessy had run off to the Elders and started throwing accusations around about the Heads own son trying to kill them or kidnap them, she also naturally mentioned how his lackey Calso had been killed by them in the forest in their self-defence.

    Once this began, Hao as the Clan Head, called the 4 Elders to the main hall to discuss what should be done. On Hao¡¯s right sat the starry eyes Elder, Song Gau. He was actually Hao¡¯s uncle and the oldest living relative of the main blood line, which was why everyone just called him Elder Gau. He was also the First Elder of the Hall of Forging and was considered a second grade forge master.

    On his right sat another Elder in purple robes embroidered with the anvil and hammer. He was the youngest of the Elders, short ginger-brown hair and had a tall stocky build. Originally he married into the clan when he fell in love with the daughter of the previous Hall of Forging First Elder but was later accepted by the clansmen for his talent in forging weapons and artefacts that out-stripped even the previous First Elder, not to mention Song. He was called Elder Anvil and was considered a first grade forge master, only a step away from being a grand master.

    On Hao¡¯s left was another old, rough looking man whose skin looked like leather and had a great scar marring his face that left one of his eyes blind and void of colour, much the same as his long grey hair. He was Elder Jeng and was the son of an Elder two generations prior.

    His battle power is the highest of the four Elders and he is considered the foremost expert and talent the clan has ever had in regards to cultivation and martial techniques. He was long since destined to step into the seat of First Elder of the Sword Hall and took the opportunity the moment the previous First left the clan to travel and study cultivation in another empire.

    The last Elder was actually a women and she looked quite young, in her early 30¡¯s at the worst. That of course wasn¡¯t the case, it was just that once you started cultivating, your subconscious would start to slightly alter your looks. James for example found after the 5th day here he¡¯d already slimmed down.

    The changes generally weren¡¯t dramatic like changing your bone structure significantly or anything of the like, but more cosmetic in nature as your subconscious mimicked how you viewed yourself to alter your body. This was reflected well in Harvy, whose self image was as permanently disfigured as his dead looking body.

    This lady elder wore purple robes with the sword embroidery and was Elder Grace. No one could remember her real name because she married into the clan much the same as Elder Anvil and chose the name Grace for herself. Although when she married into the clan she was just a mortal her aptitude for cultivation was second only to Elder Jeng which is how she eventually got to sit with these old men as an Elder of the Clan.

    The moment Xanzu was called into the main hall by the four Gau Elders and Hao, Jessy began throwing her accusations at him.

    ¡°Xanzu you piece of shit you think it¡¯s acceptable to just send out your lackeys to fucking kill and kidnap?¡± Jessy standing in front of the main table couldn¡¯t wait to see Xanzu get punished.

    Xanzu of course could already guess what had happened. ¡®That stupid cowardly moron. How could he have failed to kill these pathetic bugs? Now I¡¯ve got to clean up his mess!¡¯ With this thought Xanzu put on a confused and wronged expression.

    ¡°Junior Sister Jessy, I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t know what it is you¡¯re talking about. These are serious charges, but whatever is going on I can assure you I¡¯m innocent. I know the clan is quite excited at you three steppers cultivation progress because you¡¯ve all discovered high affinities or rare elements, being a son of the head family I would naturally keep your safeties and good will at the top of my priorities.¡± He said most of this just for his father and Elders.

    He¡¯d been at this a long time and could naturally read the room. He thought it was a bit too much trouble for the Elders to be so upset over the life or death of some filthy mortals but he knew that for the moment it would be better to avoid any troublesome matters, like just outright publicly killing them.

    Of course that wouldn¡¯t stop Xanzu, and the moment he found a chance he¡¯d silently deal with them.

    With that in mind, once he heard the basic outline of the charges he smiled grimly inside. But on the outside put on a placating, upset expression. ¡°Junior sister, first I should apologise to you. You are right, in some way I am to blame for today¡¯s troubles. A few days ago Brother Calso came to me in the sword hall and told me he¡¯d grown eyes for you. He has long since been a good brother of mine and I warned him back then not to make trouble with you three steppers but to still try his best to woo you. It appears he didn¡¯t take my advice to heart and had attacked you using my name. I¡¯m surprised his madness failed because he¡¯s quite a bit stronger than all of you, but I¡¯m certainly glad you all survived.¡±

    At this point in his one man act he turned to the Elders. Starting in a softer voice he spoke until his voice raged through the hall. ¡°But Elders, I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t let this go now! Calso was a good friend and I saw him as a brother. He may have been somewhat misguided, but from the story just now they already had him weakened and unable to fight back. There was no need to kill him and I wish to accuse the Stepper boy with murdering a clan disciple in cold blood! I demand justice for my dear friend and brother!¡±

    Xanzu thought he was quite clever in his schemes. He knew they couldn¡¯t kill the old man and the girl because of their rare elements and he didn¡¯t particularly care about some frail old man on his last legs. But now was a good chance to kill that pathetic weakling that hid behind the Elder and his Father. After all, as far as he knew James only has a very high affinity to wind and no other rare talent.

    The Elders all looked at each other. Surprisingly it was the starry eyes Elder Gau who spoke first. ¡°I agree. We can¡¯t condone these sorts of actions in the clan. It¡¯s one thing for Calso to have gone out on his own and found trouble but he¡¯s still a member of our clan and I¡¯m sure he didn¡¯t truly intend to kill anyone. If we let this sort of action go unpunished and gossip slipped out of the clan other families in the city will think we have a weak hand and start crawling all over us in an attempt to contend for power of the City. We must make an example of the boy!¡±Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    Elder Gau was a shrewd old fox and although he disliked this grandnephew he knew if they didn¡¯t placate him now he¡¯d surely raise a fuss later. He also thought James to be a little too astute and he had difficulty seeing through him. If he allowed someone like that to stay in the clan there would surely be no end of trouble. With these thoughts he then spoke out. ¡°I move the Stepper boy be executed immediately.¡±

    Soon the First Elder of the Sword Hall spoke out as well. He didn¡¯t particularly care about these matters but Xanzu was his star pupil. Although he had short comings in attitude he¡¯d well and truly been brainwashed by Elder Jeng and if he could get him onto the Head seat later, he would essentially be his puppet to control the clan. ¡°I agree. We can¡¯t let such a matter slide. If this boy can just kill our disciples in cold blood he will surely only kill again and become a scourge on our family.¡±

    The second Elder of the sword hall, Elder Grace, spoke out in disagreement. ¡°Older brother Jeng older brother Song. Since when have we Elders stepped into the matters of the junior generation? Clan members die all the time in battles for resources or blood feuds and we Elders have rarely stepped in before. Although the steppers are still only guests they have essentially already become clan members. All they need is to swear their oath. I disagree. I believe we should let these juniors sort there problems out themselves even if they kill each other.¡±

    Elder Anvil also spoke out on James behalf. Since the moment he¡¯d heard about their mad scientist laboratory he¡¯d been thrilled. His only true love after his wife¡¯s death was his craft and for an excuse to peer into a lab that could create lightning without some spirit artefact he was more than happy to step in on the boys behalf. Anvil had only been biding his time before trying to rope the old man and the boy into the Hall of Forging. ¡°From what the servants have told me the boy is essentially treated as the leader of their group and was considered by the old man as an equal in their research. This could only mean that the boy was no less resourceful and knowledgeable then the old man. I suggest we initiate the boy into my Hall of Forging and I will mentor him onto the right path.¡±

    Hao was now a little worried. He well aware of his sons corrupted nature and from the story it was quite certain he¡¯d actually tried to kill his little ¡®Jay¡¯. Although his anger rose into the heavens he had to try and be impartial in this matter and with the Elders divided he would be the deciding vote. He could only hope Jessy had something to say in regards to James that could sway the Elders, so he didn¡¯t have to upset the balance of inner clan politics.

    Before that chance came, the doors of the hall were pushed open and taking large even strides toward the seated Elders, Harvy walked forward. Before Xanzu or the elders could start berating him he dropped to his knees in front of them and kowtowed. Although his face showed no emotion this act alone showed his respect for the elders and the clan head.

    His rough strangled voice came out like an aged dying man from the caved in chest wound and truly sounded as if about to drop dead at any second. ¡°Great Elders, Clan Head. Please allow this junior to explain matters properly. It wasn¡¯t James who killed Calso, it was me. Jessy is lying to protect me because she fell in love with me at first sight! After a number of times in her room and then in the forest and then this other time...¡± realising he was going to die soon he named a whole multitude of times and places and actions. He¡¯d clearly started learning bad habits from James.

    He even went a bit overboard and Jessy nearly blew her top right there. Although she was red faced and trembling in rage at Harvy taking advantage of this moment to proclaim a whole bunch of sick twisted fantasies she said nothing when questioned by the elders and played the heart sick damsel, because she knew if she refuted now James would likely die.

    Although she didn¡¯t really want Harvy to die instead, James was her only ... Something ... left from earth and Harvy looked like he was about to die anyway so in her mind this was the best situation, even though she blamed James on the inside for this whole mess starting.

    Once Harvy had named almost every place between the black forest to the south and the great river to the north he then confessed his guilt. Hao took this opportunity to wash little ¡®Jay¡¯ of his sins and wash his hands of this whole fiasco. He did however make a promise in his heart to severely punish Xanzu later.

    ¡°Very well. With the confession of your crime of killing another clan member in cold blood you will be sentenced to death by decapitation tomorrow at dawn.¡± With that everyone in the hall left and Harvy was dragged off to somewhere by sword hall disciples that gave a nod when Xanzu threw them a strange look. Presumably a standard evil guy dungeon somewhere.

    -Zamoo! Back to the present-

    While James was listening to this story a whole number of ideas spun though his mind. He wasn¡¯t exactly sure how to solve this situation without showing more cards than he wanted. For example he didn¡¯t want the clan to find out he had triple elements at the moment. Although he planned to have more later, even just having two was considered an unequalled talent in the entire empire.

    From what he discerned of how this world works he was certain the clan would never let him go if he revealed that sort of talent. Not unless they had some way to benefit more from letting him live freely.

    For much the same reason he didn¡¯t want to reveal Harvy¡¯s double talent because they would surely try to take him back. James already considered the Ghoul as his property and wasn¡¯t about to let someone else take him.

    What other options did that leave? He knew there must be some sort of political nonsense working in the background of the clan and he wouldn¡¯t be able to leverage that situation before tomorrow morning. Also if he didn¡¯t want to aggravate that political situation it would be hard to ally with the elders who¡¯d supported him during their kangaroo court.

    He also knew that if he got too close to these people it would only make it more difficult to leave the clan in the future. James could already tell this city was just a shitty backwater that produced grain for the empire and he¡¯d most likely not gain any true power if he stayed here for too long. His life would be lived out there, in the great big world of ascension star.

    So he was now in a tough spot. They could refuse to join the clan if they insisted on killing Harvy but then what would be the point of the clan keeping them. If they couldn¡¯t control them and benefit from their rare element or strange knowledge then that meant someone else would. If that was the case why not just kill them straight out and prevent competitors from gaining any advantages.

    To top it off, from the clans point of view they¡¯ve already done more than necessary by treating them like guests and giving them essentially free reign to do what they want, but the trio really haven¡¯t given the clan anything yet.

    That was the general mind-set of the world and James was certain they¡¯d hardly think twice once they were of the opinion they couldn¡¯t contain these Steppers.

    Finally James had a thought. ¡®The only way to get Harvy back!¡¯ With that brain fart rattling around in his head he turned to Skay who¡¯d finished telling him the situation. ¡°Old goat. How much black-iron do we have on hand?¡±

    Skay gave him an odd look. Then after a moment his eyes gleamed as James had clearly come up with an idea. ¡°Should be a few kilos, maybe a bit more. What¡¯s going on in that head of yours boy?¡±

    James cupped his chin and began to talk. ¡°It must be about midday now. That means we have around 18 hours to get it ready. Jessy I want you to go and find Hao. You need to get as many lightning seeking stones as possible from the hall of forging. From a discussion we had earlier they also have some kind of gem that can store a person¡¯s spirit power, we¡¯ve not done any research on them but if they can store a persons refined spirit power we might be able to find a way to essentially make a battery. We need as many of those as they can give us. Skay give her all the notes we have on the properties of black-iron. There¡¯ll be a lot there they won¡¯t understand but they¡¯ll understand enough to know they¡¯re holding printed gold. Play hard ball Jess. My Zombies un-life depends on it! And Jess, for fuck¡¯s sake don¡¯t fuck everything up this time! You¡¯ve already endangered one life!¡±

    He thought briefly about how hypocritical that sounded but quickly brushed the thought aside. He was certain in his heart if he didn¡¯t kill Calso it would only be a matter of time before he came back to bite him in the ass. The fact that Jessy basically announced that he did it maddened him to know end.

    He was starting to wonder if she¡¯d done it on purpose to get back at him for something. He knew she was a manipulating bitch but it¡¯s hard to imagine she¡¯d go this far. Perhaps just another of her bizarre mood swings combined with ignorance. He could already tell this girl would be endless headaches.

    With that he climbed to a standing position and started moving towards a computer. Skay was rather confused as to what exactly James¡¯ plan was and couldn¡¯t help but wonder as he retrieved a note pad from an assorted box. After ripping out a few specific pages he handed it to Jessy. Finally his desire for knowledge grew too great. ¡°James what exactly are you planning?¡±

    As Jessy walked out James had already started scribbling on a pad and typing on the computer. He made a mad smile as he started filling in Skay. ¡°This project has always been a dream of mine and I¡¯d hoped we could wait to introduce it to the world until after I had a chance to develop it. Now however I¡¯m going to have to make it so these fucking Gau bastards are up against something that all the Elders can¡¯t refuse.¡±

    The next day at a battle arena on the mansion grounds, hundreds of family branches and disciples gathered around to enjoy the perverse show being made of this execution.

    A very beaten and sorry looking Harvy was dragged out in chains and thrown to his knees. He¡¯d had a rough night of being beaten and tortured by Xanzu¡¯s men, in the hopes he would reveal everything he knew about the steppers.

    Xanzu had heard about the lab and was sure they were up to something. He also knew Calso was a massive coward usually and only something of great value would make him gutsy enough to attack all three of them when they were together and after he¡¯d discovered they had any spirit power.

    Even just finding out that Harvy, the notorious waste of space, had somehow broken through to the true spirit realm would have made Calso apprehensive enough to run without stronger incentive than the harmless threat Xanzu used on him.

    He was certain they¡¯d found something in the forest and he wanted it. Mostly though, it just made him feel better after his hasty plan to get James killed was thwarted by that fucking dreg Harvy. As such, he was also in the courtyard today taking great joy in this pathetic scums death.

    He was quite surprised though, he wasn¡¯t sure if Harvy¡¯d met some great fortuitous encounter that helped him temper his will or just that his torturer was useless.

    ¡®Even when they beat him black and blue and threw him in boiling water he never changed that disgusting lifeless expression. Oh and the smell. By the heavens! How can any living creature smell like that? The smell that came off him when they tried to boil him is the main reason he isn¡¯t now a pot of stew for the earth lizards. Regardless though I¡¯ll find out what they¡¯re up to in the Endless Forest.¡¯ Xanzu thought to himself as he watched Harvy being dragged into the courtyard.

    Hao and the 4 Elders sat in seats on high in the courtyard. This round courtyard arena was normally used for clan ranking competitions and was surrounded be high spectating seats for the audience. Hao looked up at the sun rising higher, then looked around the courtyard for little Jay.

    He¡¯d thought they¡¯d come up with some plan seeing as Jessy came to him yesterday and asked for a bunch of things. He¡¯d think they were making a compass of some sort with the lighting seeking spirit stones but after she asked for spirit gems, particularly the gem of minor spirit energy storage, he wasn¡¯t certain any longer.

    In the crafting that his hall of forging does they basically only use the stones to store fire spirit energy for the furnaces. Although they¡¯re useful in some things they¡¯re basically useless and as common as tree leaves on the market so he willingly gave them.

    He was incredibly frustrated over the notes he traded for though. He knew those notes were gold and the level of detail they discuss the properties of black-iron with is beyond the knowledge of even a grandmaster forger who¡¯s used black iron his whole life.

    The only problem was, there were huge sections of it that discussed things like ¡®electro-magnetic field generation¡¯ and ¡®sensitivity¡¯ and ways to forge alloys that had terms he couldn¡¯t understand. He knew if he could have these notes explained to him in detail his clan could become one of the premier clans in forging black iron weapons and artefacts.

    Hao was now worried though. None of his little stepper friends had come to save Harvy. He was well aware that they¡¯d done something to Harvy and that as the clan head he should be upset with them, but he just couldn¡¯t bring himself to reprimand his wetdrea ... The little junior James.

    More than that, Harvy¡¯s breakthrough speed and spirit energy growth was like the difference between the heaven and earth compared to his previous notoriously terrible talent in cultivation, so Hao saw no reason to step in yet. One more powerful member for his clan wouldn¡¯t be a bad thing.

    Eventually the sun was high in the sky and still no one had come. Everyone was getting a little impatient, so Hao had no choice but to proceed with the execution. He stood and gave a cough to gather the attention of the clansmen and gave a short speech. ¡°It¡¯s rare to execute a member of the clan but today we will be making an exception. It was discovered that Junior Disciple Harvy of the fifteenth branch with a clear conscious killed an unarmed and defenceless clan member in cold blood after a battle involving a grudge and this crime was admitted to myself and the Elders yesterday.¡± Hao paused for a moment as he looked around. Once he realised they still weren¡¯t here, he could only let out a sigh. Then once again looking down at Harvy his voice rang out. ¡°Junior, do you have anything you wish to say?¡±

    Xanzu, realising something was wrong and that this execution was taking too long stood up. ¡°What need is there for him to speak now? He¡¯s already admitted to his crimes. Just kill the scum already and be done with it!¡±

    Before Hao could reprimand his failure of a son, an eerie low strangled chuckle began to sound in the arena. It was only quiet and difficult to hear at first, but slowly it spread further and grew louder until the demonic eerie laughter covered the entire courtyard arena. ¡°Heh, heh, HehhehhaHa, HaHaHa, AHA HA HA HA HAH!¡± It only grew more in its madness until finally it became silent and the entire arena fell into a hush as that godless evil laughter faded out in echoes.

    Every one finally realised it had come from Harvy as he slowly raised his head and his eyes stared directly at Xanzu. What had once been slightly yellow looking dead eyes that were murky like a corpse, were now entirely blood red with a great black pupil in the centre. Harvy¡¯s face was twisted into a truly evil smile as his blood red eyes peered into Xanzu¡¯s soul.

 Chapter 14: More Than You Can Chew

    The pervasive aura of death settled on the courtyard and everyone felt a shiver up their spine as if the grim reaper himself was standing behind them and lining up his scythe for the first and final swing. An ancient sounding and truly demonic voice rang out from Harvy as if evil itself was speaking through him from the underworld.

    ¡°The Dark Lord rises on this pathetic mortal plane. You think yourselves powerful with cultivation and martial skills! But, you don¡¯t realise you are but ants in the eyes of true power. ¡®He¡¯ comes, and behind his glorious path of ascension shall be great rivers and torrential rains of blood that span the starry sky. ¡®He¡¯ will erect mountains of corpses that he shall climb upon to ascend the heavens. And you, Xanzu you pathetic shell of a man, shall be the first to suffer his ire. Hahaha! HAHAHAHA!¡± Finished speaking his disturbing prophecy, his disgustingly course, wheezing laughter rang out through the courtyard once more.

    Before he finished his mad laughter, a grey blur shot through the centre of the arena and smashed into the back of Harvy¡¯s head. Having just been smashed in the head by surprise, the madly laughing Harvy fell flat on his face and passed out.

    Everyone was in shock. Even slightly panicked. They¡¯d never in their lives seen something like this. He truly sounded as if he climbed out from the pits of hell to deliver this message ... This prophecy. Xanzu was especially worried. He¡¯d never expected some death curse to be placed on him by the weak pathetic Harvy. He actually spent a great deal of his free time picking on and degrading Harvy when they were younger.

    To see him like this now, he didn¡¯t know what to expect, but he was the type to bully the weak and fear the strong, so if there truly was someone as powerful as described he expected nothing good. Before everyone¡¯s thoughts went wild with worrying theories or even before some people managed to wake up from their shock, an embarrassed cough rang out in the arena.

    Everyone finally realised there was someone that had appeared and knocked out that madman. Then with a slightly bashful chuckle he began to step forwards to begin speaking.

    James was inwardly a little worried as well. He new this scene of madness would not bode well for them if they wanted to save Harvy, but he wasn¡¯t ready to give up on Harvy yet. Especially after he witnessed that devotion bordering on ... Well let¡¯s admit it. It was true cult like zealotry.

    ¡°Ahem! Heh-heh. Many apologies everyone. Harvy recently suffered from a slight cultivation deviation and this matter seems to have aggravated it somewhat. There¡¯s nothing to worry about though, we¡¯ve actually been working on something for that and we believe it won¡¯t be a problem to get him back to normal.¡± After James¡¯ brief moment of quick thinking he decided to just go for broke and admit that Harvy¡¯s a little broken and try and use it to his advantage in the upcoming discussion.

    Hao and the Elders were the first to wake up from their thoughts. Realising James had come, Hao breathed out a long breath. He had no idea what was going on with Harvy and he was fairly certain he didn¡¯t want to know. Regardless of that though, the ... Prophecy, of Harvy¡¯s couldn¡¯t possibly be related to his little Jay so it was nothing to worry about for the moment.

    Before he got the chance to get control of the situation, the shrieks of his son rang out. ¡°Executioner! Kill that creature this instant! Whatever that is it¡¯s not human, I command you to kill it!¡±

    Following these screams the entire seating area exploded into a raucous scene, as everyone began yelling and discussing what just happened. The executioner was naturally from the sword hall and willingly followed the commands of their golden boy as he walked towards the unconscious body of Harvy.

    He raised his gleaming sword over his head with a cruel smile and just as he brought it down, it suddenly disintegrated in his hands. Following the disappearance of his executioner¡¯s sword, an unstoppable force blew the executioner across the arena. In the brief moment, as he was lifting into the air, the explosive sound of an object breaking the sound barrier rang out and then the explosion of the wall on the seating area on the far side of the arena quickly followed up.

    Everyone froze. Was this the power of some all mighty expert? Even Elder Jeng didn¡¯t have the power to disintegrate a sword of that quality, let alone then destroy an entire wall with a single blow. Even with his most powerful earth element martial skill and using every scrap of spirit power he had, he doubted he could achieve such a result.

    Quiet once again descended until a loud ¡°Phewy!¡± rang out, as James pulled himself up from the ground. They never had a chance to test this design so even he didn¡¯t realise that it would be so powerful. Everyone watched him as he climbed up with a bright smile on his face, which was quite unusual for James in a situation like this, and he began to pat the dust off himself.

    As he did that the eyes of everyone present moved towards a strange long white blunt metal ... staff? Or a cudgel or some kind of ... weapon. It was hard to tell exactly what is was but the smoke coming off of it and the fact James seemed so carefree about the massive explosion just then, would suggest he was the source.

    James then turned to the now silent as the desert crowd. In his arms was a long white rod about 4 foot long. At the midpoint of the stick were two obtrusions that come up out of the stick like a fork in the road. They then proceeded out from the handled part of the stick in parallel, leaving a clear space in the middle like a track.

    The space between the protrusions looked as if it was drilled out from the end to leave it looking circular. At the handle of the track was a small gap that looked square and fed into the hollowed gap between the two sides of the track. In the handle of the oddly shaped stick was an odd rectangular prism, about the size of a hand, that was glowing with a strange luminescence and looked filled with tiny blue electric snakes.

    This was James¡¯ greatest wish and desire become complete. He called it an Arc Cannon, but truth be told it made no arks or any such thing, he just liked the name. This weapon design was conceptualised by him when he was still an apprentice and something he longed and dreamed to build. In truth it would have been more apt to refer to it as an electro-magnetic rail gun. That however sounded less cool than arc cannon.

    The ark cannon was a powerful modernised weapon that used a massive current of electricity to magnetically charge two tracks. Inserted between the two tracks is a projectile that acted as both the firing mechanism and the ammunition of the weapon.

    This was a weapon that was built to fire large slugs at absurd speeds. It only had two down falls. The first was the absurd knockback of the weapon when firing a slug. The fact that James wasn¡¯t injured by the recoil alone can only be attributed to his using half his spirit energy to hold himself steady.

    The other massive draw back of the weapon, was the energy consumption. Even with a material like black-iron that had an abnormal level of efficiency in creating magnetic fields, it still used half a battery charge. The battery in question was something James and Skay had spent the majority of their time last night developing and just charging one had an enormous energy cost for James and was the reason they were so late.

    Although they could try and charge it using electricity generated by their makeshift lab, the speed was slower by a depressingly large margin. They had a few theories about that but the leading one was that the nature of the spirit stones themselves was to take in a person¡¯s refined spirit energy and not energy created by the world. Which would explain why the stones aren¡¯t chock full of primal energy most the time.

    As James stood there with his arc cannon leaning on his shoulder he couldn¡¯t stop a grin spreading across his face. From the Elders faces they most likely were very interested in this weapon.

    Anvil was the first to react as he shot to his feet, his eyes staring at the white stick in James¡¯ hand fanatically. ¡°Young junior. Is this something you¡¯ve created?¡±

    Finally the other Elders reacted as they too eyed the stick. ¡°This weapon is indeed a concept design. It¡¯s called an arc cannon. The reason I came to your public display today is to make a trade. In regards to the life of Harvy Gau. First and foremost he is a necessary subject for our research on cultivation deviation. Without him, it will be difficult to finish developing a cure for the effect of something that is normally so debilitating for cultivators. I¡¯m sure you all realise that if the Gau clan had such a method in the future you would surely become a stronger power in the empire, with many cultivators seeking you out.¡±

    Jeng couldn¡¯t stop himself from being dragged in. He stood up and his one good eye fell on James. ¡°This disciple is a criminal and his crimes are unpardonable. You will need to give the clan more than some methods to alleviate cultivation deviation. That weapon for example could almost be considered enough, if you can teach our forge masters to make it that would be sufficient.¡±

    James didn¡¯t even think before replying. ¡°Not a chance mate. The research on this weapon is leagues beyond the worth of Harvy. You¡¯d never even have seen it had I not decided that Harvy was worth keeping alive. In regards to his unpardonable crime, I can¡¯t help but feel it¡¯s been exaggerated. From all the stories told to me, disciples killing each other over resources or blood feuds are common. Why haven¡¯t you punished all the other members of your clan that have been witnessed killing someone for some reason or another?¡±

    Everyone in the crowd couldn¡¯t help looking at one another. They too knew that death was a common part of how practitioners lived. It was impossible to get ahead in this world without offending someone and when rare resources appeared it¡¯s not unusual for battles to occur even between clan members.

    They all came here for a good show though, so a party crasher like James was excellent for making things a bit more exciting. They weren¡¯t about to jump in and assist any side.

    Elder Jeng was not happy with James¡¯ rebuttal and it was clearly written on his face. Unfortunately he wasn¡¯t certain what to do, he had a feeling that such a weapon was not something their clan could create without assistance. Even if they tried to reverse engineer the one James now held. On top of that, even if they moved on him now to apprehend him, the power of that stick was enough to make even him apprehensive, so he had no doubt everyone else wouldn¡¯t want to get anywhere near it.

    Hao stepped in to mediate the Elders and James¡¯ discussion. He had a feeling James intended to exchange the weapon with the clan but he¡¯d definitely want more for such a thing than just Harvy¡¯s life. Regardless of if he wanted to trade it or not, this weapon gave him the right to bargain with the clan as an equal.

    ¡°Little Junior James, I¡¯m certain you and the Elders can come to an agreement later in regards to an exchange for your arc cannon. In the case of Harvy¡¯s life, you are free to take him as a sign of the clan¡¯s good will in this matter.¡±

    Xanzu couldn¡¯t believe he hadn¡¯t gotten his way twice in a row and was on the verge of jumping down to the stage and slapping James to death with a single palm. He turned to his teacher Elder Jeng to plead his case. ¡°Master Jeng, we can¡¯t allow some scum to...¡±

    ¡°Silence boy!¡± Interrupted Hao. He was already rather displeased with Xanzu and he¡¯d just been even more irked that his own son ran to the Elder of the sword hall to overturn his ruling. He truly was an unfilial son.

    Once Hao put an end to this matter and James picked up Harvy to drag him back to the lab holding his nose, the 4 Elders and the Clan Head met together in a secluded study room at the back of the mansion.

    As the four elders sat down at a table and waved off the servant who¡¯d just brought down tea, the most excited Elder, Anvil, started the discussion. ¡°I want the boy and the old man to be inducted into the Hall of Forging immediately. They hold a great deal of knowledge that will be invaluable to us as forge masters and building a strong relationship with them now would be better than when they¡¯ve acclimated to our world fully.¡±

    Jeng was a little dissatisfied with how things had gone with the steppers so far. ¡°I disagree with the soft approach. They have been given a great deal of leeway these past few days and we¡¯ve put off bringing them into the clan until they could swear an oath but that¡¯s left us here now. They aren¡¯t part of the clan yet and as such aren¡¯t bound to us, that brat even had the audacity to speak against an Elder in front of the gathered clansmen. We need to be able to control them! We should give them enough resources to reach mid-barrier realm and then have them swear to us or die. We can¡¯t let such a weapon, or anyone that can build such a weapon, leave our Gau Clan. It would be easier to get control of them now than let them gather any more information on our world. They should also be separated from each other!¡±

    Jeng was sure it would be better to get control of the steppers who had strange methods immediately, before they had the chance to get used to this world. From what the boy said, they were already well aware that this world was one were the strong eats the weak.

    Many other worlds connected to ascension star had more developed and set social systems that were policed, but even there, as long as it had cultivators the strong had the power and the weak were forfeit of any liberties.

    He suspected they were already making plans to leave.

    Elder Song had once again jumped ship. Of the Elders, he knew the steppers natures somewhat better than the others and had interacted with them the most out of the Elders. Although he¡¯d rather not admit it, he probably couldn¡¯t manufacture such a weapon, ever. In fact he didn¡¯t even have any ideas on how it actually worked.

    However, he had lived his life in the clan and for the clan and now felt that these steppers could very well be a turning point for the Gau Clan and perhaps even allow them to contest for the entire region, or perhaps even the empire one day.

    He also knew that the steppers and the boy especially, were a little too astute and he was sure if they forced them to swear an oath they¡¯d still find someway to make things difficult for them, the oath after all isn¡¯t infallible.

    ¡°We can¡¯t try and force their hand. I¡¯m certain that boy is aware that we may keep them here and force them to swear an oath but he seems the type to rather die than live in servitude to our clan. We should either kill them all now, or prepare to accept that we can¡¯t control them and may need to develop a new relationship with them.

    ¡°Although they won¡¯t belong to our clan we can still set up a relationship to benefit from their impressive crafting technology. In the future they will definitely become powerful enough to assist our clan in it¡¯s growth. If we befriend them now and create that goodwill then even if they one day leave, it will not be before they¡¯ve assisted us and we¡¯ve developed a good relationship with them.¡±

    Elder Grace being the last to speak was looking at Hao who¡¯d yet to sit and was staring out the window with his hands behind his back. She could tell this situation was incredibly troubling for him. ¡°Clan Head. I feel that the boy would never have shared the existence of his weapon without a reason. Perhaps our best course of action now would be to find out exactly what the steppers want. Only then will we know how to respond.¡±The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Hao¡¯s eyes were glassy and his face solemn. As he looked out the window his expression grew softer. Unfortunately he now saw that little Jay would never be held down by his Gau Clan. He shone too brightly to be trapped in this little city out on the edge of the empire.

    He¡¯d kept a creepily vigilant eye on James over the past few days and overheard quite a number of the trio¡¯s conversations. Although he¡¯d always managed to miss the Zombies moments of fanatical worship he knew James had a double element. He never mentioned this to the Elders and now that this whole fiasco had begun he knew for the moment he couldn¡¯t. He wanted James to be tied to his clan and by extension, him, for the rest of his life, but he knew it would only create enmity if he tried to force it.

    He turned to the Elders. With his face stern he looked them in the eye one by one and then finally spoke. ¡°We¡¯ll do as Grace has suggested. For the moment let¡¯s consider them guest forge masters and treat them as such. If we try to pressure them into the clan, they will feel trapped here and it will only sour our relationship with them. Once we¡¯re certain of their intentions, then we will either let them stay in the clan and join the halls or leave and set out. Either way, we will not be trying to force them into the clan. We can ask for explanations on there research into black-iron in exchange for the meagre knowledge on cultivation we¡¯ve given them.¡±

    Jeng seethed as he sat there thinking furiously. He didn¡¯t want to allow such dangerous people out of the clan. He felt the head was being foolish in his attempt to placate them. ¡°Clan Head we can¡¯t allow them to leave and be snatched up by someone else. If we can¡¯t have them they should be killed!¡±

    Hao shook his head at Jeng¡¯s short sightedness. ¡°I¡¯ve made my decision. We will discuss it with the steppers tonight but I don¡¯t want any actions taken against them regardless of their decision.¡± The Elders watched Hao leave the secluded room and then made their way out as well.

    -The Lab-

    Harvy was in pretty bad shape. Oddly, even though he should be dead from his injuries he still managed to draw breath. Skay began applying a number of high-tech first aid disposables the moment they entered the lab. Although they only had the little bit that came through the Gateway with them they didn¡¯t mind using them for Harvy.

    They had a strange relationship with Harvy now. Both Skay and James had to admit they may have gone a bit overboard with the guy. Now that he¡¯d become so damaged, mentally and physically, they felt a slight bit of responsibility for him. That being said, they didn¡¯t regret their actions to any great degree and they both willingly accepted that their moral compass was almost as damaged as their now death-state subordinate¡¯s body.

    As Skay began treating Harvy, the trio began planning their next move and discussing what they wanted in the best case scenario. James was now certain they had something the Gau Clan wanted. He also knew that it may be more than he bargained for and most likely had caused the situation where the clan either killed them or forced them to submit. Which was exactly what he¡¯d wanted to avoid.

    He hadn¡¯t realised exactly how powerful this prototype arc cannon would be. Originally he¡¯d only expected the cannon to at most be powerful enough to knock the sword away. After all, on earth you¡¯d need a cannon nearly 4 times bigger for the same level of destructive power.

    It was only now that it occurred to him, that perhaps his lightning spirit energy had something to do with it. When they were testing the black-iron in the lab, they¡¯d used the electricity they created and not his element. At present he didn¡¯t have time to question such things though.

    Right now he was more worried about how the clan would respond to this and trying to think of a way to escape the eventuality of being trapped here. He wasn¡¯t certain yet but he thought he knew of a way to clear an oath, even if he didn¡¯t trust the source. Unfortunately it could take them years before they trusted him enough to let him move around alone, he also wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d be able to clear any oath sworn by the other two.

    The stepper trio discussed a multitude things for some time before a knock came on the door. A very afraid looking servant girl entered what the servants referred to as, the den of madness, especially after Harvy was assigned to Skay and became ... well whatever it is he became.

    She bowed very politely at the doorway not daring to enter too far. ¡°The Clan Head and the Elders are throwing a banquet in the main hall for the three guests tonight and wish for you to attend.¡± Then she bowed again not wanting to look around inside the lab and hurried out on the verge of running.

    James, Jessy and Skay all looked at each other. Jessy finally sighed and made to leave. ¡°It looks like we don¡¯t have much choice any longer. I¡¯ll meet you at the hall.¡±

    When she left James looked to Skay. ¡°Old goat, how¡¯s Harvy looking?¡±

    ¡°Well, he¡¯s somehow not dead, despite his right lung being caved in and massive internal haemorrhaging. He¡¯s seems stable for the moment. What do you suppose the clan¡¯s going to do?¡±

    James face was solemn as he sat in a chair with his arms crossed looking at his feet. ¡°I¡¯m uncertain. We¡¯ve displayed too much already. Most likely, they¡¯re not going to let us leave. For now though, we¡¯re in a spot where we can¡¯t really do much about it. We don¡¯t have the power to fight our way out and even if we did we don¡¯t have a powerful backer to assist us once we leave.¡±

    ¡°Hmmm. Well we can¡¯t change things now. All the calculations on the arc cannon were off. The prototype is now significantly damaged from the recoil. We didn¡¯t expect it to be so attention grabbing. It doesn¡¯t look like we¡¯ve much choice but to go to this banquet and see what Hao has to say.¡± Skay gave James shoulder a pat as he too left to prepare.

    James sat there wildly thinking, trying to come up with anything he could to prevent their expected servitude. Coming up blank only made him more solemn as he too left to get ready after checking Harvy¡¯s condition again.

    -Gau Clan Main Hall-

    For the first time since their arrival, the main hall of the mansion was full. All the branch heads and their families had come to this banquet. Very much similar to the public execution, they came for a show. It¡¯s rare for particularly exciting things to happen inside the clan. This was attested to by the entire clan assembling for a guest banquet.

    The four Elders and Hao sat in the main seats and opposite them sat the trio of steppers. The banquet had a rather excited atmosphere and all the families present spent some time greeting the steppers and having a toast. Almost nothing exciting happened and none of the trio or Elders mentioned the elephant in the room.

    Once it had gotten rather late and everyone had eaten or lubricated themselves with a number of toasts the elephant was finally disinclined to remain unmentioned when Elder Anvil couldn¡¯t hold himself and asked James about his arc cannon.

    ¡°Young Junior I¡¯m quite interested in your weapon. The ahhh ... Arc cannon?¡±

    The trio of steppers and the other Elders all tensed for a moment. James finally let out a long breath, he knew this would come after all. From their rather polite conversations all night he could tell something was going on with the Elders. He couldn¡¯t read Hao at all though, mostly because he was afraid to make any eye contact with the man.

    His expression became stone and he finally decided. Since he¡¯d already revealed so much he may as well go all out and get that elephant out into the spotlight. He was of the opinion by this point that the clan was still trying to play with kiddy gloves and trying to retain the trio.

    ¡°I suppose it¡¯s about time we discussed this.¡± James sighed mostly to himself. Then he glanced at Hao and the Elders and then at his two compatriots.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid we¡¯re not willing to sell plans or teach anyone to build the arc cannon and that means not just you but everyone. It¡¯s a powerful weapon from our world that we used materials from this world to build and although eventually we may sell the weapon we¡¯ve decided it¡¯s best not to spread this technology yet.¡± James let that sink in then threw out what he suspected may be his last free words.

    ¡°To be honest we don¡¯t want to remain in the Gau Clan permanently. That being said we¡¯re still too weak to leave your protection and most likely will be for some time. No doubt you¡¯ve discussed this and if I¡¯m not wrong you¡¯ve...¡±

    ¡°Young James just wait a moment!¡± Hao interrupted. He could guess all too easily where James¡¯ thoughts had run to. Most likely he was afraid they planned to forcibly conscript them to the clan and was going to threaten with his life if they tried. So he jumped in now to alleviate that fear.

    ¡°Junior James, the Elders and I did discuss what exactly to do about you. Originally we had intended for you to join the clan because all random steppers generally come from a world with knowledge or cultivation methods that our world lacks. The reason steppers like yourself are enslaved so often is because most clans believe if they can¡¯t have your worlds knowledge then no one should. Sects are generally less strict but that is another matter. We offered methods to cultivate and gave you all a chance to learn of your elements. Unfortunately, two of you we can¡¯t even properly train and if you remained we¡¯d be unlikely to teach you anything regarding your talent.¡±

    Hao paused for a moment then looked to see if the Elders would still accept his proposal to release the trio from their previous promises. When all of them but Jeng nodded he continued.

    ¡°Juniors, all three of you have given us reasons not to allow you to leave. It¡¯s also obvious that you all have a great deal of potential, if not in cultivation then in your world¡¯s strange means and crafting. That means staying here would only limit you. Instead of killing you or trying to force your devotion to the clan ... We want to treat you as guests or friends and commit to trade. You¡¯ve already learned more about black-metal in your time here than we have in our clans thousands of years living here and mastering the art of forging. We want to know your plans for the future.¡±

    Hao eventually fell silent and seeing as almost the entire hall was listening in on this conversation a strange quiet fell on the entire hall.

    James looked to his companions then an unusually bright grin split his face. He couldn¡¯t tell if this was some kind of trick or some method to manipulate them into swearing an oath to the clan but then, what reason would they need to do so?

    Finally he nodded to Jessy whom he¡¯d recently learnt was an excellent negotiator. Having discussed what they wanted to do earlier in the day Jessy had a pretty good idea what the duo wanted to achieve. She herself wasn¡¯t sure what she wanted to do yet, but she knew she¡¯d stay with James and the Madman for a little longer.

    After having cried herself to sleep these past few days she was acutely aware that all she had left was these pair of morally corrupted madmen, as depressing as that notion was. She gave a curt nod in reply to James¡¯ urging and took a deep breath, once she¡¯d collected herself mentally she put on a very business-like face and spoke in her proper British accent.

    ¡°We want to make some trades. You¡¯ve done a great deal for us already, as such, we at the least owe you for that. Although the cultivation methods you¡¯ve given us aren¡¯t particularly useful individually they have, together, given us the means to create our own. On top of that is the assistance you¡¯ve given us when we first arrived. We¡¯ve no delusions that had it been someone else our fate would be questionable at best. Therefore we¡¯d like to offer you some of the knowledge from our world as compensation for this, just as was agreed upon when it was first discussed. Also we want to assist you in understanding the black-iron research we¡¯ve done.¡±

    The Elders shared brief glances and finally Anvil spoke for the Gau Clan. ¡°Well we certainly won¡¯t deny the opportunity to learn from you on your worlds techniques. We would also like to offer you the opportunity to work with our Hall of Forging. That will allow us to learn from each other. We believe there will be a great deal about our methods that will differ from yours.¡±

    Jessy looked to James and he nodded again. Jessy then faced Anvil and continued. ¡°Your offer we will most certainly agree to. Our intention was to sell you some equipment and start a workshop in the city. We¡¯re aware that we don¡¯t have the strength or means to protect ourselves so we intend for the workshop to be a Gau City branch. We will pay tax and protection money and ... I suppose allow for our workshop and your Hall to cross exchange ideas. We¡¯ve no intention of stepping into your business of artefact and weapon production.

    ¡°Instead we would be considered ahh ... Hmm well, as a research and development department. We only need the workshop to further our understanding of your world and in the process your hall of forging will reap the benefits in any designs we choose to sell you. Although we will make sales to other groups there won¡¯t be anything that would disadvantage your clan. In saying that, we would naturally swear an oath to a mutually beneficial business relationship for our duration here instead of an oath of servitude.¡±

    Finally having finished her sales pitch Jessy took a deep breath. James and Skay were both surprised. They¡¯d figured she¡¯d be a good speaker because she¡¯d handled there trade with Hao earlier rather well, but they never expected her to be so fluent.

    When it comes to business things James was the first to bow out, he new his limits. Skay had more experience but his people skills were sub-par at best. Even now in this serious situation it looked like he was having difficulty restraining himself from leaning across the table and trying to scoop out an eye from starry eyes Elder Gau.

    After Jessy¡¯d finished, the Elders all looked at each other. Although it looked like they were only staring from one to another they were actually sub-vocalising. Only someone who¡¯d trained to their level of cultivation would have such precise control.

    After a short time Elder Jeng grinned. He then leaned forward slightly and looked at James in specific. ¡°We can accept these conditions. However, we still wish for you to swear an oath to our clan. Not of servitude as some of us would like but as a pact of mutual protection. You¡¯re all weak now and still need our protection. If we are to protect you while you¡¯re not a part of our clan we want this oath. That way, when your rare elements propel you to higher levels of cultivation, you will step in to assist our clan. Also, while your in the city you will leave once a month to assist in beast subjugations or material collections. This counts as protecting the clan and also can be considered a good chance to train yourselves.¡±

    Jessy wasn¡¯t too sure how to respond to this. Ideally they wanted to separate entirely from the clan and remain only as business partners. She herself had no attachments now and although she was still battling with the severity of losing her home and all the people she loved she knew she wanted to cultivate.

    To have such power, who wouldn¡¯t chose to try and become stronger? That was why although she wasn¡¯t ready now she was sure later she would want to leave this city and see what this world had to offer. Perhaps she may even find love! She, like James, didn¡¯t want to have anything tying her here.

    James had cupped his chin and was thinking quickly. ¡®I don¡¯t trust this Jeng character much. He¡¯s not had a pretty face on all night, so if I had to guess, he was against the idea of letting us go. He also seems too close to that Xanzu fellow for my liking.¡¯ After a brief moment he had an idea.

    ¡°How about we delay any action on your clan missions until our party has at least reached the true spirit stage? You said it yourself we¡¯re too weak and still require protection.¡±

    Jeng frowned slightly. If he could get them out of the city it would make it easier for them to have an accident. ¡°What more could you want? The majority of our disciples are only barrier realm. This is just a chance to measure yourself and train to properly handle yourself in battle. You¡¯ve definitely realised by now that if you want to become a strong cultivator you¡¯ll have to engage in battle. No one can be strong without having offending others or fighting for resources.¡± Jeng coaxed. He had to encourage these people to leave the city so he could deal with them silently. Accidents always happen during the beast clearing.

    Elder Song stepped in this time. He already had an idea of what Jeng was thinking. ¡°It¡¯s fine Elder Jeng. Let¡¯s allow them some more time to acclimate to cultivation first. How about until they¡¯ve reached true spirit they visit the sword hall and train under Elder Grace? That will give them a chance to gain experience and they will be more prepared for a real life or death experience once they have to take a mission.¡±

    Elder Grace who¡¯d been eyeing Jessy for most the night then nodded and agreed. She¡¯d never taken a personal disciple before. Although her cultivation speed wasn¡¯t slow, she knew that she would almost always be tied down to the Gau Clan because of the oath she swore when she married into the clan. If she took a personal disciple for a while who would be a better choice than this beautiful young women with an abnormal element.

    James gave a nod to himself. This would be appropriate for him as well. A chance to actually experience battle was as important as cultivation itself. He¡¯d come to this understanding after fighting Calso. He gave a charming smile and leaned in to whisper his thoughts to Jessy who was his negotiator. She gave his words some thought then began a new pitch.

    ¡°Very well, we agree to these terms. It is acceptable for us to repay the Gau Clans protection in our early phase with kind. Therefore we will refrain from protection fees from our workshop and assist in beast hunts at true spirit realm and join the Gau Clans Sword Hall until then. Hmmm ... that being said, we don¡¯t necessarily have any aversion to joining your clan. Only to being restricted in anyway. Well ... Actually we eventually plan to start a Guild so I guess we would be in an alliance and have Gau city be our first branch. So let¡¯s call this a trade alliance and a mutual defence pact. How about instead of just a personal oath we make it as a guild in the same way you make an oath as a clan? In the future our guild will assist in beast clearing to allow newer members to gain experience and also deepen the relations with your clan?¡±

    Hao¡¯s eyes widened in surprise. He wished his own son was as intelligence as these steppers. Not only were they master craftsmen, they also had the forethought to build a power base for themselves. It was truly a pity they wouldn¡¯t remain in the Gau clan, but if their aspirations succeeded and their abnormal talent accelerated there cultivation as fast as he and the elders expected, then they would be powerful allies for the clan in the future. Doubly so if they began developing new talents in a guild.

    He looked at James with an odd expression that left James sweating slightly, then after another sub-vocal discussion between the Elders he agreed to their terms.

    Because the trio needed time to have a seal created they would sign the pacts and make there oaths on their seals in two days. After this discussion the hall was a magnitude more exciting as everyone ate and drank till the morning in celebration.

    Some people weren¡¯t happy the Elders were treating such weak cultivators so well and a good deal didn¡¯t give a shit and were just there to drink on the clan¡¯s dime, but most everyone took the opportunity to greet the clan¡¯s new allies.

    James and Skay spent half their night discussing with Anvil and Song everything about forging or materials under the sun. James spent the other half trying to avoid Hao¡¯s burning gaze or wandering hands. At some point Jessy had disappeared somewhere with a tall handsome disciple from the swords hall.

    Eventually as the three suns peeked over the horizon, James and Skay found their way back to their rooms, greeting the earlier mentioned tall handsome disciple strutting out of Jessy¡¯s room looking rather bedraggled.

 Chapter 15: Breathing

    After a good sleep the trio of Dark Brotherhood¡¯s founders met in the lab to find a perfectly ghoulish Harvy tidying up with Little Blue running around everywhere madly. The moment he saw James he ran up his leg and bit his arm.

    ¡°Ahhh! You little shit!¡± Once he gave a response, Little Blue let go and started madly running around again. He¡¯d clearly been terribly bored being ignored the last two days and wanted to play.

    James let out a sigh and against his better judgement tried to catch Little Blue. Half an hour and two new lightning ball holes in the lab later, Little Blue had finally calmed down and just quietly climbed up to James shoulder and started snoozing.

    The group sat down to discuss their futures in more depth and just as they were finishing their discussion Anvil and Song stopped by. Before now, it wasn¡¯t particularly appropriate for Elders to visit on lowly disciples but now despite having hardly any cultivation they could be considered esteemed allies and guests. This meant the Elder duo could come and explore their lab a little as they discussed in more detail the Hall of Forging and Dark Brotherhood¡¯s collaboration.

    ¡°How¡¯s preparations to create a seal? Have you created a design yet?¡±

    Song was the first to ask anything, mostly because Anvil, whom normally was so excited, was somewhat dazed. Skay¡¯s lab had a variety of obscure test equipment assembled on the fly that looked hardly safe or operational despite their lights glowing showing readiness to melt, cut, mix or destroy some material, plant, cute harmless creature or person.

    Skay could be considered particularly careful for a madman, as almost every corner of his lab contained a hot glowing pit with the words ¡°Caution: test subject disposal¡± scrawled above them in something suspiciously red, very much resembling blood and written with a person¡¯s bare hands.

    James too questioned this when he first saw it but after Skay side-tracked, distracted from or completely ignored his questions on it James stopped asking. Occasionally he thought he heard Skay mumbling ¡°just like soul experiment zero zero one¡± whenever something he¡¯d created, attacked him or exploded and he had to sweep it into a pit, or fight it in, which wasn¡¯t uncommon when he got into the Gau Clans herb garden and fed something he wasn¡¯t sure about to a creature he also wasn¡¯t sure about.

    This greedy and malicious zeal for science resulted in the gradual disappearance of all the other forest hoppers apart from Little Blue, whom James had prohibited Skay from touching without him present.

    James was the first to respond as he waved his hands in front of Anvil who appeared to have had a stroke and turned red like he was about to explode as he just watched the tesla coils on the wall jumping great arcs of electricity around the place. Normally Little Blue would play in there when everyone else was busy which no doubt would have resulted in Anvil¡¯s heart actually seizing had he witnessed it.

    ¡°Ahh ... Oh, yes we¡¯ve had some ideas, I think we¡¯ve decided on this though.¡± As he said that he handed a piece of paper with a rectangle about the length of a hand. In the middle of the rectangle was a very poorly drawn english number 7 encircled by an equally appalling drawn Ouroboros made of lightning. When Song looked it over he had a strange expression. Finally he couldn¡¯t contain himself and asked about the significance of the odd ruin and the snake.

    ¡°On our previous world this was the number 7. In the folk lore of a certain religion it described 7 major sins. They were pride, gluttony, lust, sloth, envy, greed and wrath. There were also 7 major virtues which I can¡¯t remember for the life of me. Can¡¯t imagine why. Anyway, we intend for our guild to eventually contain 7 core members denoting these aspects. It¡¯s my belief that in this world these sins reflect the true power and driving will of all cultivators. Err ... And the snake eating its own tail is an Ouroboros and is a sign of infinity. Meaning these 7 sins will always exist for as long as time runs forwards. It¡¯s made of lightning because I¡¯m the founder and that¡¯s my most proficient element.¡±

    Anvil finally woke up from his daze and was once again hit with a bombshell. ¡°Wait! Lightning? You mean you have more than one element?¡±

    James gave a nod as he and Jessy began to make some tea. Skay looked to be amusing himself over at a work bench with a whole bunch of random glowing herbs or strange plants.

    The numerous glowing substances he¡¯d poured into Harvy a few days ago appeared to have multiplied now and whenever the lights in the lab were off this workbench shined with a rainbow of colours.

    ¡°Tea?¡± Jessy asked the Elders. Song and Anvil both gave a nod. James sat down on a chair they¡¯d flogged from the mansion somewhere. ¡°So how does this seal creation work? You said you needed me to create a design and also need me present to forge it?¡±

    Song and Anvil were still processing their shock at a double wind/lightning element. They both were now somewhat more accepting of letting the steppers go in their hearts. They could never contain James here, it would be a true waste of his talent. To assist someone so talented will only help their clan in the distant future.

    Not to mention this lab. If this was what they¡¯d set up in what... 6 days? Then what would they have created in 6 years or 600 years? They didn¡¯t realise that a great deal of this equipment was the debris they hauled back from the Gateway site.

    Actually, they could barely tell what half of it did but the magnitude of such a scene was still enough to slow there motions. As people who created magic artefacts and weapons they could tell this equipment wasn¡¯t just here for show.

    ¡°Elders?¡± When he saw them both in deep thought, he grew a bit worried. ¡®They aren¡¯t planning on reneging on their words and forcing us into submission just because I revealed double elements are they?¡¯

    ¡°Ahh. Oh yes, sorry. I¡¯m just surprised. Double elements are rare. Even in our entire empire there may only be a small elite group of other double affinity cultivators. You truly were destined for greater things than our little Gau city. We just hope you remember our oaths and kindness should the time ever come that we must call on you.¡± Song let out a sigh when James called out.

    ¡°Oh and the seal. Hmmm ... Well let¡¯s say that your soul is necessary for the creation of the seal. Essentially the material used to create it comes from a fairly rare beast known as the One Heart beast. By carving your seal from it¡¯s horn and mixing its blood with your fresh blood, along with holding the seal, then you can bond your soul to it and by extension bonding your soul to whatever it represents.

    ¡°That¡¯s why, guild masters, sect leaders or clan heads generally remain in that position for life. When you swear in guild members they will be swearing to the seal and not yourself. Even when you¡¯re not nearby, if someone makes an oath to your guild in front of someone from your guild, you will know. This is actually one of the most complicated artefacts we can create and it requires hundreds of intricately carved array patterns. There¡¯s actually quite a number of different seals and ways to make them, but we only can only produce this one.¡±

    At the mention of something interesting he¡¯d never heard of Skay perked up from whatever he was working on. At the same moment he poured a little too much of something labelled as ¡®unknown 15¡¯ onto a little vine that had been sitting in a pot. The moment he realised his lapse, it was already too late as the vine rapidly grew out from the pot and started whipping violently around.

    Skay was struck back and Harvy and Jessy had already run to a wall with a rack of shovels and machetes labelled ¡®lab accident fixer¡¯. Harvy collected a weapon and ran towards the vine but Jessy had already leapt through the air like a barbarian women and slashed off a dirty great vine.

    Harvy then joined in to start hacking away until the plant couldn¡¯t keep growing at the rate they were dismembering its limbs. Once it only had a few feet left on a handful of vines, Jessy launched forward and gave the pot an excellent 3 point kick and it shot towards a furnace pit in the corner.

    For the whole ordeal, Song and Anvil just stared dumb founded while James calmly poured their tea. Never in their few hundred years of life had they seen someone able to aggravate a Soft Vine to such an extent it tried to kill something.

    The whole scene of Jessy and Harvy¡¯s practised execution of said normally harmless spirit plant led the two Elders to question just what sorts of abnormal things they¡¯d been creating in the little lab. If it was anything like this they may need to be slightly more apprehensive about letting them set up a lab in the inner city.

    After this whole incident, Skay climbed back up off the ground, gave his lab coat a few pats and straightened himself up. Then pulled a chair over and poured himself some tea, like that whole thing was just an everyday occurrence here and nothing to be concerned about. Finally he asked. ¡°What are these array patterns exactly?¡±

    Anvil finally started and awoke, then with a wry smile at what he¡¯d just witnessed he explained. ¡°By now you should be aware that spirit energy is everywhere and in everything. Array patterns are a means to harness the spirit energy of the world into a confined area and is usually used as a means for advanced law manipulation. The monolith for example, is covered in obscure array patterns that no one can understand and all attempts to alter or study the monoliths have ended in failure. A long time ago a group wanted to try and build more to cover the eastern continent that is widely considered barbaric because it¡¯s never had any monoliths and the majority of people living there are from sects or clans that don¡¯t speak common.

    ¡°Haah ... But I have digressed. Essentially array patterns are a means to channel spirit energy for very particular uses. Because they¡¯re ancient and not wide spread, meeting someone skilled with them is rare and it¡¯s even more rare to meet one that would want to pass their knowledge on to anyone. The seal is only a lower level array magic and our clan only won it through auction in the Empire¡¯s capital.¡±

    Skay and James we¡¯re both lost in thought until Skay looked at James and then James looked at Jessy. Jessy was confused for a moment when everyone started looking at her. When James gave a nod towards the Elder pair to suggest something, she cottoned on.

    ¡°Ahhh ... I see, well ... Um if these array patterns are so rare what would it take to trade for all your knowledge on them. Let¡¯s throw a ballpark figure out and offer you...¡± Jessy looked around the lab for a second then she thought for a moment. ¡°If we offer to sell you the means to create electricity ... Ahh, artificial lightning. We won¡¯t sell a method but a device. If you can reverse engineer it then more power to you. What do you say?¡±

    James and Skay were both satisfied with this. It was an eventuality that they would trade them something like this for resources later. The fact that it was sooner rather than later didn¡¯t bother them. They had an entire world of more advanced technology they could create and sell to the Gau Clan. Actually they were quite pleased with Jessy, they were both thinking of selling the broken arc cannon for them to play with, even if they didn¡¯t particularly want to. They never even considered starting lower than that, such was their terrible negotiating ability.

    Anvil and Song both looked at each other having a sub-vocal chat. Song started off. ¡°It¡¯s a very tempting offer. We only have a few dozen lessor patterns we understand anyway. The clan ancestor was the only one who really knew what any of the other patterns did, or had the knowledge to use them.¡±

    Anvil thought silently for a moment then replied. ¡°I agree. We know they don¡¯t intend to step into any of our business so it wouldn¡¯t hurt to let them see our research knowledge. Like you said, even we can¡¯t explain the older arrays we have. What if we have them share anything they discover from looking them over? That way we get a lightning device and can learn anything new they learn about them.¡±

    Song turned to Jessy with his ever present slight smile and gave a nod. ¡°We accept, however we have an extra condition. Anything new you learn from your research we¡¯d like shared with us.¡±

    Jessy quickly agreed with these terms. They then discussed other future co-operation between the guild and the clan. Once the tea was cold James agreed to go with them tomorrow to the Hall of Forging then once the seal was complete they would have a signing ceremony.

    Once the Elders left, James turned to Skay. ¡°Old Madman, how much longer do you need for the breathing techniques?¡±

    Skay scratched his head then went to a computer and began typing. ¡°It¡¯s actually even more difficult than I thought. From discussions I¡¯ve had with cultivators in this universe the breathing techniques aren¡¯t even about a pattern of breathing, but a method of channelling the flow of refined spirit energy through the body in a set pattern then having it return to your spirit realm. They envision their spirit realm in their Dantian, just above the waste. When they discuss a breathing technique they¡¯re not discussing your lungs breathing but the spirit realm in their Dantian breathing out spirit energy into your body and breathing it back in along with primal spirit energy.¡±

    Skay started to madden as he slapped the bench. ¡°They follow some fucking superstitious ancient Chinese mumbo jumbo bullshit about following fucking meridians and breaking through bloody acupuncture points, which just makes it all the more difficult to discern how exactly their stupid fucking breathing pattern and their piece of crap spirit energy path is effecting their control.¡±

    Skay then started getting rather riled up and swearing about meridians and Chinese acupuncture. After a solid ten minutes of swearing he calmed down enough for James to understand him again, at which point he questioned. ¡°So explain to me why this is making it so difficult. Can¡¯t we just design a system that utilizes every ahhm ... Meridian path? and just create a generalised breathing technique?¡±

    Skay took off his glasses to wipe them and then pressed a button on the computer allowing it to resume spewing out continuous random drivel across the screen. Once he¡¯d finished he put his glasses back on and repositioned his Spider Eyes then sat down. After signalling Harvy to make some new tea he continued.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    ¡°My boy, it¡¯s not so simple as that. Meridians as they call them, are an imagined system the ancient Chinese used to try and describe the flow of life energy or some such crap through a person¡¯s body. It has no bases in real medical science therefore we have no way to speed up the computation as we did with our universal meditation technique by using information on meditation from our universe. Apparently just flooding your body with spirit energy and trying to recall it into your spirit realm has the least effectiveness and is almost pointless. We have no way to fucking measure it or discern what exactly it¡¯s doing or how in the fuck it¡¯s doing it when it runs around inside you!¡±

    At this point Harvy poured fresh tea for Skay and James sat down to enjoy a cup as he began to consider this problem. Jessy who was also somewhat interested sat down to discover what she could about the one piece they were missing from their cultivation. As she began to think about the problem, she asked a question to herself aloud. ¡°I wonder what other cultivators with rare elements do at this stage. Surely breathing techniques must have come from somewhere?¡±

    Skay clicked his tongue. ¡°Not just a pretty face after all. Your right, I was also curious and was told by Hao that normally at later stages in cultivation a person develops their own breathing technique and meditation techniques. In fact they often begin developing their own martial techniques well before then. He couldn¡¯t say what other rare element users did in their early stages though, because he¡¯s never met one.¡±

    James frowned slightly. ¡°How do they develop their own? If they can¡¯t accurately measure its effect, do they just randomly pass their spirit energy through millions of different patterns until it feels like it¡¯s doing what they want it to do?¡±

    Skay nodded. ¡°Most likely that¡¯s exactly what they do. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if these savages just sit around for hundreds of years meditating in different ways, to try and develop meditation techniques.¡±

    James shook his head. ¡°Well I don¡¯t want to wait around hundreds of years to try and find something that works. Old madman what if we measured brain activity while trying different patterns?¡±

    Skay lifted an enquiring eyebrow and gave James a look suggesting he explain his thoughts.

    ¡°When we measured Harvy during his breakthrough to True Spirit Realm, his beta brain waves which are his consciousness leapt up to match his alpha waves. Which is the gateway subconscious we call our spirit realm. If these two levels are feeding and matching each other at true spirit realm then most likely increasing one will increase the other. Your meditation technique, for an example, allows you to enter your spirit realm and increases the brain power of your spirit realm, or rather your alpha waves.

    ¡°I recken your meditation technique and breathing technique essentially do the same thing, but in different ways. Perhaps the flow in which your spirit energy takes is like muscle control for your spirit realm. The more you practise with it the better it gets, which is how it increases your ability to control it. Maybe the more complicated a pattern we can make with it and consciously repeat, the more it learns to properly control spirit energy outside of the spirit realm.

    ¡°It makes me question though, why does each element have different techniques for meditation and breathing? You¡¯ve said meditation techniques are filled with specific knowledge that a cultivator tries to learn to help understand their law. Since we don¡¯t need that, the meditation techniques could be simplified by your computer to a level that just allows us to enter our spirit realm. When we¡¯re in that state we naturally have high alpha brain waves which is why we can draw primal energy in and control spirit energy more easily. On the other hand, breathing techniques have no such laws, so maybe they¡¯re specific to an element for some other reason?¡±

    James took a brief moment to stop and sip his tea before continuing. He was actually rather surprised at his ability to articulate his thoughts on the subject and could only assume it was the assistance of his spirit realm with his conscious minds operation. After this distraction he continued.

    ¡°As a side note, when I envision a part of my body being empowered or spirit energy flowing out of my body it just appears there. It doesn¡¯t flow from anywhere and after arriving just ... I guess dissipates once I stop thinking about it. I don¡¯t have a place it comes from because I think of the spirit realm as an intangible, imagined place and so spirit energy isn¡¯t limited in how it comes or goes in my body and just does whatever the fuck it likes to achieve the goal I¡¯ve set for it. Like making my arm faster or my perception faster it just appears in my arm or brain then just as quickly disappears.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes widened somewhat. ¡°Oh? ... Oh! Hahaha I¡¯ve been a fucking idiot! Since I asked Hao I¡¯ve been envisioning it coming from this Dantian place. To think I¡¯d allow some superstitious nonsense from these hicks to limit myself! Boy do you realise this changes everything? We¡¯ll have to develop our own techniques anyway. Because if we envision it this way, it¡¯s not limited to flowing through a certain path. Instead we will have to develop a method in which it appears and disappears in a certain way.¡±

    Skay jumped up spilling his tea across the table and ran to his computer. ¡°You know what the most difficult thing in creating a breathing technique was for multiple elements? It¡¯s limited by the number of elements you can control at one time. If you want it to cycle through a set pattern in your body you have to cycle them one at a time and the effects it produces are limited significantly. If we use your method of envisioning our spirit realm, we can create a pattern that almost instantly cycles through your elements, increasing the effect of ¡®breathing¡¯. The only thing is ... How does it return to mirror the act of breathing?¡±

    James closed his eyes for a moment and controlled his spirit power to pump into only a finger on his hand. Instead of just forgetting about it and letting it dissipate he instead tried to command it to return to his spirit realm. After a moment of his mind trying to process a new sensation he felt his energy return to his spirit realm. Not only that, he could intuitively sense that for a brief instant his rate of refinement jumped slightly.

    When he opened his eyes he saw everyone else doing the same thing. The first person to open his eyes was Harvy who had a deranged fanatical expression. ¡°Truly the Great Evil Overlord. Your methods are beyond my understanding but this envisioning without a spirit realm is truly godlike. I feel no delay in my spirit energy control now, as if no longer being limited by my meridians and unbroken acupuncture points.¡±

    Jessy looked like she hadn¡¯t experienced anything particular spectacular, as she just opened her eyes calmly and drank some tea. Clearly she was much like James in that she didn¡¯t envision spirit power coming from anywhere and it always just appeared.

    Skay finally opened his eyes with a strange gleam. Then instead of typing further he sat down heavily. He gave James a peculiar look. ¡°Boy I wouldn¡¯t hate a chance to figure out how your brain ticks. Why not donate your brain to science should you ever meet an accident?¡±

    James could tell the old madman was being serious and his face became stone. He then turned to Jessy. ¡°Jessy, I¡¯ll help you unlock another element on the condition that should I ever die, you will cremate me immediately!¡±

    To James their little side project with Jessy was less important than himself. If that madman got a hold of his corpse then it would be no small certainty that Skay would find some way to raise him from the dead. James simply couldn¡¯t let that come to pass. The last thing he wanted was to become another Harvy, or worse than whatever Harvy currently is.

    Jessy¡¯s eyes widened when she heard James mention getting a new element. She was so excited at the prospect she could barely contain herself. Although she¡¯d come her current spirit energy as a part of her she was so excited she didn¡¯t even think to look into the possibility that James knew for quite a while how to unlock other elements.

    After a brief moment of explaining their theory on how unlocking new elements was dependant only on how you envision your energy, Jessy had unlocked water element without even needing the stick. Her water wasn¡¯t a calm flowing water like many cultivators envisioned the laws of water, instead hers was violent and acted like it was under absurd levels of pressure. Being a hydraulic fitter, that was the state of liquid she was most familiar with. That wasn¡¯t to say she couldn¡¯t control it like flowing water but rather she preferred it as she¡¯d first envisioned it.

    Before she even mentioned gaining more, James stepped in to stop her. ¡°We don¡¯t know the effects of accumulating multiple elements yet. I should warn you that I have three elements and I already feel somewhat more restrained when I try to control them in my spirit realm. I get the feeling that there may be a limit to the number your subconscious mind can assist you to support.

    ¡°Also since Harvy can¡¯t unlock new elements now, we¡¯re convinced that they can only be unlocked at the spirit barrier realm. We intended to unlock more earlier but I¡¯m now glad circumstances limited us in the sense that we now understand it may be dangerous. Perhaps it¡¯s only because I lack the control yet to sustain three elements but I feel we need to wait and do some tests before we try and gather more than three.¡±

    He then stood up and walked towards the operating table. ¡°Old madman hook me up to your brain scanner. I want to try something.¡±

    As Skay¡¯s eyes lit up with a mad light James added another sentence that crushed any weird ideas he may have been building up to trying. ¡°Old goat, if you try to stick anything into me I¡¯ll let you play with Little Blue next time he gets bored.¡±

    ¡°Humph! Can¡¯t handle real science!¡± Grumped Skay as he placed a mesh helmet on James then flicked the monitor on. It had 4 wavy lines and one flat line.

    James watched the monitor as he flooded his body with lightning element. Then wind and finally plasma. He didn¡¯t use plasma much because it made his nerves feel like they were on fire so he avoided practicing with it like he did with the other two.

    Each time he released a different spirit energy, the magnitude of his alpha and beta waves jumped around, interestingly the greatest reaction came from his Plasma element and not his lightning element like he¡¯d expected.

    He then briefly entered his spirit realm, then jumped back out after thirty seconds. He didn¡¯t trust his body in meditation to be left too long in the same room as Skay, lest the madman get any strange ideas. When he jumped back to his body he noticed that his alpha and beta brain waves had momentarily leapt up almost triple of what they had when just empowering his body.

    He began to randomly send spirit energy from each element to different areas of the body and pull any unused energy back to his spirit realm. After cycling through his elements and different parts of the body he looked at the lines showing his conscious mind and spirit realm. He noted that generally they both flared in magnitude when using spirit power and that occasionally his beta waves would jump to almost the same magnitude as his alphas.

    ¡°Old madman. Is there a way to see the difference in average magnitude before and after I¡¯ve practiced breathing? I suspect it will have to be accurate down to at least ten decimals.¡±

    Skay moved to his computer then started typing. After a brief moment he looked at James with an excited expression. ¡°Boy, it looks like you¡¯re onto something. The magnitude of activity after your playing around has increased by a tiny fraction. With this equipment I can only measure to 7 decimals but that whole moment of ¡®breathing¡¯ has increased you activity by one one-millionth.¡±

    Jessy had a confused expression. ¡°Why do you sound so excited? One one-millionth is like... 6 decimal places right? That¡¯s nothing.¡±

    James grinned slightly. ¡°It may seem like nothing, but consider this. That¡¯s one one-millionth in what, 2 minutes of playing around? If we could make a proper technique it may be dramatically higher. But the main point is that there¡¯s 1440 minutes in a day. If we sleep for six hours that¡¯s err... 1080 minutes left. Now consider how long these people cultivate for. Harvy¡¯s the same age as me and has only just entered the true spirit realm with 9 years and a great deal of hardshhh ... Lets call it assistance.

    ¡°Elder Gau¡¯s lived for hundreds of years in order to achieve the spirit palace realm. Imagine how many years of life a cultivator in a higher realm has lived. If we can increase our alpha wave strength by one one-millionth in 2 minutes then in a year we could achieve something like ahhh...¡±

    James cupped his chin a moment then Skay interrupted. ¡°Firstly its important to know that brainwave activity like this is measured in microvolts. Which is one one-millionth of a volt. Normally, alpha activity is between 20 and 200 microvolts. Beta activity on the other hand is generally measured between 5 and 10 microvolts. When Harvy stepped into true spirit realm, both his beta and alpha waves matched in magnitudes and increased to nearly the limit of this measurement at just short of 200.

    ¡°I¡¯m actually surprised the brains of cultivators don¡¯t explode from heat. I can only assume that at that level your subconscious is protecting your brain by using spirit energy as some kind of insulation or cooling. Regardless of why it doesn¡¯t kill you, the fact remains that over a hundred years this level can be raised by double the level at which we normally measure it. Once again that assumes the increase remains constant. That means you¡¯ll be measuring alpha and beta brain waves between 200 and 600 micro volts by that time.¡±

    James gave a nod. ¡°Precisely. It may not be much for short term but if you can train yourself to do it even when your not thinking about it ... Like breathing, then you could essentially raise your level of control dramatically. From what we know, I suspect that moment of enlightenment Harvy had when merging with his true spirit is actually his spirit realm trying to teach his conscious mind how it controls spirit energy. This way not only is the conscious mind controlling spirit energy but it¡¯s still gaining assistance from the spirit realm. Harvy, when you merged with your true spirit describe again what it was like.¡±

    Harvy thought for a moment then replied to his dark lord¡¯s commands. ¡°Master it felt like I grew to understand more than I ever had in my life. Like all the questions I¡¯ve ever had became clear but at the same time, although my control became stronger, I don¡¯t think about it any more than I did before and I haven¡¯t learnt exactly how spirit energy is controlled.¡±

    James thought to himself for a bit. ¡°Perhaps I¡¯m wrong? I had assumed that the magnitude of the brainwaves on the conscious level had increased but perhaps it was the operation of the spirit level increasing in frequency to the same level as the conscious mind?¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes brightened somewhat and he voiced his rapidly forming thoughts. ¡°Boy that¡¯s not a wrong assumption. This equipment is vary roughly constructed and can¡¯t measure to the depth that it can differentiate parts of the brain. Perhaps the spikes we see showing both frequencies having higher magnitude isn¡¯t because the brain waves of the conscious mind are increasing in magnitude. It¡¯s more likely the brain waves of the spirit realm have increased in frequency. It¡¯s surely computing thousands of things in order to assist in the control of spirit energy.¡±

    Jessy had once again been mostly lost by the conversation and looked to James who appeared to have just had an epiphany of some sort. After the short time since they¡¯d explained how to gain a new element she¡¯d come to the realisation that James most likely new how she could escape her current element back since he discovered the wind element.

    Instead of exploding she decided to just hold onto it till she needed it. She was now somewhat invested in the discussion because it was about how cultivation worked. ¡°James not all of us have such a disturbed mind as you two. Could you help me understand exactly what your talking about?¡±

    James pulled the mesh helmet off and while in his usual thinking pose sat back down. ¡°Well, hmmm, how do I explain this to the challenged individuals? Ah, okay, so basically you don¡¯t need to worry about the brain waves and such, just consider it this way. Your thoughts and stuff like when you think about sex, which no doubt is endlessly, or when you try to encourage your spirit power to do something are all done by your conscious mind. However it can¡¯t handle certain things, like all the movements you need to take to throw a ball. It only tells your body to do it. Your subconscious then goes and calculates all that nonsense like bending the arm, holding the fingers together and so on.

    ¡°Basically what we¡¯ve been discussing is that when you tell your spirit energy to do something your subconscious or rather the part between your conscious and subconscious which is your spirit realm, is jumping in to do all that boring calculating stuff. When you reach true spirit realm it¡¯s constantly doing it. Probably because if it stops it¡¯ll be engulfed by the tidal wave of your spirit energy. All you need to understand though is that the boss part of your brain sais ¡°do this¡± with your spirit energy and your subservient part which is your spirit realm goes ¡°yes sir!¡±

    Finished with his childishly demeaning explanation he took his cup of tea and had a sip. Jessy looked mad, but if she was being realistic it was easier to understand this way. Those two oddities that seemed to live for this stuff could worry about the boring things as long as they simplified for her. Every time James was a dick, she just added another mental note and patiently waited for an opportunity to make him suffer. That was the cycle of karma after all. After a deep breath she just smiled sweetly which made James slightly worried, normally she¡¯d have reacted to his goading by now.

 Chapter 16: The Guild Hall

    The Hall of Forging was a massive underground structure. If James didn¡¯t know better he¡¯d think it belonged to some dwarfish race. It spread out over nearly a kilometre underground and hundreds of ventilation stacks channelled through the underground back to the chimneys in the circle courtyard up on the surface.

    The stone halls and walls were all lit by odd spirit stones, spread out evenly and letting off a humble glow not dissimilar to incandescent bulbs.

    Little green stones sat on the ventilation shafts running across the roof presumably as some sort of wind stone pushing air flow out through the chimneys or pulling fresh air down to the underground.

    Skay and James were both quite impressed as Anvil led them through the halls to a large room with a huge glowing furnace in the corner. On the wall was an assortment of tools and odd equipment along with a massive anvil and sledge hammer next to the furnace. Along with the multitude of work benches and other generalised smithy stuff and apart from being fully enclosed underground it truly looked like a mystical fantasy smith where someone would forge a sword of the gods or some such thing.

    Anvil led our morally twisted duo towards an elderly man in grey robes tapping away on a little bone white rectangle with a tiny hammer and a little metal pin. Whenever he lifted the pin to blow away dust his hand shook like he had Parkinson¡¯s disease but the moment he focused back in on the seal his hand was as solid as the stone floor.

    As the group approached the old man lofted the pin one last time and dusted of his workmanship.

    In his hand he held the splitting image of James design. In fact it was such a perfect replica he somewhat felt dissatisfied with the man¡¯s artistry. This was because James was an absolutely horrible drawer. The 7 looked like it had been made with putty and squeezed out through someone hands, the Ouroboros looked like it couldn¡¯t quite decide if it was going in a circle or oval and was even more lumpy and squiggly than the 7. The lightning it was made of looked like oddly shaped noodles and only looked like lightning from a long, long distance.

    On the back however it was carved in intricately carved and masterfully cut patterns that overlapped and intersected everywhere, covering almost every bit of space. When they arrived in front of the man appraising his work he gave it to anvil patted his apron off and gave a bow before taking his leave.

    James peered over anvils shoulder at his new seal. ¡°I take it that¡¯s our seal?¡±

    Anvil gave a nod as he ran his hand over it checking the patterns in the back. ¡°Yes this is your seal. It looks ahhh ... Unique.¡±

    ¡°Oi. I thought he¡¯d spruce it up a bit when he inscribed it. Will it affect the seal if we re-cut the face of it?¡±

    Anvil gave a shake of the head. ¡°It should be fine as long as you don¡¯t effect the array patterns.¡±

    Anvil walked over to a cupboard and pulled out a jar with a red viscous liquid. He then pulled James over to a strange circle painted on the stone floor and handed him a knife. ¡°Now then, just make a cut on your hand, hold your seal with it and as I poor the one heart beast blood onto the seal and hand the array circle your standing in will tie your guild seal and your soul together.¡±

    James was dubious about this whole thing, but he doubted they¡¯d go to so much trouble just to entrap him. With that thought he reached out and cut his hand, placed the seal in it and watched as Anvil pored the blood onto his hand. At first nothing interesting happened and the blood just began pooling on the floor. James was just about to ask, when the array circle he stood in lit up like a flare bathing the room in light.

    Following this sudden change, James felt his hand burning like he was holding a blazing hot iron rod. The pain grew more intense until he could hardly move his body and dropped to his knees panting and screaming into the air.

    Once the light began to dim he saw the last of the blood that had dribbled over his hand pouring into his cut like the blood flow had reversed and was being sucked in. The once bone white seal was now the colour of red blood and after all the blood finished it¡¯s reverse flow, the seal gave an intense flash and the room had returned to normal.

    James looked at his hand and the rapidly closing cut. Then at the blood red seal. After closing his eyes his seal disappeared from his hand and appeared in his spirit realm, just floating around weightlessly. After opening his eyes again a smile split his face. He could sense his seal like a part of himself and more than that he could sense it already had an oath sworn to it. When he investigated this sensation he felt the oath Harvy had made earlier.

    James brow furrowed slightly. ¡®I thought they said that oaths to a group like the one we plan to make needs a seal. I wonder why Harvy¡¯s previous oath to the dark brotherhood is here as well. Even more odd ... It feels like, I just know that Harvy is currently alive. I don¡¯t even know how I know. Is that because he swore his life to the brotherhood?¡±

    After thinking about it for a short time he decided not to pursue it too much. If he¡¯d been duped he wouldn¡¯t know about it until later on anyway.

    Once James managed to climb to his feet and wipe the sweat from his face, Anvil showed them around the hall for a few more hours. When they visited the materials storage, Skay and James nearly couldn¡¯t contain themselves, as they both pulled out a black pad and started noting things down that they particularly found interesting, which amusingly was almost everything.

    Anvil had to force them out because they started trying to start assembling something from old parts and odd materials even he wasn¡¯t certain about. ¡°Just a little fusion reactor...¡± Skay complained as they were escorted out.

    Once leaving they returned to the mansion where James consumed a few fruits and a colourful tonic Skay had prepared called 616. Although he wasn¡¯t quite at the half barrier realm he obviously had enough spirit energy to swear an oath after testing a simple oath like ¡°I swear an oath to pass this cup of water to Harvy.¡±

    -Gau Clan¡¯s Main Hall-

    In the main hall sat the leaders of both parties, Hao and James, facing each other. Behind them sat their subordinates, the 4 Elders behind Hao and Jessy, Skay and Harvy behind James.

    Both parties swore an oath of mutual defence and trade along with some other odds and ends they worked out beforehand. In the end, their two oaths encompassed a number of things.

    The oath of mutual defence consisted of:

    The Gau Clan swears to protect the Dark Brotherhood until such time as they can defend themselves and to a mutual defence pact thereafter.

    The Brotherhood swears to assist the Gau Clan in times of need if they have the power to do so.

    The Clan and Brotherhood will serve to assist each other in growing stronger through joint training exercises and instruction for anyone under the spirit realm.

    After the Brotherhood reaches the spirit realm they will assist in disciple missions, like resource gathering and beast clearing.

    Any beast materials or extra materials gathered by Brotherhood members will be kept by the brotherhood.

    This pact is inclusive of all members of both parties now and in the future.

    The trade pact contained a little more being the thing both parties were most interested in.

    The Brotherhood swears to sell no weapons plans or completed weaponry to anyone other than the Gau Clan or the Empire itself within the Kantsu Region of which Gau city is a part of.

    The Gau Clan swears to not step in and attempt any oversight of the Brotherhood in Gau City provided they don¡¯t endanger public security. (This came about after the Elders visit to the laboratory.)

    The Brotherhood¡¯s trading of resources in Gau City are exempt from Tax including designs and artefacts the Gau Clan hasn¡¯t paid to reserve the rights to.

    The Gau Clan has the right of first bid on any artefact or design developed by the Brotherhood in Gau City for the purposes of sale to other parties.

    The Gau Clan has the right to purchase the ¡®Reserved from Sale¡¯ status of certain designs and artefacts provided they fall within a set area that would directly affect the Gau Clans production and sales.

    All deals are to be conducted fairly and transparently between the Clan and the Brotherhood. Any offenders breaking this rule will be tried and executed by a joint counsel of both parties.

    The Guild is free to produce and sell any item they wish to anyone on any scale provided they follow all prior rules of this trade agreement.

    The Clan and Guild are free to share and corroborate information and techniques in regards to the matters of trade and crafting but not required.

    Apart from the main body of their alliance there was also a number of small oddities such as limitations towards whom the Brotherhood could recruit. For example the close descendant of a rival faction in the city would only be allowed to join provided they swear an oath of absolute allegiance. The only other condition of note was that after 10 years the alliance would be tabled for fresh discussion and renegotiation from both parties.

    This was to prevent other powers trying to gain a foothold within the Brotherhood and using its alliance with the Gau Clan to strike the clan a blow. Although some people in the Gau Clan party, Elder Jeng most notably, tried to weasel in some more unfavorable terms for the Brotherhood, Jessy was quick to dismiss them.

    Jessy was the main mouth piece during the drafting of the alliance and James would simply lean back to discuss some thoughts with her now and then. Both James and Skay had vastly underestimated her ability to do business and it was one of the first things they discussed with her the next day after the celebrations for the treaty were signed and sworn to.

    As they sat in the lab nursing hang overs James finally shot a question to Jessy. ¡°Jess, you¡¯re unexpectedly rather skilled in business. Did you do some sort of business studies before you became a fitter?¡±

    Jessy, who¡¯d been lying sprawled out over a desk rolled to a sitting position. ¡°Quite right James. I actually owned my own contractor company before the end of the world you know. It was only because this was such a high end job that I personally took on the contract to come out to the sea lab. Actually, both my parents ran a corporation when I was little and dragged me around half the world to their discussions and meetings.¡±

    Jessy let out a long sigh at the thought of her parents. Although they were always busy and rarely had time for their little girl, Jessy still missed them. The fact the dragged her to all their meetings after she turned 15 was undoubtedly an attempt on their part to prepare her for the world they expected her to eventually join. To say they were disappointed when she took some filthy commoners job would be an understatement.

    After that moment of reflection Jessy came back to the present. ¡°I may not be as knowledgeable as the two of you in your science stuff but I¡¯m prepared to boast that I¡¯m leagues ahead in the world of business.¡±

    James grew a crooked smile and after a chuckle gave a strong nod. ¡°Good, that means you will now be our Business Manager or err ... What would that be in a guild? Well it doesn¡¯t matter. We will be creating our guild from the ground up so we can create the structure as we go. Actually, now I think about it. Perhaps we should create a framework and a guild charter or something...¡±

    ¡°Lady of Lust.¡± Jessy threw out.

    James eyebrow lifted as he looked at Jessy confused. ¡°Huh?¡±

    Jessy gave an exacerbated sigh as if talking to a child then said. ¡°You said earlier that you wanted your 7 core members to represent the seven sins. So what does it matter what our jobs are for now, eventually we will be known as our sin. If I beat the crowds now I can coin my own moniker, instead of becoming known by people as The Tart, or Jessy the Slut. As long as we know what our duties are, what does it matter what we title ourselves as? Like you said we¡¯re creating a whole new faction in this world and can call ourselves whatever we want.¡±

    James cupped his chin and thought for a while. ¡°Fine, sounds good actually. I like it. Regardless of your title, you will be in charge of our business in Gau City for the time being. I¡¯ve no doubt that we will eventually run into someone we can call Greed that has the capacity to take that burden from you. Until then for the next few days you will need to take Harvy and scout out the city. We need a building with plenty of room and in a busy area to attract members. From what I understand the Builders Guild is full of cultivators and building things is rather quick for them, so even if you get a plot of land or some old building and have something built that would be fine too. When you need to trade for money try to go to the Clan first. We just chartered our trade alliance and it would be a good chance to show that we plan to keep them as our top priority in trade.¡±

    After another hour of discussion and after Skay and James had decided on what they needed for an acceptable workshop Jessy left to make some enquires and hunt down some land in the city.

    -Ten Days-

    For the next ten or so days, things were slow and steady with no massive upheavals in the city. Jessy arranged a plot of land not too distant from the Hall of Forging and the Builders Guild accepted the job request in exchange for a number of interesting things thrown together in the lab, from building designs to construction methods and even something Skay had termed Ultimate Cement, which he accidentally created in one of his bizarre lab accidents. Strangely his accidents seemed to be growing disturbingly frequent the more he played with things from this world.

    Surprisingly, the Builders Guild only took a few days to construct a building that was designed by James and Skay. They even helped to dig out the underground area which reached nearly 80 meters below surface level. If not for the assistance of some True Spirit Realm cultivators with earth affinity, which could compress soil and stone to an unimaginable degree, then the surface would long since have collapsed in.

    After the building was established the trio spent a day watching Harvy slowly packing everything from their borrowed lab and moving it to their new lab.

    On the surface the new lab was actually a very normal two story Guild Hall with the cleaned up crest of the Dark Brotherhood carved into the door. It was situated in the corner of a large circular plaza spanning nearly 600 meters in diameter with a fountain in the middle. It was the second busiest and most traveled market in the city. The hall was in a rather sought after location and they only managed to snag it because the previous owner was a member of the Gau Clan.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

    The first level underground looked like a battle arena around 200 meters in diameter, which would be used for training and sparring. In the foyer of the Guild Hall was a strange metal room with magic doors that opened and closed when you pressed a button on the wall. If you stepped into it, the metal room had two other buttons shaped like arrows to go up or down. Apart from this there was a pad with a number of strange symbols that no one could recognize apart from the one that resembled the ruin carved on the guilds crest.

    Apart from Harvy and the trio, no one knew what this panel was supposed to do. Inside the monolith¡¯s range even the stepper trio couldn¡¯t fully recognise the numbers from 0 to 9 but they understood how the keypad was normally arranged. In fact, when they drew these numbers they had to enter the Endless forest and leave the monoliths range just to remember their own language, much the same as James had to do when he drew the 7 for his seal.

    The ground floor was arranged with the foyer in front that had the elevator off to one side looking rather ominous. Along the same wall was a reception/service desk, leaving the rest of the foyer with just some nice plants and wallpaper along with short wide corridor that lead into a big main hall. Behind the reception desk was a door leading into a small storage area about 5 square meters that would eventually contain things they planned to sell to guild members.

    The main hall was smattered with chairs and tables with an ordering counter attached to the kitchen on the furthest wall from the entry. On the two adjacent walls were massive blank boards that spanned the entirety of the walls length. Both had ¡®JOBS¡¯ written on the top of them, but momentarily remained empty. In the corner of the room was a small stage should they ever have someone with any skill or for making speeches and what not.

    The upper floor of the guild hall was arranged to house the staff and had nearly 10 bedrooms, some stacked with bunks and a few rather nice ones. At the end of a long hallway, that looked far creepier than it should for a brand new building, was a huge set of double doors that led into the office of the Guildmaster.

    Adjoined to this office was the Guildmaster¡¯s quarters which at the moment were much to James style. Wide, roomy and adorned with rather rich tapestry, rugs and furniture, as well as a massive bed. This furniture and style was all arranged by Hao as a gift, much to James¡¯ consternation.

    If you were in the know, the elevators strange pad could be used to take you to lower levels. Underground level 2 for example, was the main lab and contained almost everything the old lab had plus some new things Skay had Jessy buy from the Hall of Forging. Every wall and corner was stacked with poorly repaired machinery, stacked boxes of half-finished projects and workbenches with computer screens or diagrams.

    In various places was a big red button next to hatch doors in the walls or floors, no label was necessary for these now because everyone who entered this lab would know what it was for or most likely quickly experience it. In the lab was also a number of small rooms arranged for various purposes along with a very special room filled with lightning arcs shooting everywhere and what appeared to be a doggy flap on the door.

    Level 3 was mostly only used by Skay as an alchemy laboratory. It had a number of odd books Skay had picked up from somewhere, discussing the uses and properties of herbs. There was also a multitude of odd machines Skay had thrown together or rescued from the Gateway incident, that even James could only guess the purpose of. It was also littered with a number of chemistry lab equipment from incubators to centrifuges. This lab was connected by a speedy little mini-elevator to the main lab so that Skay could just shoot between the two when he needed.

    Level 4 was a nursery for all of the odd plants and herbs Skay was trying to grow. According to others these herbs usually took anywhere from tens up to thousands of years to fully grow, because apparently their potency was generally dependent on how much spirit energy they could gather.

    Skay was convinced he could create an array that would draw in absurd levels of primal spirit energy to this area and insisted that eventually their guild building would become a primal spirit energy hotspot to assist cultivation. According to him that would be the best way to draw in ¡®fresh subjects¡¯, which James assumed was Skay¡¯s term for new guild members.

    Level 5 had a range of things from a generator that Skay and James had spent 2 days making with black-iron, which was absurdly powerful. There was also some air-conditioning, hot water systems and other basics. Their whole building had modern amenities. The majority of this stuff wasn¡¯t built or installed until after the construction of the building and so James and Skay got a number of odd looks from the Builders Guild when installing pipes and ducting leading down here where there was nothing.

    If you walked through the opposite side of the elevator on level 5 you¡¯d walk into an absolutely massive warehouse area. The purpose of which was to hoard and collect as many odd or valuable materials as possible for study and experimentation. It could also be used to store old projects or merchandise that they eventually wanted to be able to sell to members.

    After these few days of moving into the Dark Brotherhood¡¯s Guild Hall was officially complete, Harvy was ... sold, to the brotherhood for a few trinkets. Essentially though he was gifted to them by the Elders as a house warming present. Before the trio opened their doors they all sat down in the Guild Masters office on the top floor and began a discussion about the future of the guild and most importantly, their own futures.

    The trio sat at a marble stone table in the center of a large open room with some ornaments along the plain wooden paneled walled. From the size of it, one has to question how exactly they even got it up to the second floor. It wouldn¡¯t be a difficult guess though if anyone noticed Harvy¡¯s now dramatically more hunched back. Poor Harvy had spent almost half a day moving a massive chunk of marble up here then carving the table out of it with his spirit energy. James took great delight in pointing out any mistakes Harvy made during this process.

    James started their discussion as he placed a tea cup down on the table and savored his tea for a moment. ¡°I can¡¯t believe we¡¯ve only been here for less than a month. It feels so much longer. Actually, now I think about it the days feel dramatically longer. Old Madman, do you think our perception of time is somewhat altered here?¡±

    Skay was tapping away on his pad as he gave a grunt. ¡°Humph! You finally picked up on that huh? You¡¯re right though. Day¡¯s, hours and minutes are all twice as long as on earth. We only recognise it as a somewhat normal flow of time though because we¡¯ve been growing our spirit energy. I suspect normal mortals have just adapted from longer exposure to this planet. The only reason we think two days here is one 24 hour cycle is because of the monolith. You¡¯ll find that you recognise the day as 48 hours outside of its brain manipulating. Even the distances are different but we recognise them as meters or feet. You never noticed it but it took me half the time you were in a coma to figure out a way to teach the computers common instead of English.¡±

    James made a grimace. He added a visit to the monolith as his first priority once the guild was opened. He¡¯d never forgotten about it, but until now he¡¯d had no chance to visit it personally without someone nearby. Perhaps tonight he¡¯d go check it out. The idea that something was poking around in his head disturbed him to no end. Had it not been for certain reasons, he¡¯d have already fled the range of the monolith long ago. Especially now that he was somewhat free of the clan.

    After that quick though James jumped back to the present. ¡°Well that doesn¡¯t really matter, from what I understand once we develop our spirit power further our need for sleep will lesson dramatically. Even now I feel I can operate normally for at least 3 straight days. I guess that would be a week on Earth.¡± James scratched his head and leaned back in the very nice looking chair he¡¯d apparently appropriated from the Gau Clan¡¯s mansion.

    Jessy sat next to him with a roll of parchment and a scribing feather and ink well. She¡¯d had some thoughts on what she wanted to do recently and had essentially offered to run the Guild Hall since both Skay and James were unreliable and she was the only one with experience in operating a business. ¡°Let¡¯s get started then. I still need to hire staff and organise supplies for the Guild. What exactly do you want to achieve with this guild? That will decide how we write up the guild rules and charter.¡±

    James cupped his chin and began to order his thoughts. Originally he¡¯d never planned for it to be a big guild, but after some consideration he decided it would be better to make it as big as possible and expand branches everywhere. That way he could develop a reliable information network and create more contacts. More importantly is if he can establish a guild with significant power behind it, that would become a strong backer for him while he remains in this empire.

    Eventually he was sure he¡¯d be leaving this empire and the influence of his guild, but he was certain for the foreseeable future it would be essential. If it took him hundreds of years just to reach the Spirit Palace, then a guild system would be a priceless resource. Having a total lack of trust in everyone else, the only way he could see himself joining any guild would be creating his own.

    So he started telling Jessy what he wanted the guild rules to be. ¡°Firstly, only members loyal to the guild. Skay, is there some foolproof way we can create a system to identify members of our guild? Perhaps some chip or card?¡±

    Skay looked up from his pad thoughtfully. ¡°Well ... I¡¯m sure we won¡¯t need it immediately. For now we will most likely know everyone who is a member because you or Jessy will be inducting them directly. Leave it with me for a while. I¡¯m sure we can come up with something in the lab.¡±

    James then continued laying down rules. ¡°Make that rule one. An oath to the Guild. No one can join that isn¡¯t absolutely loyal. They can act freely and autonomously as long as they never betray the guild.¡±

    Jessy stopped just before she put the feather quill to the parchment. ¡°James, no one will ever willingly choose to join a guild they have to sell their life to enter.¡±

    James grew a crooked smile on his face. ¡°Oh? Did we not jump at the chance when we first came to the Gau Clan? Our situation was rather unique though and we got incredibly lucky, just take a moment and imagine yourself as a commoner in this world. Weak little cultivators and commoners sit at the bottom rung of society. You¡¯ll never live with more than your few meager meals and shabby house. You¡¯ll never have a true chance at cultivating, because the sects and clans usually only take you in if you can give something back or you¡¯re at the start of your prime years for cultivating. Unless you are born into power or can display some talent or skill that is heavenly, then you will spend your whole life in this world overlooked by your betters. Bullied by the powerful and forever remaining weak. Muhahaha!¡±

    James couldn¡¯t stop himself from allowing a maniacal laugh to escape as he continued to explain his thoughts. The more he talked, the more twisted his smile grew.

    ¡°Now imagine someone comes along and says that in exchange for your loyalty they can grant you the chance to become a powerful cultivator. All you need to do is make a simple oath. You maintain your freedoms and liberties and get all the benefits of being in a guild and becoming a cultivator. On the sole condition that you never betray your guild and follow our few simple rules.¡±

    Jessy visibly paled as James talked. If this wasn¡¯t a pact with the devil then what was. Exchange your soul for a wish from the devil. Or in this case exchange your soul to start the journey of cultivation. It sounded good when said in honeyed words, but veiled beneath this opportunity was enslavement to the Devil!

    James then calmed himself back down and gave Jessy a nod. ¡°Go ahead and right it down. Rule One: All Guild Members will swear an oath of loyalty to the guild.¡±

    Jessy grimaced slightly as she thought of all the poor unlearned peasants that would be sucked into this trap. She had no doubts in her mind that half of them would most likely disappear into one of Skay¡¯s Specimen Disposal Pits eventually.

    Having seen her scribe it down James gave a grin and continued. ¡°Let¡¯s set up a training camp, if we can. I want to educate any new members in some basics like science and math. The first group we will oversee ourselves. After that we can let them train new recruits. It will probably be a few months long. We¡¯ll give them the meditation hypno and allow them to learn and train until they can swear their oath. Once their sworn in we can help them develop some more elements and hopefully by that time we will have worked out this breathing technique thing. We will train them with our breathing techniques.¡±

    Jessy gave a sigh. This was starting to sound like some kind of screwed up militia. ¡°Next thing you know they¡¯ll be running a boot camp in the endless forest training tactics and assembling machine guns in their sleep.¡±

    James lip quirked up at Jessy¡¯s mumbling and his sinister grin widened. ¡°That¡¯s an excellent idea Jess. Let¡¯s table it for now, but perhaps later we will phase that in for our guild members.¡±

    Skay gave a harrumph. ¡°Boy aren¡¯t you getting a little carried away. I suggested this guild to allow us to gather information and resources. If you¡¯re going to build an army you should at least wait until you¡¯re strong enough to run one. We¡¯re still only Barrier Realm cultivators and right now resources and information for ourselves is more important.¡±

    James grin dropped and he glanced at Skay. After a moment he sighed. ¡°You¡¯re right old goat. Let¡¯s take it slow for now. Perhaps I¡¯m aiming too high for the moment. Let¡¯s only have the oath and training for now. Once the guild is properly assembled we will revisit the topic of guild rules and what direction the guild is going to head in. We may even disband it before leaving Gau City. Once the first batch of recruits is done and we have some ... volunteers to assist in research, then we can worry about other stuff.¡±

    Jessy felt some relief. She was actually a little surprised inside that Skay would want to table more discussions in the direction James was heading, after all, she was certain he was crazed and would be salivating at the chance to start some wars and observe mass scale cultivator battles.

    That day at high noon Jessy opened the doors to the Guildhall. Out the front she placed a sign that read ¡°Recruiting new staff ¨C All applicants welcome.¡±

    While they waited for Jessy to recruit some staff James and Skay went down to the Lab. ¡°We need something cheap to produce that we can sell to commoners for some income¡± was the consensus of the two. They knew they could make some big money from schematics and designs for the major factions in town but for the moment just some basic income for the hall was necessary, besides before they could start selling things they first needed to research and develop them.

    It would also help attract some more attention to them so word would spread faster when they started recruiting new members. With that thought in mind they sat down for a brainstorming session. James started off the idea bouncing. ¡°What do the commoners in this world need the most that can be made cheaply and easily?¡±

    Skay was busying himself on a computer as usual then stopped after a moment. ¡°What about this. Instead of selling something they need, let¡¯s sell something they really want. We¡¯re an early starting guild with only 4 members and our greatest source of income and resources is you and me selling research and tech to others. If we do like you said and train up a group of people from scratch it won¡¯t be easy. How about instead of taking in commoners, we set up a computer and just flash every commoner who pays a few coppers with the hypno. They all fuck off back to their straw huts and in a few months the town basically won¡¯t have any commoners anymore. Then we start recruiting only people already capable of swearing an oath, until then we can focus on research.¡±

    James sat down at a stool near a workbench and started to think aloud. ¡°Well it¡¯s definitely a good way to earn some income and because it¡¯s implanted through hypno they can¡¯t steal or share our method. Almost all the people on this world believe there spirit energy will manifest as one of the four elements. I suspect there may be other reasons why rare elements don¡¯t appear often on top of this common folklore. We should put some research into that later. For now though I don¡¯t think it¡¯s a bad idea. But let¡¯s charge a little extra and throw in element discovery. We still have a few of those magic sticks or whatever and if any rare talents pop up ... well. Let¡¯s have Harvy escort them to the lab.¡±

    With that said they called Harvy over and spent an hour manufacturing some wireless speakers and installed them into the arena. Once everything was ready they set up a Black-Pad acting as a projector onto the wall and then sent Harvy out to start mustering some customers.

    They very quickly realised their mistake when Harvy returned being dragged by the ear. Jessy looked at the two fools and marched up to them with Harvy in tow. ¡°How did you fucking think that sending the man that fucking stinks and looks like a corpse onto the streets would help you to attract anyone?! Twats! I had a very promising young lady who I thought I could groom into a decent fucking receptionist until your god damned Zombie marched out of the elevator and scared her into hysterics! Took me nearly five minutes to stop her shouting about ¡®Holtzier¡¯s coming for her soul¡¯ or some shit!¡±

    James and Skay looked sheepishly at each other until Skay jumped back a step a moment before James. ¡°Tsk, fine Old Madman. I¡¯ll field this one, but you get the next time.¡±

    Stepping forwards James put on his most amiable smile and tried to distract Jessy. ¡°Calm down Jess we just sent him out to check how things were going. By the way we have another little task for you when you get the chance. We¡¯d like you to start advertising that we¡¯re selling a meditation technique and element discovery for only a single silver coin. You can have your new receptionist girl send them down here when their ready. Oh! That reminds me!¡±

    James spun to Skay. ¡°We need something that can give them a bit of spirit energy to help discover their element. I think those fruits Hao gave you guys cost nearly a silver each...¡±

    Skay, realising James left his sentence open for him to make suggestions, rapidly thought for a bit then clicked his fingers in a Eureka moment. ¡°Harvy, go to the Chem Lab and bring the vial labeled 616 ... Actually I have a better idea.¡± After another thought he flicked a pouch with ten silvers over to Harvy.

    ¡°Take this and buy ten barrels of grog and grab a handful of mugs from the kitchen. Once you¡¯re done, bring it all here and set up a bench.¡± When James gave him a questioning look he just grinned broadly. With a ¡°you¡¯ll see soon¡± he strolled back to the elevator and disappeared down stairs.

    That afternoon a new sign was set up out the front of the guild reading;

    ¡°Always dreamed of the chance to become a godlike cultivator?

    The Dark Brotherhood is introducing to everyone a chance to start your journey with no strings attached!

    Gain the ability to peer into your Spirit Realm and Meditate to draw in spirit energy thanks to our new advancements in hypno-memory implants!

    Apply today and be granted a free Spirit Energy refreshment and the chance to unlock your hidden elemental talents.

    Only 1 Silver coin or 100 coppers to join the ranks of the most illustrious!¡±

    Written at the bottom of the sign in incredibly small print was a single blurry sentence that looked half rubbed out saying ¡®Terms and Conditions Apply¡¯.

 Chapter 17: Because weéˆ¥æª™e soulmates dummy!

    -Brotherhood Guild Hall-

    At first, everyone thought it was a scam, but after a few curious and adventuress souls had gone through the process, rumours began to travel. Eventually, they didn¡¯t even need the sign out front.

    A massive wave of interest began to stir throughout the city as every commoner with a son or daughter scraped together every copper they could find till they had a hundred just so they had a chance of sending their children in. People began to crowd the front door of the guild and a line formed of desperate commoners from the wealthy merchants and businessmen to the lowly field ploughing commoners and poorly treated servants.

    The uproar was so huge that almost the entire market plaza was filled with people trying to file into the Guildhall and half the businesses in the city were closed shut. Jessy actually had the chance to hire almost all her staff, most of whom willingly jumped at the chance to get the hypno and work it off with the guild.

    In the Guild foyer it looked like a chaotic mess, as the 5 new receptionist girls employed by Jessy hurriedly took people¡¯s money then gave them a ticket. A few unruly guests made an ass of themselves occasionally until Jessy strolled up, stroked their arm, and then they collapsed on the floor jutting their hips into the sky madly. Ever patron of the guild made a wide margin around her whenever this scene happened.

    Down in the arena, Harvy, who was now covered from head to toe in bandages like a mummy and smelled of mint, was leading people over to an open area until they¡¯d packed about a hundred in. Then James pressed on the Black-Pad and everyone spasmed and jerked about with their eyes unnaturally glued to a projection on the wall as strange sounds rang out from the arena speakers. It very much resembled a bucket of live fish dumped on the ground flailing and flopping about.

    After about 5 minutes of that, they were led over to a large bench with a whole stack of mead barrels. Skay was busy pouring in a questionable substance labelled 616.2 into the barrels and then half filling mugs with mead. As a person drank it, they felt their body grow warm, and then James would give them a stick and tell them to imagine their spirit power and pour it in.

    Strangely, whenever he asked someone how they envisioned their spirit energy they would reply with something like ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t envision it as anything.¡± When James asked about how much they knew of cultivation, basically everyone would say that cultivators had power over the four elements.

    When this happened repeatedly, he realised that perhaps it¡¯s entirely the fault of this misconception that people rarely unlocked exciting elements. Or if they did, maybe it¡¯s this misconception that limits them from ever perceiving they even had it.

    No rare talents popped up from the crowds, and not a single person exhibited a reaction even close to when the 4 current members of the guild unlocked an element with the stick. This process continued throughout the majority of the day until close to sunset, when Skay ran out of whatever he¡¯d been feeding to those poor hapless fools. They nominated Jessy to be the spokesperson who had to tell the massive crowd outside that they could no longer supply their services for the day and anyone still interested should wait until tomorrow.

    Once the disappointed crowd dispersed, the city settled into the night, and the Brotherhood sat at their round table in the Guildmaster¡¯s office.

    Jessy looked up from a report just handed to her by one of her new hires. ¡°Looks like we didn¡¯t do too badly. Thanks to your little promotional stunt, I¡¯ve hired about 15 staff to fill out the essential roles in the Guildhall. I have a few on the back burner as well. They offered services in exchange for the hypno but I¡¯d already filled out my staff.¡±

    James swished his hand impatiently. ¡°Who cares about the commoners, we probably won¡¯t have many decent members joining the guild for a while. What about our intake. How many people did we get through today and how much did we make?¡±

    Jessy flipped over some parchment then pulled another document out. ¡°Apart from the 15 new employees who we hypno¡¯d in exchange for working here, we serviced ... About 8000 individuals today. That makes 80 gold coins which is about an eighth of what we could probably get if we sold one of your spirit batteries to the Gau Clan. On auction to the whole city, we¡¯d probably get double that again.¡±

    James put a grin on his face. ¡°Well, 80 gold coins isn¡¯t bad for a day¡¯s work. If we¡¯re going to keep doing this, let¡¯s have some fun with it. Let¡¯s start advertising that we¡¯re seeking fresh new members and anyone that can reach the half barrier realm or better is welcome to apply.¡±

    James then thought for a bit and signaled Jessy to start scribing as he had some thoughts on how their guild would operate. Guilds would usually take commissions and jobs from people in whatever their line of work was. The merchant¡¯s guild, for example, specialised in marketable contracts and the builder¡¯s guild in building things.

    James had decided his guild wouldn¡¯t specialise in anything. He would take any job from anyone to do anything, as long as it was possible to do it. This would serve two purposes. Firstly, he could gather information and make contacts with every trade and walk of life. Secondly, it created a method for members to earn money and resources and also created a competitive atmosphere for newer members.

    He wasn¡¯t sure how it would go, because from what he¡¯d heard, most guilds controlled their Job intake and the people they sent out to Jobs so that they could suppress others and grovel to the powerful. James already knew his approach would undoubtedly step on the toes of the other guilds and the powers behind them, but he would eventually be upsetting them anyway.

    While fleshing out this idea he began to add some new rules and changed some things in the setup of the guild.

    The new guild rules were as follows.

    1. All members must swear an oath of loyalty to the guild.

    2. Anyone that can swear an oath is free to join. There are no limitations to class or background.

    3. Anything the guild sells, members get a discount price of 50%.

    4. Members can accrue Guild Merits from Job completions to trade in for gold, resources, skills and techniques.

    5. All members are free to act autonomously and have no requirements from the guild apart from protecting its interests whenever possible.

    He also had Jessy scribe down some miscellaneous stuff, like how merit points would work and what sort of things they¡¯d be selling and trading. After this had been done, he turned to Skay. ¡°Old Madman, how much more of that 616 can you make and how much does it cost us to make it?¡±

    Skay smiled a small smile then wrote down a list on some parchment. Then he grabbed a fresh piece and drew a strange circular pattern on it containing some intricate and elaborate designs. When he was done, he pushed it over to James.

    When James reached out a hand to collect them, he felt his spirit power gather rate speeding up, even though he wasn¡¯t in meditation. His eyes opened in shock then quickly closed as he lapsed into a silent moment inspecting his gathering rate.

    When he was done, he could tell the Old Madman had managed to find or create a pattern that draws in primal spirit energy. Once he had that thought, he looked at the other parchment and saw a list of very common and reasonably cheap herbs along with ¡®Helper x 3¡¯.

    Skay began to explain before James even had to ask. ¡°I can grow what we need in ... about 3 days. I¡¯m just going to need some people tending to the gardens on level 4. Also, this array pattern isn¡¯t one I made. It¡¯s one that the computers pattern recognition picked out as ¡®most likely to draw in spirit energy¡¯. I honestly only have a few ideas on how these fucking things work, but I suspect you¡¯ll quite enjoy them if I¡¯m right. Mostly just because I believe they¡¯re similar to an electrical circuit diagram. This small scale primal gathering array works without any catalyst, I¡¯m fucked if I can figure out how, perhaps just the ink alone has some spirit energy that allows it to successfully create a circuit. On the other hand, anything bigger than that must be produced with a catalyst as paint ... or carved into a catalyst.¡±

    James cupped his chin and thought about the implications of this. Suddenly an idea struck him, and he could no longer sit still. ¡°The Lab Skay! There¡¯s something we gotta try right now!¡±

    Skay grinned madly seeing James getting excited over an idea. For the past few days, James had been playing Guildmaster and hadn¡¯t been in the lab as much. Without him around, Skay had noticed a good deal of his research slowing down significantly. Although it wasn¡¯t so bad as to significantly limit him, it was enough for him to notice that James had been a driving force behind a good deal of his earlier research.

    Seeing the boys running off to play mad scientist, Jessy gave a sigh then called in one of the maids to brew some tea as she started sorting out how to run the Guildhall efficiently when James eventually started pulling in those poor unsuspecting wretches from the city.

    -The Lab-

    ¡°Old Madman, you remember how we crushed some lightning stones into dust and used it to paint the Arc Cannon Rail?¡± James was busily searching through bench cupboards and yet to be unpacked boxes from the move. Finally, he pulled out a little jar of white liquid labelled LS3 Paint. (Lightning Seeking Spirit Stone Paint). Once he had it in hand, he pulled Harvy over to an open area of the floor then took a photo of the array pattern he just got from Skay.

    Skay was busily trying to imagine just what James was thinking, when suddenly it clicked. His eyes widened for an instant and a sickening smile showed his teeth as his licked his lips and pulled out his Black-Pad. After a few button presses, he began dictating.

    ¡°Begin new Array Project. The test subject is a simple array pattern for drawing in primal spirit energy using. LS3 based paint as a catalyst and lightning based spirit power as the driving force.¡±

    After making that short note, he went to help James and Harvy who¡¯d projected the image onto the ground from James¡¯ Black-Pad. After painting the array pattern onto the floor with great care and detail, Skay stepped back. Once he felt a safe distance, he lowered his Spider Eyes and then after a second thought began to run around the lab turning on a bunch of odd equipment he¡¯d been developing.

    Once he saw that Skay was ready, James pushed Harvy into the array pattern. ¡°Harvy, you¡¯ve got a crucial job. Just stand right here and feel free to describe any changes you feel.¡±

    Having said as much, James moved to the outside of the pattern then knelt down and started pouring in spirit power. It didn¡¯t even take much before the array pattern lit up like a Christmas tree and James could notably feel a massive influx of primal spirit energy. After only a few seconds, he could feel that he wasn¡¯t able to put any more spirit energy into the paint and it was just going straight into the floor.

    Skay was busy dictating and recording odd things, and Harvy appeared to be in a trance. After half an hour and nothing changing, James quirked his eyebrow. He tried to pour in some more energy and realising the array was still full he walked over to Skay. ¡°You know old madman ... I thought it would run out of spirit energy. I think at this point it¡¯s self-sustaining somehow.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes glittered with madness as he mashed away at computers and his pad intermittently. ¡°I suspect your right boy. Come have a look at this.¡±

    James looked at a screen Skay was pointing to and saw a graph that started off at one then slowly rose over a time period of half an hour to 25 where it was starting to level off. Connected to the screen was a little device that looked like it was made of some unique and unusual materials. After closer inspection, he could tell it had a little bit of plant matter hooked up to an odd gem he¡¯d never seen before. One side was painted with LS3 Paint and sat in a little Black-Iron box with a multitude of cables running to the computer.

    After blinking a few times, he couldn¡¯t help glancing at Skay only to see a massive shit eating grin. ¡°Hahaha! You¡¯re right boy, I¡¯ve figured out a way to measure spirit energy. Although, at the moment I can only measure it in the local area, and specifically only Primal Spirit Energy. If I can find something better than this plant I may be able to build something the size of a USB stick that you can take with you anywhere to measure spirit power. Hell, if I could, I¡¯d fucking figure out a way to measure a person¡¯s spirit energy. That, I suspect, is much further in the future though.¡±

    James cast his eyes back to the screen and saw that the Primal Energy had slowly risen some more to 26 times the average energy. ¡°Hey, if we set up one of these in the arena and just had people meditate in it for a half hour do you think they¡¯d generate enough energy to use the testing stick without your 616?¡±

    Skay thought about it for a short time, then gave a nod. ¡°If it¡¯s draw rate is based on its size and the purity of the catalyst we probably could. If we make an almost pure LS3 paint and create an array that spans the entire arena, it would probably reach primal energy levels approaching the hundreds. If it takes more than half an hour to generate the tiny little bit someone needs to unlock an element, then they have literally zero talent for cultivation, and we probably can¡¯t help them even with our different methods.¡±

    After this discussion, they processed some new paint and spent the entire night painting the array pattern onto the roof of the arena level. Then after charging it, they painted over the whole thing with conventional paint, so the entire roof was white, and the array was concealed. It made the arena exceptionally bright, and they ended up having to remove a third of the light stones from the ceiling.

    -In the dark of midnight.-

    After some more playing and testing, James made an excuse and disappeared off into the town. After a short time of walking, he came to the conclusion that he was lost and mumbled as much to himself before moving to step in another direction.

    Just as his foot touched down, he froze. His face assumed it¡¯s standard dead eyes and detached countenance. After a moment he turned with a scowl and started walking in a different direction. After a few more turns and some narrow twisting streets, he came to a large courtyard in the centre of which was a huge glistening black rock that reached up into the sky a good 40 meters. Its entire surface was covered in bright, intricate and bizarre moving patterns and it somewhat resembled a giant shard of black glass.

    After observing his surroundings and seeing no one nearby, he walked up to the rock. With some hesitation, he reached out his hand, placing it onto the monolith. His face quickly became completely slack and blank as if his body wasn¡¯t even currently occupied.

    James vision grew blurry and twisted, until moments later he found himself standing in an entirely empty white space that reached out in every direction to infinity. Overhead sat an enormous blue sun made of lightning that stretched out crossing half his field of vision and mighty bolts of lightning swarmed out from it across the white space striking the ground far beyond James¡¯ range to perceive.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    Once he¡¯d had a few minutes to observe the situation and calm down the lightning sun slowly morphed and formed until it was the shape of a titanic Chinese dragon towering up into the heavens and its tail stretching off into the distance. James¡¯ heart nearly exploded when the giant head leant down and looked at him. The head was so big it looked like he could stand on one of its massive fangs like standing at the summit of a mountain.

    After just staring for a while the dragon eventually spoke in the voice of a bratty teenage girl.

    ¡°Hahaha! Oh my god, like, finally! It only took you a month. Fuck sake James, felt like I¡¯ve been waitin¡¯ here for about fucken ever. Christ, I was almost ready to just endlessly blast you with telepathy coms till you were fucken forced to come down here. By the way, loving the whole dark guild slash cult thing you¡¯re running. Never seen a dark guild popping up their Guildhall in plain sight in the middle of a city. Hahaha, it¡¯s fucken brilliant. Oh, fuck! I¡¯m so fucken excited. You don¡¯t understand how fucken long I¡¯ve been stuck in this fucken rock, just doing damn memory implanting every time some new little turd is born, or some stupid fucken stepper gets sucked through a gateway nearby. Fucken¡¯ hell! Thought I¡¯d be in here for fucken ever James! You understand, For. Fucking. Ever! That¡¯s the time it takes for everything in existence to begin and then eventually end. Oh well, I guess you probably...¡±

    James just stared. If you didn¡¯t know better, you¡¯d think he was one of those people that just had a stroke and lost all expression and motion, just dying standing up staring off into the distance like a statue. James was never sure what to expect when he started getting weird visions from the monolith. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure whether to believe the monolith was actually communicating with him in his mind. For a time, he thought he¡¯d just finally lost a little part of his mind from the fact that something had been playing in his head.

    When it first happened, he¡¯d just discovered the monoliths existence and was freaking out, yelling inside his head for it to get out. He¡¯d just met Elder Gau for the second time and had asked about the monoliths range in preparation to try and escape. It was at that moment when it first happened. A birds-eye view of the entire area for 50 or so kilometres around the city was forced into his head. Everywhere inside of the 35km radius of the centre of the city looked ordinary but everywhere outside of that was painted red.

    Then in this vision, he saw himself stepping over the demarcating line between normal and red when a massive lightning bolt descended from the sky and turned him to ash! Then the vision changed, and the words Oath to the Heavens was transmitted into his mind as if he had just had the thought himself.

    He¡¯d encountered such visions numeral times since he¡¯d arrived, all of them giving him some sort of direction. Like when he was preparing to deny the offer of the Gau Clan to start cultivating with them.

    He saw a vision of him denying them, then being engulfed in the hot plasmary retribution of the sky the moment he left the main hall. The image in his mind then changed to him swearing an oath to the clan and later going to the monolith and it lifting his oath. This quick interruption went mostly unnoticed at the time, but it had quickly changed his tune from ¡°very much no¡± to ¡°most certainly, I¡¯d love to¡±.

    He wasn¡¯t too worried about lightning when he left the endless forest for two reasons. Firstly, the forest was obviously magical, and he can¡¯t be blamed for not knowing that. Secondly, just how was he going to escape from the forest if not back through the Gau mansion gateway.

    Sure, apparently there were other gateways to other parts of ascension in the forest, but they were supposedly separated by extreme distances and huge treks of spirit beast territory. There was about zero chance of him escaping the monolith that way, not unless he planned to move into the endless forest and live there until he was strong enough to get to another gateway. That idea just stank of an early death by wandering spirit beasts.

    As the lightning dragon chattered on endlessly about everything under the sun it was excited to see again, James couldn¡¯t help feeling a little lost. Finally, he cleared his throat and craned his head up towards the dragon.

    ¡°Ahem! Oi! You giant fucking piece of shit! I demand you stop fuckin round in my head!¡± Originally James was planning to try and be polite, but in the end, he decided that if regardless of what happened this thing was still in his head, he¡¯d rather it just fucking eat him or stomp him to death now.

    The last thing James would accept was a mind reading anything, let alone some epic sized lightning dragon spirit that had already shown now qualms about blowing him to pieces with some lightning!

    After his interruption, the dragon stopped its endless monologue and then gave James an odd glare similar to one your girlfriend would give you if you farted right next to her in public. After a silent second, the lightning dragon suddenly began to shrink until it was the size, shape and look of a young woman about 18, standing at his chin height and wearing a very tight-fitting cocktail dress made entirely of blue satin that seemed like lightning was running around through the fabric.

    She had short lightning blue hair reaching her shoulders and cut in a goth-like fashion. She had slightly Asian features that, along with the rest of her, balanced somewhere between cute and sexy. Her skin was a beautiful light tan and had an eye-catching healthy glow to it. Her body wasn¡¯t toned and sculpted like Jessy¡¯s but instead gave off the feeling of healthy and fit with a perfect peach shaped bottom with long slender legs, accentuated by black 6-inch heels.

    Her chest wasn¡¯t flat, but certainly couldn¡¯t be described as ample. If James reached out and grabbed them, they would probably be just enough to fill his entire hand. Her breasts had that youthful perkiness, and her little nipples looked ready to poke a hole through the satin fabric. Overall, she had a beautiful hourglass figure with just enough breast, a tiny little waist and a perky peach bottom.

    James suddenly came back to reality after he caught himself admiring her, only to see her striking poses for him and doing sultry twirls while giggling. He quickly came to the conclusion that something was decidedly wrong with this dragon ... or person, or whatever the hell they were exactly.

    As if reading his thoughts, or more likely, precisely because she was reading his thoughts, her face scrunched up cutely and she stomped towards him in a huff. ¡°Humph, James you bastard, you¡¯d better not be thinking bad things about me. I¡¯ll eat you right now if you are!¡±

    James took a step back but was too late as the little lady disappeared and was suddenly latched onto his arm like a clingy girlfriend. With a swish of the sleeve, a small couch materialised out of nowhere, and she pushed him onto it then sat on his lap and curled up into him like a cat.

    ¡°James from now on your mine! Do you understand?! No one else can have you but me! MINE!¡± She sternly said looking him in the eyes then leant into his shoulder and cuddled up to him.

    James wasn¡¯t exactly sure what just happened. ¡®Did I just acquire some kind of creepy stalker or something? To make things worse, she isn¡¯t just some regular crazy, but a godly powerful dragon spirit residing inside the monolith. Does this mean she will never let him leave the city? Holy crap after all that shit splitting off from the clan and I¡¯m fuckin¡¯ trapped here anyway? FUCK!¡¯

    As these thoughts floated through his head, the girl that was sitting on his lap gave a giggle. She then moved around till she was straddled over his lap. She had a cute little smile as she cupped his face with her hands and leant forward pasting a searing hot kiss on him.

    Being a bit of a pig by nature, James couldn¡¯t stop himself from responding as his hands circled around her waist and pulled her into his chest. He quickly resumed normal brain function and broke the kiss pulling his head back. He tried to push her off, but it was like trying to move a mountain.

    She gave an adorable little pout, then spun back around and crawled around on him till she was comfortable, after which she pulled his arms up to embrace her like they were some kind of lovesick couple. James was having a hard time processing exactly what was going on here. The only thing he was sure of, was that this girl was definitely crazy.

    ¡°Humph! You jerk. I¡¯m not some crazy girl. I¡¯ve lived for millions of years. Understand? Millions! You¡¯re not old enough to question my sanity.¡± The girl bit down on his arm weakly. It wasn¡¯t hard and was obviously play biting which was only a small consolation to James.

    James just sat quietly for another moment until he finally decided he needed some kind of answers. ¡°errrmm ... who even are you?¡±

    Following this question, the dragon began an incredibly long and dramatic monologue but still only managed to actually explain a few things.

    Firstly, her name didn¡¯t matter, and he could come up with a new name for her. Following this James suggested quite a few new names which all lacked almost any imagination and were just things like ¡°dragon girl¡± or ¡°lightning¡±, all of which were quickly rejected by her despite her invitation for him to call her whatever he wanted. Eventually, she gave up on trying to coax him into calling her something cute and decided she¡¯d name herself. As such, she suddenly became Exsue. Which was apparently dragon for Little Blue.

    When James heard this, he had to restrain his laughter because where he was from, little blue would definitely be a name of a pet. Actually, he already had a pet named Little Blue. As this thought passed, Exsue suddenly bit him again. ¡°Bumhead! I chose this name because it¡¯s cute and if you¡¯re going to rescue me from the monolith, I¡¯m going to need a vessel!¡±

    James just looked down at the cute girl in his arms and was about to speak again when she harrumphed at the thoughts he had running around in his head. ¡°Hmph! Who cares if your little rodent has balls for now. Once I inhabit it, I can make the body change however I like! When I¡¯m done with it, I¡¯ll look exactly like I do right now. Wouldn¡¯t you like that?¡±

    With a giggle, she began to move James¡¯ hand around over her body until eventually, she placed it onto a very moist bald pussy under her dress. ¡°Mmm, just imagine it James, making love to this tight little pussy. I¡¯ll be all yours, and you¡¯ll be all mine.¡± She said while biting her bottom lip, as if just from this little bit of contact she was having trouble controlling herself.

    Before this escalated any further James started distracting her with more questions. The last thing he needed right now was to get raped by the dragon girl inside her giant rock. Although he wouldn¡¯t say no if it came to that, he¡¯d rather have control of the situation, which he was rapidly realising, may never happen. Especially if this creeper started following him around.

    Exsue then went on to explain a few things. She totally skipped over how exactly she got trapped in here and just described it as ¡°some fucking asshole kidnapped me and forced my spirit into this big rock¡± or some such. James was sure there was more to that story, but he chose not to pursue it for now.

    After what felt like an eternity of her discussing how ¡°absolutely fucken boring¡± living in the giant rock was. She got to the part about her escaping. She only explained that James had to bring his little pet here and use his spirit energy to alter a very specific part of the array pattern on the outside of the rock. Once that happened she¡¯d be able to swap her soul with the Forrest Hopper and after a few days of rest would be back to her human form.

    When James asked what level of cultivation she had, Exsue just made a sour face. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter what level of cultivation I have, I¡¯ll have to use my entire cultivation base just to switch vessels with the little rodent and then revert my body to normal. Once I¡¯m done, I¡¯ll have to start again from the mortal level.¡±

    She suddenly spun to James with big tears threatening to escape her eyes. ¡°James, you have to promise to protect me, you understand? I want your oath that you¡¯ll protect me forever, if you don¡¯t swear it, I¡¯ll just ... just ... I¡¯ll fucken eat you, fuck! Promise me!¡±

    Following this very needy sounding plea from Exsue, James decided he really had no choice in the matter and made the oath of the heavens. Although he was filled with scepticism, he knew he was actually trapped in this situation, which aggravated him to no end.

    If the dragon was telling the truth, he wasn¡¯t too worried about the mind reading after she ... resurrects, since she¡¯d have absolutely zero cultivation base. That at least, would be a plus to this situation and also fulfilled his ultimate goal in coming to the monolith.

    If all he had to do was protect her till she was strong again, he was fairly sure he could do that. As long as he kept her out of trouble, she should cultivate rather quickly, after all, this wasn¡¯t her first time developing her spirit energy, and she would surely retain all her cultivation techniques. He didn¡¯t see it, but Exsue just smiled to herself when James had this thought.

    They then finally got to the part that James had wondered about the most ... Just why the fuck she was treating him like her boyfriend ... or more accurately why she acting like some creepy possessive girlfriend.

    She just poked out her tongue at him and replied with ¡°Because we¡¯re soulmates dummy! Why else would you appear right into the lap of a lightning dragon through some random Gateway? I could tell straight away you would unlock the lightning element. I actually learnt heaps about lighting from you that I could never have fully understood before. You¡¯re obviously meant to be mine, and I¡¯m obviously supposed to be yours!¡±

    Following this somewhat twisted reasoning she suddenly sat up gave him a scorching kiss then gave him a push. James felt himself falling then suddenly opened his eyes back in the courtyard with a hand on the monolith. He smiled wryly at the parting words of Exsue. ¡°I love you baby! You¡¯d better come back and save me tomorrow, or else! Oh, and you tell that bitch slut Jessy, you¡¯re taken now. If she touches you again, I¡¯ll fucken blow her to pieces!¡±

    When he turned to leave the plaza, he noticed the glow of the sun slowly rising on the horizon and could already hear the motions of people starting their day throughout the city.

    Once he got back to the guild, he went to check and make sure Little Blue was still in his lightning room. Sure enough, there was the little blue rodent sleeping soundly, while dirty big arcs of lightning shot all over the chamber. He seemed to have climatized rather quickly, after all, these bolts weren¡¯t anything like in the old lab. Especially with the new generator down on level 5 running its guts out, pumping mind-boggling amounts of electricity up here.

    He sat down for a second to process everything that he¡¯d just experienced. ¡®Just what kind of world is this, that has a dragon trapped in a big rock in the middle of a city? It¡¯s like inviting a wolf into the sheep¡¯s pen.

    ¡®Regardless of that ... Just what¡¯s this dragon playing at? Assume the form of a human and tempt me? Unlikely, it can read my thoughts and probably long since foresaw I¡¯d be having this exact thought. Also, being so god damn powerful, why would it bother with an act if it can just turn me into ashes. Unless ... it truly doesn¡¯t have the power to... ¡®

    KABOOM!!!

    A massive shake ran through the building, and James rushed up to ground level to see the devastation of what could have only been a stupidly enormous lighting strike in the market plaza outside the guild. After which a vision of Exsue making a pouty face floated across his mind.

    James stared at the obliterated fountain that used to be in the centre of the plaza. Then made a thought of himself pulling Exsue over his knee and spanking her bare ass. Moments later, instead of a vision, he just felt what could only be described as a towering wave of lust smash into his mind. Clearly, she very much enjoyed that thought.

    James shivered then moved down to the arena and decided to start meditating in the range of the arena¡¯s primal energy array. The moment he entered into meditation he felt his incoming spirit energy grow drastically.

    When he dived into his spirit realm, he could see his elements slowly forming out of nowhere at a visible rate, which made his normal meditation growth rate seem like it was just a light drizzle in comparison to a full-blown rainstorm.

    While doing this, he took out an odd little mesh cap from his robe pocket and fit it to his head before plugging it into his Black-Pad and started testing a few breathing techniques and letting the Black-Pad calculate how efficient it was at raising his brain wave magnitude.

    He¡¯d been doing this on and off whenever he stole a few hours to meditate. He¡¯d already worked through hundreds of different combinations of breathing patterns, trying to find the best one. He slowly began to recognise a particular pattern but wasn¡¯t too sure what to make of it yet. What he was certain of was, it almost tripled his energy intake speed. With the arena pulling in energy as well, his cultivation speed began to rocket up.

    While he was busy doing this, there were already people lining up in the plaza outside waiting for the Guild to open their doors. Meanwhile, Skay was badgering Harvy who was currently carrying boxes and boxes of books into the elevator to be taken down and scanned into the Lab¡¯s computer system.

    Skay could just as easily scan all these books with his Pad as he flicked through the pages, but like James, he took some perverse joy in ordering Harvy to do unreasonable things. Besides, who had time to stand there and flick through every page of these hundreds of books apart from the ghoul.

    First thing this morning he¡¯d gone out with Harvy and visited every store, repository and guild in the city asking to buy any books they had. He eventually had to call in Jessy to do some negotiations for some of the rarer books that guilds weren¡¯t willing to sell for just some gold coins.

    A large number of guilds were granted the privilege to train in the Brotherhoods arena for a fair price and were given VIP invitations to the first Brotherhood auction, which they would be holding in about two weeks. At first, no one took this seriously. Mostly because the Brotherhood was a fresh starting guild and surely couldn¡¯t have anything they would want to buy in an auction.

    However, after Skay described a few things they would be selling like Liquid 616 or ¡®insert item particular guild would really want¡¯ they quickly changed their tune. Most of the things he advertised, he could whip up in the lab in a couple hours. For example, a lightning generator. For some irrational reason, everyone wanted it, even if they had no idea what to do with it.

    When he visited the builder¡¯s guild they didn¡¯t even blink when he mentioned an auction and immediately sold him copies of every book they had.

    The merchant guild was a little more challenging, that is until Skay mentioned something about self-propelled vehicles that left ordinary horses in the dust. After a short description, they were climbing all over him trying to get a look at this vehicle. Although this world raised spirit beasts capable of ridiculous speeds, they were difficult to tame and control. Worse still, they were incredibly expensive.

    This repeated itself quite a few times until Skay had been to nearly every place in the city that could sell him a book. Harvy had spent the entire time walking along behind him while Skay just continued to stack books onto him.

    As James meditated and Skay was busy with his books, Jessy was doing some training with her new staff and getting everything ready for a new day. They¡¯d decided to open the job board and start taking in members today. They originally planned to wait a little longer but a few free cultivators still in the barrier realm expressed interest in joining the guild so today they would allow people who could swear an oath to start applying for membership.

    After a few hours of James training and Jessy preparing they arranged everything and opened the Guildhall. The moment the doors opened they saw a crowd of people suddenly swarming forwards trying to be the first to unlock an element and gain a cultivation method that could propel them upwards in the world.

 Chapter 18: Fatty gets abducted ... again

    Ascension Star is a planet with a circumference of nearly 300,000 km. For reference, the Earth sits at a comfortable little 40,000 km, and Saturn is about 380,000 km. To help you realise just how big that is, the surface area of earth is about 510 million km<sup>2</sup>. The surface area of Ascension blows it out of the water at a whopping 28.6 billion km<sup>2</sup>.

    Now for a new comparison, take New Zealand. It¡¯s got a surface area of 260,000 km<sup>2</sup>. If the surface of the earth was covered in New Zealand¡¯s, it could fit approximately 1900 of them. This is an apt comparison because the continent James is presently inhabiting, is the New Zealand of its world.

    Curiously, that only makes it slightly smaller than the continent of Asia at a humble 15 million km<sup>2</sup>. This continent is called Atsunari and is one of the weakest most pathetic continents on Ascension. It would be more accurate to call it an island in comparison to other land masses on the planet, but it sits on its own tectonic plate, so gets to be called a continent.

    The primal spirit energy saturation of Atsunari is one of the lowest in the world. The only continent with less saturation is called ¡®Dead Island¡¯, which sounds pretty self-explanatory.

    Amusingly, the next highest saturation is a continent called Lakiola, which is 8 times bigger. It¡¯s situated on the opposite side of the planet and has almost 200 times the average saturation of Atsunari. For future reference, if the average saturation of the entire globe were 1, then Lakiola would be about 0.2, which would leave this bottom tier continent, Atsunari, at less than 0.001.

    Surrounding Atsunari was thousands of ¡®Islands¡¯, which in comparison to any isles of Earth, would be considered huge. Sections of these islands joined together to form Island Nations, which comprised nearly 8 separate nations. Interestingly a good majority of these islands were inhabited by sea-based spirit beasts and animals. Making the inhabitants the most adaptable on the continent.

    On the southern end of the mainland, was the largest ¡®Island Nation¡¯ in regards to land mass. This island was unique, in that it had no single faction in control but was instead overseen by a council of 5 separate sects, which all placed in the top 10 most influential factions of the continent.

    Regardless of that, the Empire James resided in, which has been mentioned a few times, is the Yori Empire, and is ... you guessed it, the puniest Empire on the continent, being so small as to be able to cover the surface area of Atsunari 75 times.

    Obviously, Atsunari doesn¡¯t have 75 tiny little Empires making it up. It had about 20 different powers, some small and some big, but none as small as Atsunari. The only reason they haven¡¯t been consumed by surrounding nations yet is because they were sandwiched right in the middle of the three biggest Nations on Atsunari.

    This was both a blessing and curse for the Yori Empire. A blessing, in that none of the three countries wanted to allow any of the others to take that little piece of middle ground and have some advantage over the other two. It was also a curse because it meant the Yori Empire could never become strong enough to contend for land with the three Great Nations and would never be able to expand.

    This left them all in a stalemate, and apart from Yori Empire, every border shared between them was constantly embroiled in skirmishes and an occasional all-out war.

    It wasn¡¯t even so much that the nations cared who took the Yori Empires land. It was more that it was used as a method for the wealthy families and merchants to trade with each other without worrying about the wars on the borders. Having the Yori empire, allowed the nations to exchange commodities and be at war simultaneously.

    To the leaders of the Great Nations, it was just a fun chess game and apart from truly rare resources or other such things, they rarely enforced any of their political might onto the Yori Empire. This basically left them in an equalised status quo, and generally, no one wanted to push the scales and tip the balance.

    Finally, we zoom in on Yori Empire. Yori was founded thousands of years ago, after they rapidly consumed adjacent lands, until finally, they united all the lands between the great nations, only to realise the great nations were already so big and powerful, any one of them could blow Yori to dust with less effort than a sneeze.

    Within the Empire¡¯s borders, were 7 Regions and the Capital City of Yansho. Yansho didn¡¯t rule an area, but rather an entire empire and was the home of the Imperial Clan. It was a city that spanned nearly a thousand square kilometres.

    Of the 7 regions, was the one James was in right now, the Kantsu province, which was, of course, one of the crappiest, taking up only 15,000 km<sup>2</sup>. Making it the second smallest. This section was run by the Kantsu Sect, as opposed to a Clan, as one would normally expect.

    The provincial capital was actually centred around the Kantsu Mountain on which the Kantsu Sect resided. The city was inherently named ... Kantsu City.

    Of the other major Cities in the region, there was only 2. One was Gau City, and the other was Felsine City. Gau City was as you¡¯d expect ... the 2<sup>nd</sup>biggest after Kantsu.

    So, all in all, not only was James on the 2nd shittiest continent in the world, but he was also in the 2nd shittiest city, of the 2<sup>nd</sup> shittiest region, within one of the shittiest empires. If someone wanted to describe this situation, it would be with two words. Fucking Shit.

    James and Skay had long since learnt a bit about these circumstances and were entirely aware that, if they ever wanted to become strong cultivator¡¯s, they would eventually have to get the fuck out of this empire. Unfortunately, they were also vaguely aware of just how difficult that would be.

    Before anything, to travel, you had to at least have some degree of power. In this empire, that level was the True Spirit Realm. If you reached Palace Realm, you would be only one realm below the elites of the empire, and you could most likely move to one of the surrounding nations without being mugged by someone¡¯s children.

    Interestingly, being the centre hub of trade for the three great nations made the Empire rather rich in resources, on the market anyway. The problem was that hardly any citizen of Yori could afford them. Apart from food and lesser spirit materials they didn¡¯t have much to trade and so the higher end of the market was mostly run entirely for traders and cultivators from the 3 Nations.

    This whole scenario was somewhat bizarre, because running through the middle of the empire was a magnificent mountain range, called the Jetsu Mountains, or if being referred to by locals, ¡®Fucked¡¯. This naming came about from the death toll that usually accompanied any trips into the mountain range. It was generally said that anyone who goes to the mountain range was fucked.

    In the neighbouring 3 great nations and the entire empire itself, this mountain range had the highest level of primal spirit energy saturation. It was the second highest point of saturation on the whole continent, reaching almost 2 times the global average. That made it nearly 2,000 times more potent than the spirit energy in the rest of Atsunari.

    It also meant that huge numbers of violent and powerful spirit beasts congregate on the mountains and not even the strongest of the three great nations dared to travel too far into the area, preferring to hunt and train around the outer areas, where the energy was thinner, and beasts were equally weaker.

    This meant that the only people who could frequently handle hunting, gathering or training on the mountains, were the strongest people on the continent. This was also why the empire remained so weak even with such a precious natural resource inside their borders.

    -Gau City-

    Fatty had been through a rough few days this past week. After leaving Lost Village, he arrived in Gau City about the same time as James completed the pacts with the Gau Clan. For the first few days, he completely forgot about his goal in coming to the city and was travelling around everywhere looking for any sort of work he could find.

    Fortunately, or perhaps, unfortunately, he once again got employed by the city stables. Fortunate, because he earnt more and had a place to sleep. Unfortunate, because he spent nearly two days shovelling the entire stables and replacing hay before he was paid. He was paid 20 coppers for two days work which was enough to afford him a stop in at a busy pub hosting an eating competition.

    The rules were simple. You pay 20 coppers and with a team of 4 people had to eat the entire leg of a cow. If you could accomplish this goal, you eat for free and win half the pot paid by competitors. Now for those of us who aren¡¯t aware that¡¯s nearly 5 kg of beef each person.

    It goes without saying that fatty entered alone. Actually, the owner of the pub was almost afraid to deny him after he saw the glowing hand. Most likely even without that, the way fatty looked at him and basically everyone around him as food made the announcer even more unlikely to refuse, due to fear of being consumed alive right here on the street.

    Fatty was hungry. So hungry that, in his entire life, he¡¯d never been more hungry. He actually tried to take a bite out of a horse in the stables and only failed because he wasn¡¯t nimble enough to catch it. He came to realise just how much his appetite had grown since coming here.

    It was okay in the grain fields because he was always eating. But now, having not eaten anything for two days, he was ready to just lean over and take a munch out of some random pedestrian. Proper decorum be damned!

    The announcer started to get the crowd fired up as about 10 groups of 4 and Fatty sat at a big table on the stage of the pub.

    The moment the fire-roasted leg was placed in front of him, Fatty gorged himself. He didn¡¯t stop until he started to feel a little bit full. Only at that point did he awaken from his frenzied face stuffing and come to know that not only had he devoured his 20kg of leg meat. He¡¯d eaten his competitors as well, hell the fat bastard even ate the bones.

    Of the 11 cows legs that had been brought out, fatty had eaten 9 of them. It was a mystery where exactly in his body it went because he didn¡¯t look any more bloated than usual as if his stomach was a bottomless pit.

    The whole pub was quiet, and not even the normally rowdier patrons made a sound. They all just stood and stared. After a short moment had passed the announcer reached out and through a sack towards Fatty with half the pot in it.

    He said nothing as Fatty made a rapid escape from the tavern. In all the 4 or 5 years that the bar had hosted this competition, no one had ever managed to finish the leg. Even between four people, there had never been a winner. How could he possibly imagine that some mysterious cultivator would appear and clean the table of 9 of them all by himself? Just what sort of sick cultivation did he practice?

    After that whole scene, a rumour began to spread around the city of the ¡®Red Baron¡¯. Aptly named because everyone imagines barons as gluttonous fatties and because of his red glowing hand. The rumours eventually became a folklore parents told their kids at night to make sure they behaved.

    ¡°The Red Baron will sneak into naughty children¡¯s rooms in the dead of night and gobble you up without a sound.¡± Or some other equally embellished fairy tale.

    After that whole incident, Fatty found his appetite equalling out a little, enough at least to not make a scene every time he went out for food. He continued working in the stable for the next few days and asking anybody he could about cultivators and cultivation.

    A couple days after the Red Baron incident Fatty started hearing rumours about a new guild that just opened in the city. Rumour had it that this guild was selling a method to start cultivating and to view your spirit realm. Most importantly, it was cheap enough that a good majority of the town could afford it if they worked hard enough.

    Fatty, being the conspiracy theorist he is, immediately began to imagine strange things. He was sure of the truth hidden behind this rumour, especially when he heard the guild was called the Dark Brotherhood.

    ¡®If that¡¯s not a flag for something dubious going on, what is?¡¯ With that thought in mind, Fatty cleaned himself up a little and made his way to the Dark Brotherhood to get to the bottom of whatever this conspiracy was. ¡®Because it¡¯s obviously some sort of conspiracy to entrap the common folk of the town!¡¯

    -Dark Brotherhood Guildhall-

    It was another busy day in the brotherhood Guildhall. Luckily, Jessy, had the staff managing most things, and Harvy was usually around to prevent any trouble by just taking off his bandages now and then and releasing a death aura. Although this created some negative stigma for the guild, everyone was far more concerned with missing a chance to cultivate.

    Funnily enough, even Xanzu and Jeng started sending out some disguised Sword Hall lackeys, trying to spread rumours about the meditation techniques stealing your soul. The only problem was that 8000 people had already marched through the doors of the guild and seemed okay, so these rumours generally died before they got a chance to spread.

    The whole city was going through a cultivator craze. After yesterday¡¯s huge intake, Jessy had to send someone out to get more Tree of the Elements branches so they could process more people at once. Today, they essentially filled half the arena, blasted them with hypno and then waited a half hour for them to meditate and build up some energy to test their affinity. Once that was done, they could leave.

    The guild hall was processing nearly 2000 people an hour. By lunch time they¡¯d already pushed through more citizens than they had the day before.

    In the foyer, Jessy was somewhat enjoying herself managing the receptionists and taking people¡¯s money. As they processed townspeople, loud arguing started at the doorway of the guild.

    The discord was from a group of very ne¡¯er-do-well looking individuals with black cloaks covering their bodies and hoods up covering their faces. The gentlemen they seemed to be having a problem with was a great big fat man in a dirty poncho.

    So fat was the man, that Jessy was sure he¡¯d crush her to death if he were on top. Then she decided it was strange that was her first thought upon seeing the man and chose to immediately forget it¡¯d ever occurred to her.

    Everyone in the foyer split like the red sea as Jessy approached the trouble makers. It wouldn¡¯t be a lie to say rumours of the Lady of Lust had already spread across the city almost as fast as the brotherhood selling cultivation for one silver.

    Everyone could recognise the iconic freckles peppered over her face, and the equally iconic figure tightly fit into the red cheongsam she had chosen to wear today. Not just that, though, whenever Jessy released her lust spirit energy an odd smell would permeate the surroundings and bring out the desires in everyone around her.

    The fact that she even exhibited some materialisation of spirit energy at the barrier realm showed just how powerful her lust really was. The only thing stronger than that feeling of desire she had, was her sheer fortitude and willpower to prevent herself from being ensnared by it and spending the rest of her life on her knees or back trying to fulfil it.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    As that sickly sweet and enchanting aroma filled their noses, the ne¡¯er-do-wells that had been causing a raucous finally stopped creating anything. Their entire face went white like they¡¯d just seen a ghost and their bodies stiffened like rigor-mortis had just set in. One of them, presumably the leader of this little gang turned to see the slightly smiling Jessy slowly approaching them.

    ¡°M-m-mistress Lust, p-please forgive this uncouth peasant from disturbing your Guildhall again.¡± Cried the leader then as quickly as he spoke he dropped to his knees and smashed his head into the ground in kowtow to the mistress of the brotherhood.

    Some might think this reaction to be a little bit extreme but this man knew better than anyone, after all, just yesterday he¡¯d had a run-in with the Lady of Lust and spent the rest of the time since then in agony. So powerful was the reaction he had from Jessy¡¯s spirit energy, he actually came until he bled from his cock.

    It wasn¡¯t until he managed to fall into a deep sleep that he escaped the pain of an endless orgasm. He felt lucky for two reasons when he awoke this morning. Firstly, because he actually managed to wake up at all. Secondly, because he still had feeling in the most important part of his anatomy.

    Jessy looked the man over for a moment then it suddenly clicked that she¡¯d seen this fellow causing trouble yesterday. ¡°Oh? I recognise you. They had to drag your body out of our Guildhall yesterday. How disappointing, to not learn your lesson the first time. This time, you might actually die if I touch you again, so I suggest you show yourself out without my assistance.¡±

    The leader of the little group simple grovelled further as his friends too dropped to their knees and tried to force their foreheads through the floor tiles, in an attempt to kowtow even lower. ¡°M-mistress. Please forgive this wastrel. I only found a suspicious character travelling around the crowds and asking strange questions about your Guild. He was trying to spread malicious rumours about you kidnapping common folk and telling everyone to be careful and keep some distance from your Guild.¡±

    After saying this little bit, another of the group¡¯s men spoke up. Clearly, this one had a silver tongue and was quite smooth even when talking to someone whom he believed could instantly kill him.

    ¡°Most illustrious and beautiful Lady, please forgive us lesser beings. Rumours of your grandeur and stunning visage have already travelled through the entire Empire. I can see now, that they are but trifling pleasantries in the face of your true magnificent semblance, which could no doubt aspire boys to be men and men to be heroes. I beg you, Lady Lust, to grant as mere peasants clemency.¡±

    Jessy was rather taken aback by these honeyed words and shortly after a beautiful blush lit up her face and caused everyone in the surroundings to groan and their knees to weaken.

    Deciding she would reward such pleasant words later, she turned to the fat man only to freeze in place. Staring back at her was the now chubbier than ever Fatty who seemed to be stunned into motionless.

    Oddly he wasn¡¯t particularly affected by Jessy¡¯s aroma but more concerned that he was seeing some sort of shape shifter using Jessy¡¯s image.

    The moment he saw her passing through the crowd, he was certain that this was some trick of the alien overlords of this prison planet ... or something.

    The situation rapidly changed when a loud, obnoxious laughter sounded out from the elevator. ¡°Hahaha! Holy Shit! Alan, you glorious fat bastard! Look at you, you look like you¡¯re a snack away from a heart attack.¡±

    Moments later a blue blur flashed through the crowd, and a man appeared next to Fatty wearing a light blue robe with the Guild Seal embroidered on the chest.

    When he arrived, he slapped a hand onto Fatty¡¯s shoulder and gave him an appreciating look. Fatty felt his guts clenching into a knot the moment he realised who was standing in front of him. ¡®No! No, it can¡¯t be him!¡¯

    Fatty felt a cold chill up his spine and was just about to start backing away when the hand on his shoulder snaked around to the other side of Fatty¡¯s shoulders pulling him forward like they were the best of friends.

    James had a rather sinister smile on his face as he walked forward with an arm slung over Fatty. Fatty wasn¡¯t sure if he should just immediately turn and run or continue on to find out what exactly was going on.

    Once the doors to the elevator closed and James had abducted Fatty from the hall, it was already too late for him to decide and he descended into the depths with a smiling James. Jessy finally woke up and began to get the ball rolling again. After organising the staff and calling Harvy to let him handle everything top side, she got in the elevator and went down to the level 2 lab.

    -The Lab-

    Jessy arrived from the elevator just in time to hear James explaining some things about how they got here. After that, he coaxed Fatty just a tiny bit and Fatty exploded into a long, detailed story of everything he¡¯d been through and all his theories about this world. After nearly an hour of this, the elevator gave a ¡®ding¡¯ and out stepped Hao and Anvil.

    Characteristically Skay and James would never reveal how to get to the lab with the elevator, but Harvy was informed to allow certain people down and was kind enough to send them down. Originally, they¡¯d planned to keep the underground a secret but after some thought decided it would be acceptable to allow a select few into the labs. For the moment at least, they trusted Anvil and Hao. Song also was trusted enough to visit. James was insistent, however, that no Sword Hall member would ever step through those elevator doors.

    Seeing someone new in the lab telling some enthralling tale, the pair stopped just outside the elevator until the almost asleep James noticed them and beckoned them over completely ignoring the progress of Fatty¡¯s story. He¡¯d basically not been listening anyway.

    ¡°Anvil, we¡¯ve got something exciting to show you. Oh, and I guess let me also introduce another stepper from our world who must have come through after us. Anvil, Hao this is Fatty Alan. Fatty, meet the second elder of the hall of forging and the Clan Head.¡±

    Then not even giving them the chance to acquaint with each other or process that another odd stepper had appeared, James grabbed Skay and Anvil then dragged them over to the workbench.

    After a few minutes, they¡¯d set up their little energy measurer. Then pointed Anvil to the graph. ¡°See this line here. It¡¯s flat now sitting at 28 times average. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve noticed already, but the spirit energy here is unnaturally thick, right? Come take a look at this.¡±

    Pulling Anvil again he led him over to a tarp laid out on the floor covering a 5m by 5m area. He then bent down and pulled the tarp back to reveal the glowing array pattern they¡¯d painted there last night. Then with a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face, he turned to Anvil. ¡°Well, how about it?¡±

    Anvil was turning red and shaking like he had the fever. After a bit, a low chuckle escaped his lips which rapidly devolved into mad laughter. He was starting to sound like Skay and James when he laughed now.

    ¡°Heh heha hehhaha haHaHAHAHA! You fucking genius madmen! This is unbelievable!¡± His eyes shone like a torch was lit behind them, and he spun to stare at the graph. ¡°28? You mean ... this room contains spirit energy 28 times the average? My god, do realise what you¡¯ve unlocked here?¡±

    James and Skay shared a bright look then Skay flicked a button, and another line appeared on the graph. It now showed a chart over the last 12 hours and was labelled ¡®arena¡¯ and was still steadily rising ever so slowly.

    When Anvil saw this, his mind boggled. ¡°57 times standard? Does that mean that ... upstairs you¡¯ve made an even bigger one than this?¡±

    Skay gave a nod and started to explain. ¡°Not just larger, it¡¯s made with an almost pure catalyst. Even just standing out in the plaza up there, the standard is sitting at about 9 or 10 on our present scale. On the ground floor of the Guildhall, it¡¯s around 25. The entire arena level is at 57 times, and still slowly rising.¡±

    Hao by now had also caught up with their conversation and mostly understood what was going on. His mind shook, and he could hardly contain the trembling of his hands. ¡°How? How does it work, how can we create this?¡±

    James had already expected this. He knew they¡¯d want to know how. With a grin, he leant back on the bench and crossed his arms. ¡°Well, I can tell you right now that you¡¯re going to be disappointed. We believe this is the result of my element spirit energy, the type of catalyst and the nature of array patterns.¡±

    Skay then continued on after James. ¡°We believe array patterns may respond rather well to lightning energy because they act like a similar system we had on Earth. That¡¯s only a theory though. We still understand hardly anything regarding how they fucking work and we still need to do some experiments and test reactions from different affinities.¡±

    When he finished, he fished a jar of LS3 out of a box. He then looked around for a test subject. James had a pretty good idea what he was thinking, and his head swivelled to stare directly at Fatty. The grin of a wolf eyeing a sheep spread on his face and he marched over and pulled Fatty back next to the array.

    The moment Fatty stepped near the array his red glowing hand began to shine brightly with a strange bluish light. Fatty himself didn¡¯t even know what was going on so you can imagine how everyone else reacted. James shot back away like a ghost, grabbing Skay in passing and Jessy dived behind a workbench. Hao and Anvil, seeing the trio¡¯s reactions, immediately followed suit and started diving behind cover.

    After nearly a full minute the light suddenly dimmed until everything was normal again. The startled group slowly poked their heads up only to see Fatty sat on the ground rubbing his belly like he¡¯d just gorged himself full.

    When they saw this, James¡¯ and Skay¡¯s head made a united swish as they looked at the graph on the computer that was rapidly dropping. The line for the arena had dropped nearly 10 points. The line for the lab had fallen all the way back to only 4 times standard.

    James was expecting to use Fatty to break the array on the floor, then see a massive explosion of all that energy it had built up. Instead, he witnessed Fatty ... eating it? Yeap, definitely eating. He even looked like a fat man who¡¯d just ate his fill.

    James wasn¡¯t sure how he should feel right now. Should he be angry that he didn¡¯t get to observe the test he¡¯d wanted to run, or should he be excited that he¡¯d just found something new and interesting to play with?

    His eyes stared at Fatty¡¯s hand that had returned to its strange red glowing. Then he and Skay advanced at the same time as if possessed and of a single mind. Skay turned into a bright streak of light and James blurred and shot forward like lightning.

    The now delightfully full feeling Fatty got a rude shock as a flash of light appeared and began to wrap his hands together with an odd wire. Then a moment later a hand fell onto his shoulder from behind, and Fatty turned to see the wolf ... err, James rather, with a bright smile like he was greeting his best friend.

    When they made eye contact, he felt a sudden jolt and his entire body froze up and grew numb as it started jerking and spasming.

    After another short moment, Fatty was thrown, unconscious, into one of the odd rooms in the lab and the duo returned to the array discussing something in a very secretive manner.

    Anvil and Hao both wisely chose to say nothing and Jessy for a first time opted to ignore it all as if nothing had happened. She just turned on her heel and said she¡¯d ¡°go watch over the hall¡± as she strolled into the elevator and pushed a button pretending she never even saw Fatty appear on their doorstep.

    James walked back over to the array pattern and placed a hand on it. ¡°Well, looks like he ate everything. Even my lightning energy is gone. This is good though. It means we can just try and put a different spirit energy in now. Oh! Actually, let¡¯s try something else. You remember that gel you made for the battery pack of the arc cannon. Technically that stuff is element neutral and just sucks up any element. Perhaps it would be an efficient catalyst for other elements instead of lightning.¡±

    Skay started looking through boxes until he¡¯d grabbed an old battery pack and popped the top of it. He poured the thick grey gel into a jar, and they proceeded to paint two small arrays for testing. One was painted with LS3 and the other with what Skay referred to as Power Gel and labelled as PG.

    James powered up both arrays simultaneously, and they quickly found their LS3 was about three times as efficient as the Power Gel. He then used his other two elements revealing significantly worse results with LS3. The PG remained roughly the same, but the LS3 dropped to a quarter of its previous level, so half that of the power gel.

    This proved a few things. Firstly, the array patterns efficiency or power was dependent on the synergy of the spirit energy and the catalyst being used. Anvil was now joining in and throwing around theories with the two of them about array patterns. He made a good point that arrays were made to serve specific purposes and often could only be created using specific energies.

    Suddenly the trio of geeks were throwing theories every which way, and Hao was just feeling left behind. Once it got to this stage, he decided it was about time they discussed what they came to discuss.

    ¡°Ahem! Before we delve any more into arrays, we should talk about the Sword Hall.¡± At Hao¡¯s reminder, Anvil gave a wry chuckle and began to explain what Hao was referring to.

    ¡°Ehehheh, yes erm ... apologies, it seems I grew a little too excited for a moment. Unfortunately, the Elders of the Sword Hall are encouraging us to remind you that in our defence pact, you agreed to train with the Clan until spirit realm.¡±

    James cupped his chin for a short moment and then gave a bright smile. ¡°Well we decided to train with your Clan, but we never set a time or place, just that we would train until the True Spirit realm. How about this. If they¡¯re so keen, we will allow for some of your disciples and Elder Grace to come and train us in our arena. Let¡¯s make it ... every third day, we will train together. Inform Grace, we can start tomorrow, and there will be about 6 members of the Brotherhood in attendance for our first lessons.¡±

    Skay made a strange face when James said 6 but didn¡¯t think much about it. Perhaps someone interesting had applied to join the guild, and James was already counting them as well.

    Anvil and Hao passed a glance then gave a nod. The moment that business was over Anvil launched back into the research the trio had just started. Seeing them about to get absorbed in study again, Hao made a wry smile then made his farewells saying he¡¯d make an effort to visit again shortly.

    Once James had sent Hao up in the lift, the little group gathered around the test bench and began to discuss, test and research everything they could on arrays and patterns.

    Array patterns were a fickle business and more often than not an array made by someone with little experience would result in failure or backlash. Even remembering all its small parts would be difficult for beginners. As they played with different patterns and filled in details to the computers, they began to discover just how it was they operated.

    On Ascension, it was essential array law that all patterns are made up of three parts, array pattern masters would teach this simple rule to all their apprentices and would follow it up with ¡°Each one is equally as important as the others, and no valid array can operate without them all. James and Skay were both of the opinions that it should be considered 4 steps of design and construction.

    Traditionally the first part is the Foundation. Foundation patterns are created in a number of ways, but they all have one thing in common. They are the base print of an array and assist with everything to do with power. Foundation patterns that the trio of researchers had discovered from the Gau Clans collection only numbered 4 types so far. Collection, Attraction, Storage and Dissipation.

    The second part was the Support Structure. Support patterns were somewhat more complex and slightly smaller than foundation designs. In the lab, they¡¯d discovered that the support¡¯s purpose was to control, limit and change the flow, quantity, type and quality of spirit energy. This kind of pattern was usually interconnected with the foundation pattern in complex and bizarre ways.

    The third and usually final step was the Lore patterns, and its job and construction was vastly more complicated than foundation and support combined. The Lore patterns were more like a language of symbols, and they were usually drawn onto both the support and foundation models and were also used to connect certain parts of the other two patterns. These symbols set the values for the foundation and support patterns or connected them with certain limitations and expectations. These symbols numbered in the thousands and of them all, the trio could only define about 30 of them.

    Normally that was it for the description of how an array was built but James and Skay both agreed that there should be a fourth stage. The Detail stage. This stage was the first and the final stage and involved the design, development, and tweaking of an array pattern. From there previous experiment, they¡¯d learnt that the catalyst used also affects the efficiency of operation. So, that too was added as a part of the Detail phase.

    Initially, the stepper duo had trouble wrapping their head around some of this until one of them came up with the analogy of a computer. They started referring to the foundation patterns as hardware, the support pattern as the operating system and the Lore pattern as the computer code.

    The Hardware supply¡¯s the power. The operating system controls the power and runs the code, and the code tells the other two exactly how much power to make or what power to control and what exactly it¡¯s supposed to be doing with it.

    James felt another analogy would be a PLC (programmable logic controller). The Foundation would be the power, the support would be the programmable CPU and the switches and timers, and the lore would be the logic circuit used to tell everything else how to work properly.

    By the time they got to this stage, the lab was covered in hundreds of different patterns and even a few finished arrays. There was also a large black area in the centre of the lab where it looked like something had exploded. Having been madly researching the entire day, James didn¡¯t realise the time until a series of visions of Exsue doing a ridiculous number of inappropriate things to James suddenly flooded his head.

    The moment that happened James body did two things. The first was a natural response any hot-blooded male would have. He got a massive erection. The second was James¡¯ natural response to sudden changes in the situation, his face went blank and emotionless.

    Skay seeing this drastic change, began glancing at various test tubes littering the bench to make sure they were properly closed. Anvil didn¡¯t even appear to notice, so absorbed was he by the computer program Skay was showing him, that was displaying thousands of patterns and trying to catalogue them based on what they¡¯d discovered so far.

    James scratched his head and gave a loud sigh, sounding somewhat forlorn. Then he marched over to Little Blue¡¯s room. Flicking the switch to power down the lightning, he opened the door to go in but was stunned to find no rodent anywhere.

    The next moment he felt a sharp pain in his ankle and spun to see the little blue furball biting into his leg. When they made eye contact, Little Blue started running around everywhere playfully trying to get James to chase him.

    It wouldn¡¯t be wrong to say that James had somewhat grown attached to their test subject. He¡¯d had dogs and cats and a whole number of other odd pets, but of them all, little blue was the most unique. He gave another sigh and with a little remorse went to catch little blue one last time.

    After a good hour of chasing around the lab, James quickly found he could no longer keep up. He already had trouble gaining any advantage over Little Blue before, but now that the bloody rodent had spent 10 days sleeping in and eating lightning, he¡¯d grown even more powerful. It had taken nearly 2 hours and the Assistance of both Skay and Anvil before they¡¯d caught the little bastard.

    Now that the game was finished, Blue gave a contented sigh and climbed onto James¡¯ shoulder for a nap. Seeing this, James just looked at him for a long moment. Then after another loud sigh, he turned to the now very curious pair that were wondering what was going on. ¡°I¡¯ve got to go and meet with someone. A ... err ... let¡¯s say a potential guild member. It shouldn¡¯t take long, I¡¯ll be back soon.¡±

 Chapter 19: Release the Dragon!

    -Monolith at Midnight-

    Setting the scene of this romantic rendezvous, or rather, this prince rescuing the princess moment, the night¡¯s sky was beautiful.

    The dual moons were high in the starry heavens, bathing the world beneath them in a calming and harmonious mellow glow. The stars shone in strange and bizarre patterns, like ripples being created by rain drops. Not a cloud could be seen

    Apart from James, garbed in his new handsome light blue robe and the little blue ferret sleeping soundly on his shoulder, the courtyard was empty. The glow of the moons reflected off the shiny surface of the monolith and the clear fresh scent of the night¡¯s air pervaded the city.

    In contradiction of this romantically inspiring scenery, James looked rather distressed. His distress came from two separate issues that were intuitively linked together.

    The first one was Little Blue. He didn¡¯t really want to sacrifice his little buddy to free some creepy stalker from a giant rock. This had nothing to do with having developed any significant emotional bond with Little Blue, but more from his possessive nature and his lack of desire to part with anything that he considered ¡®his¡¯.

    The second reason stemmed from the ¡®creepy stalker¡¯ linked to the first reason. Just the way he referred to the focus of this worry is self-explanatory in his reluctance to create it. On top of that, once he freed her, he had to protect her. Without realising it, he¡¯d already considered her a problem child that would bring him endless headaches.

    However, conflicting with these worries was his desire to eliminate or escape any potentially mind reading entities. This was the sole reason for his decision to free the dragon. Well ... that, and if he didn¡¯t, he¡¯d most likely be leaving this city as ashes on the wind.

    Although this coincided with his desire to eventually leave Gau City and explore the world, there was a particular part that eliminated this option. The being ashes part.

    So here he was, standing in front of a rock, preparing to make a sacrifice of a harmless, cute little animal and summon the spirit of a dragon. If anyone else were to hear about what he was planning to do, he¡¯d surely be burnt at the stake for being a demon craft.

    Letting out a final long sigh James approached the rock and placed his palm against it. After a short discussion with Exsue, he returned to his body and started walking around the monolith looking for something on its surface.

    As he observed the monolith¡¯s array patterns, he was secretly shocked. He¡¯d only just stepped into the world of arrays, but he thought he¡¯d at least be able to discern the different parts or some of the code.

    To his disappointment, he was incapable of even telling which parts were the foundation and which were support. Even the Lore patterns looked foreign to the handful he¡¯d seen in the last 12 hours.

    After half an hour of looking over bits of the array, he found what he was looking for. Naturally, it was in the hardest place to reach, nearly right in the centre of the rock, 20 meters up in the air.

    James just gave another woebegone sigh then after putting Little Blue on the ground he began to pump as much wind energy as he possibly could into his body. Soon the gentle breeze of the night turned into a gale around James as he began to release spirit energy from his body.

    This was how barrier realm practitioners usually manifested spirit power outside of their bodies. Although it could manifest, the moment it left the body all control of it would be lost, so generally they created what they called martial techniques to harness it properly.

    Once you reach the True Spirit realm, you usually gain enough control to influence it once it¡¯s left your body, but again, it¡¯s not actual control and more like gentle guidance.

    This was the first time James had tried to use a martial technique that wasn¡¯t just injecting his power into something else. The moment the wind picked him up, he flipped over forwards and face planted into the side of the monolith.

    As if face planting wasn¡¯t embarrassing enough for James, a vision of it happening to him on repeat accompanied by a girl¡¯s laughter was sent from Exsue. James was a proud man, and face planting it was unacceptable for him. Having someone witness his stuff-up and tease him for it only fuelled his determination further.

    He climbed to his feet and this time, very slowly, began to pour wind energy into his body. Instead of allowing it to create the lightening effect it normally had, he started with the upwards gale force. Then he gradually increased his weightlessness until he felt himself barely still putting pressure on the surface of the ground.

    Even though only taking a few minutes, just getting to this stage used almost half of his spirit energy. Finally, he began to apply a wind coming from the surface of his feet, and his body gradually rose off the ground.

    James made no rush to increase his speed and consciously prevented himself from making any sharp movements or moving his centre of gravity. After another 5 minutes, he was floating in the air in a wobbly unstable manner right next to the middle of the monolith.

    Having reached his goal, his hand shot out and touched a particular pattern as he pumped lightning energy into it. After a few moments, the design was lit up like a flare on the side of the monolith. Before the ache of simultaneously using two elements caused him to pass out, James let his body fall back to the ground with the weightless wind energy preventing him from any damage on landing.

    Ever since he¡¯d started cultivating he¡¯d never used two different energies to such an extent at the same time. His body felt empty, and his remaining spirit energy was roiling about in a frenzy. It felt like he¡¯d just run a marathon and then been clubbed in the head with a brick.

    Before he had the chance to rest his weary body, an impatient vision flashed through his mind, and James gave a miserable groan as he pulled his body up. He then stumbled over to the sleepy, confused-looking little blue ferret and picked him up. Then in much the same manner as Skay had done the first time he met Little Blue, he launched him through the air towards the monolith like a furry little projectile.

    Little Blue very quickly realised something was terribly wrong and let out a hissing scream moments before impact. To both the rodent¡¯s and James¡¯ surprise, instead of the ¡®thunk¡¯ they¡¯d been expecting, Little Blue was sucked into the rock as if he was landing in a puddle of water. With a simple ¡®plop¡¯ the furry little bastard disappeared.

    Before James had the chance to grow curious as to what exactly was supposed to happen next, the array patterns on the surface of the monolith lit up and brightened the entire city. He didn¡¯t even consider sticking around to check out what the hell was happening next and made a strategic retreat to a hidden corner of the courtyard.

    The last thing he needed was people wanting to lynch him for releasing a dragon into the city. Even if they didn¡¯t know there was a dragon in the big rock now, they would undoubtedly soon find out.

    As James hid away, the monolith continued to ramp up its power output then started humming and vibrating. If there were anyone in the city who wasn¡¯t awake yet, they soon would be. Even the air felt like it was vibrating.

    As this technicolour show grew more intense, enormous storm clouds began forming in the sky as if they were just materialising out of thin air. Great claps of thunder rang out for tens of kilometres and peels of lightning danced through the storm clouds like playful snakes, lighting up the entire city and all the land within the jurisdiction of Gau City.

    Anywhere that was within the range of the Monolith could hear and see the results of this catastrophic level natural disaster. Rain started pouring down like a torrential flood falling from the heavens and the lightning being generated in the clouds cut the sky into ribbons as it struck down like Thor¡¯s Hammer onto the landscape below.

    Trees, buildings, livestock ... basically, anything that looked like it would be amusing to obliterate with lightning was engulfed in a plasmery streak of death.

    James just watched both amused and horrified. Amused because watching lighting hit stuff is always a fun show. Horrified, because at this rate the city would be ashes once this crazy bitch was done with it. Everything he¡¯d just spent the last ten days building would become pointless.

    As these conflicting emotions battled within him, the clouds in the sky seethed and contracted as if taking in a huge breath. James suddenly got a vision of him covering his eyes. Then without any suspense, a lightning bolt nearly 10 metres wide fell onto the monolith, and the resulting light was like staring at a flash grenade going off. Everyone¡¯s vision everywhere turned white.

    The moment this flash descended, James sprinted into the now rather populated courtyard and arrived next to the monolith shard, just in time to catch the falling body of Exsue. The moment she was in his arms, James deployed what remaining lightning energy he still had and disappeared into the city like a thief in the night.

    Standing in the centre of town and rubbing their eyes and staring dumbfounded at the monolith, was the Gau Clan¡¯s Head and three of the Elders. Along with them were some of the heavy hitters from other families and guilds in town. About 30 people in total just stood there stupefied after rubbing their eyes.

    No one was exactly sure what to make of these strange events. Even more confusing was that everything just returned to normal after that last singular strike. Well, almost everything, some houses and trees were still on fire, and several harmless unsuspecting cows and pigs had been replaced by small craters filled with wet ash.

    An emergency town meeting was to be called with all the major Clan Heads and Guildmasters, to try and figure out exactly what happened and to make preparations if the monolith was damaged.

    Something Exsue never told James, was that the monolith didn¡¯t just alter people¡¯s language. It also had the critical job of protecting the city from hordes of spirit beasts encroaching into it.

    Typically, a town with a monolith would be protected to a certain range. For example, the Gau cities monolith protected a radius of about 20 km and altered language to 35 km. Which covered a decent area mostly utilised for grain production.

    The only other monolith in the region was in Kantsu City, which the Kantsu Sect had appropriated from elsewhere and placed on their Sect¡¯s mountain. Curiously, the range of that monolith¡¯s protection was significantly greater than Gau¡¯s, sitting at a large 32km radius and influencing language to nearly 50 km. This covered almost a third of the whole region.

    The limiting factor on how far a monolith¡¯s range generates to normally has no bearing to the spirit locked inside it, because they¡¯re all abnormally powerful. They can support and operate in a radius moving into the thousands of kilometres, and some frightening spirits can work even further than that.

    The real limitation is created by the monoliths array patterns and is generally dependent on how many cultivators reside within close proximity. Now in saying all this, the monolith doesn¡¯t prevent spirit beasts from wandering into its area of operation. Instead, it only prevents large movements or stupidly powerful beasts from entering.

    The reason for this is tied with the story of its creator, but regardless of why it doesn¡¯t just stop them all, the fact remains that it only prevents the powerful ones or the hordes from encroaching. This naturally means that should the monolith stop working correctly, all the spirit beasts living out in the wilds can just march straight in and eat everything ... and everyone.

    Of course, that means the big wigs of Gau City will need to start employing countermeasures should the monolith have just been damaged.

    -The Lab-

    James walked into the lab incredibly worn out. His body and mind were tired from the expenditure of spirit energy and the price he had to pay for using wind and lightning simultaneously. The moment he walked out of the elevator with the sleeping Exsue, he dropped to his knees.

    Skay and Anvil, who had been down here playing with arrays, remained entirely unaware of the happenings up in the city. When James slumped out of the elevator, they both passed a look then ran over to check him out.

    After a quick look over, Skay pronounced him still healthy, then just to be sure he collected a few suspiciously named tonics from a workbench. Starting with ¡®Harbinger 2.3¡¯ and moving through to ¡®Reserectuleakianus 1.8¡¯ Skay placed them all on the floor in preparation to feed them to James.

    The moment he took the stopper out of one of them, James shot up from the floor and rapidly backed up against the wall. He looked like he was still passed out and this was somehow a natural reaction like scratching an itch in your sleep.

    The moment he was a good distance from Skay his body slumped to the floor again. Skay just stared wide eyed for a moment then gave a dissatisfied ¡®tsk¡¯. ¡°Damnit boy, even in your sleep you¡¯re a massive pussy.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes then wandered over to the strange girl that James had carried in. Just as he was preparing to change his test subject the elevator gave another ding.

    As the door opened, Harvy came into the lab with Song in tow. Choosing to completely ignore whatever Skay was doing to some unconscious girl on the floor of his lab, Song turned to Anvil. ¡°There¡¯s been some kind of incident in the city. We¡¯re not sure what exactly happened, but the monolith¡¯s array patterns are starting to dim. Clan Head is calling for an emergency town meeting.¡±

    Song then looked around quickly and saw James sitting against the wall with lazy eyes. ¡°Junior Brother James, although your guild isn¡¯t a big one in the city, your members input at this meeting may be helpful. I hope you¡¯ll consider joining us.¡±

    James just gave a very lethargic nod, as if just doing that simple action made him even more tired. His voice then trailed out lazily as if sleep talking. ¡°We¡¯ll be there. I¡¯ve been out doing some training and overdid it so we may be a bit late.¡±

    Song just gave a solemn nod then moved towards the elevator with Anvil. ¡°Very well, we¡¯ll meet you at the Mansion.¡±

    Harvy punched some buttons in the elevator, and the duo of Elders disappeared up to the surface. Skay had an odd look on his face as he looked at James. ¡°Boy, have you been playing around in the city and broken something important?¡±

    James just beckoned him over and weekly said ¡°Arena¡± then slumped onto his shoulder. Skay shook his head and carried him into the elevator muttering things about young people and breaking everything they touch.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    After meditating for about 10 minutes on the first level of the guild, James felt a hundred times better. If he had to describe spirit energy depletion, then he¡¯d probably use the word ¡®withdrawal¡¯. He didn¡¯t fully realise just how dependent his body was to spirit energy once he¡¯d adapted to always having it.

    Once he was ready, he went downstairs to collect Exsue and moved her to a nice safe location. Namely, the Lightning Chamber. After dumping her on the ground, he assembled the Guild members and went to visit the Gau Clan¡¯s mansion.

    -Gau Clan Mansion-

    In the main hall of the mansion sat about 36 people from 4 Families and 8 Guilds. 5 People from each household were present, along with two people from each major guild. Standing around the crowded table these people sat at, was a handful of attendants and servants.

    As James walked in accompanied by his guild mates they could hear the loud arguing and shouting of some people all competing to see who could out-yell the others. The two largest offenders were a gentleman in teal robes with a cauldron and a phial embroidered on his back, surprisingly the other one was the usually reserved Hao who seemed to be trying to cuss the other man to death.

    Said other man looked about the same age as Hao and his most predominate feature was a messy long beard that was the same dark brown as his long hair.

    The first thing James noticed on closer inspection was he could barely even see the man¡¯s face. So messy and chaotic was the man¡¯s hair and beard, it all just looked like someone had cut the afro off another man then stuffed it over the guy¡¯s head. Like some kind of hair helmet.

    As they trio of the Brotherhood entered the hall, everyone started to quiet down somewhat. To say they¡¯d been expecting someone else would be a lie. Because apart from the 4 families and 8 guilds they didn¡¯t believe anyone else in this city was on equal footing with them.

    James, Skay and Jessy acted completely oblivious to the stares and sudden quiet and just strolled up and casually sat on some cushions at the table. After taking a moment to prolong the quiet by making themselves at home and sipping some tea James looked up, and as if only just now realising everyone was looking at them he glanced around with a shocked expression.

    ¡°Oh, were you waiting for us? Sorry about that, busy, busy, busy. I¡¯m sure you know how it is. So, what¡¯s all this about a town meeting?¡±

    Hao and the Gau Elders all just had a wry smile on their faces. Generally, for anyone under palace realm they would show some sincerity to seniors in a situation like this. Customarily, at the minimum, they would greet everyone with a bow.

    To add fuel to that fire they just walked in here like they owned the place and acted like they hadn¡¯t even noticed all these other influential people.

    Making matters even worse, they were late.

    The afro faced man looked stunned. He didn¡¯t know how to process this situation and wasn¡¯t sure how to respond. To confuse matters for him further, someone from the Gau Clan should be jumping up and down right now. Especially because of this huge lack of etiquette in their own home. It was like a slap in the face.

    As if to entirely oppose that idea, they all just had forced stiff smiles on their faces and seemed completely comfortable with these people acting this way. If they were associated with the clan somehow, then afro man would be the first person to start causing trouble for them.

    But if they were against the clan in some way he wanted them to side with him because they seemed to easily be able to apply some sort of pressure to the clan.

    Spending almost an entire minute processing this thought he lost the chance to respond to the situation when the Guildmaster of the Builder¡¯s Guild put a huge smile on his face and started to chat with the newcomers.

    ¡°Hah! James, you mad little bastard, good to see you coming out and introducing yourself to the rest of the city occasionally. Seems we¡¯re in a bit of a pickle this time.¡±

    James just plastered a friendly smile on and returned the banter. ¡°Hahaha, Toller you perverted old goat, thought you¡¯d be down on your knees at Madam Sue¡¯s about this time. So, what¡¯s going on? Must be pretty big if they could pull you off the Madam¡¯s lap for it.¡±

    Another shock blew everyone away as they sat there trying to process what the hell was going on. ¡®Toller? Is that his real name? Who is this guy to call Toller like their old friends?¡¯

    Hao¡¯s wry grin just grew more vexing as he chose to take this silent moment to introduce the new people. ¡°Everyone, this is Junior Brother James and his companions from the Dark Brotherhood. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve heard of them opening their doors recently, and if you haven¡¯t, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve heard of the group that is providing cultivation techniques that even the commoners can learn instantly.¡±

    Suddenly everyone in the room had a light bulb moment. ¡®This was them? The group of researchers who developed a way to teach someone instant meditation?¡¯ Even the Clans and Guilds were envious of this meditation technique.

    Amongst the factions present, the highest-level meditation technique was at the common palace class. Which amongst meditation techniques in the world, placed it at third last.

    The only ones below that were common mortal, barrier and spirit. If the Brotherhood¡¯s method were to be ranked, it would be a practitioner spirit class, placing it an entire realm above the rest in the city and skipping about 2 other stages of technique.

    The only reason it wasn¡¯t higher, was that a meditation technique contained the knowledge of the natural laws and could be taught to others once you gain an understanding of it.

    Unlike with other techniques that work through self-hypnosis, theirs works on implant hypnosis.

    This meant two things, firstly, you don¡¯t have to chant to enter your spirit realm. Making it instant. Secondly, you can learn it in a comparatively tiny moment. Generally, it could take weeks, months or even years to properly memorise a meditation technique. In addition to everything else, anyone could learn it and use it, even commoners with horrible talent.

    To clarify, the known system of technique classification in Atsunari had 3 realms, each with 4 stages. The realms from lowest to highest are the Common, Practitioner and Master realms. The Stages were Mortal, Barrier, Spirit and Palace.

    This classification system was used for every technique in the three primary cultivation systems. Meditation, Breathing and Martial. If their meditation techniques were split into the meditation and the natural laws, then that would create a fourth group, Control.

    Now that everyone knew who they were, they suddenly realised why these people were acting so cocky. Even they had been sending them disciples to learn this meditation technique, so naturally, these people had the right to be somewhat arrogant, even here.

    Finally, Hao decided to get the ball rolling again before everyone got distracted from the most important issue. ¡°Junior James, we¡¯ve gathered everyone together to discuss a coming catastrophe. Tonight, around half an hour ago, a freak lightning storm developed over the city and struck the monolith.¡±

    Once this was said everyone began to fill the trio in on why this was a problem. Sporadically they¡¯d argue about whether or not the monolith had even been damaged but they all unanimously agreed that, if it was damaged, then it could lead to a horrible event in the city¡¯s near future.

    James made no great contributions to the discussions, choosing instead to sip tea and make some greetings with the big players in town. Although he made no contribution, Skay was madly throwing out ideas for how to handle the situation.

    One thing James did notice during the meeting was that the afro faced man always opposed Hao on everything. Even when Hao suggested they get some fresh tea brought in, afro face rejected the proposal. Everyone else wanted tea and didn¡¯t particularly care about his opinion, but it showed just how childish this man¡¯s opposition to Hao was.

    James learnt a few new names and faces. All the Guilds seemed very friendly with him, which was odd because he was already advertising taking ¡®any¡¯ jobs. Even if it were a job, another guild would usually take on. He was suspicious of this behaviour, but they made no overt threats of extortion tonight, so he put it to the back of his mind.

    On the other hand, the three Clans seemed rather hostile towards the trio from the brotherhood. James just put this down as them disliking someone their competitors were backing.

    Of the thirty-six people present, James already knew 7. The first 5 were the members of the Gau Clan, and the other two were the Guildmaster and vice-master of the builder¡¯s guild. These two he¡¯d met previously when they¡¯d been building their Guildhall, and he¡¯d gone drinking with both of them regularly over that ten day period.

    Toller, the Guildmaster, was a tall hairy man that looked like a bear and was built like a brick shithouse. He seemed to somehow have hair on every visible part of his body. The vice-master was amusingly his wife and was an equally tall blonde who looked like some Nordic Viking, her name was Vellaris.

    During the night, he also got along well with the merchant¡¯s guild, the Master of which was named Haso and was a short, bald gentleman with a huge snoz. His nose seemed to take up almost half his face it was so big.

    He also met the Guildmaster of the Shield Maidens and the Sword Masters. It would be more precise to call these two guilds sects because they both focused entirely on cultivation and battle. As opposed to a guild they were a school of thought and didn¡¯t really participate in anything but fighting spirit beasts and bandits.

    The Sword Maiden¡¯s leader was Kelsy a tidy brunette with a body so fit and toned it rivalled Jessy¡¯s and then had a bit more. She wasn¡¯t a muscle freak or something, but every muscle and curve were defined as if carved from stone.

    As if to contradict the nature of a sword master, the leader of that sect was just called Tiny, and he was a tiny little man who was a foot away from being classified as a midget. He was so short that the sword on his back was almost the same length as his body.

    The last four guilds were the tailor guild, farmer guild, storage guild and explorer¡¯s guild. Of them, the last two were the most interesting.

    The Storage Guild was more of an Imperial branch placed here to oversee and purchase the massive stockpiles of golden grain that Gau City specialised in. It was their job to pay for any extra grain the city doesn¡¯t need (which is shit tonnes) and organise storage and delivery of it to the capital or any cities in need.

    Being a branch of the Imperial family one would think they held some sway in the politics of the city. In truth, they were really only an honorary Imperial Branch. The Imperial Family in the capital sends their branch families to places like this to ¡®oversee¡¯ certain duties. It was more a banishment to prevent any usurpers contending with the main bloodline for power.

    This also meant that they didn¡¯t particularly care if these people were to disappear one day. Say for example they tried to push their weight around in the city to have things their own way ... if they suddenly vanished, then the head family wouldn¡¯t blink an eye. It was rather common for this to happen.

    The Explorer¡¯s Guild was the most interesting guild in the city in James¡¯ opinion. Although they were a guild, they didn¡¯t so much attract jobs from people. Rather they catalogued and mapped unknown regions in the Katsu territory. They then sell and trade this information for money and resources.

    The most interesting thing was that there is apparently a lot of unexplored area around the Empire. This was because spirit beasts tend to kill any wayward adventurers that wander too far from the garden path. Explorers tend to have short life spans in comparison to other guild¡¯s cultivators.

    More interesting was that the branch here was their smallest branch and was primarily here because the Jetsu Mountain range bordered on the Kantsu region and was the weakest in this province, making it the easiest to investigate.

    As the morning suns poked up over the horizon, the group of influentials in the Gau mansion left to return to their own business. In the end, they achieved nothing of significance. Gau Clan wanted everyone to send out a few people to scout the area around the city and keep an eye on any beast sightings.

    Unfortunately, the other three clans were generally opposed to anything the Gau Clan suggested, so when the moons set and the day grew bright, the Gau family became responsible for everything.

    Some might say that¡¯s only natural, considering they were the most influential in the city. The problem was, they weren¡¯t so much more powerful that they could release those sorts of resources or manpower on a whim.

    Everyone was acutely aware that if a beast horde appeared, then every commoner in the city would most likely die, but none cared too much. The other Clans wanted more power in the city and forcing the Gau Clan to expend people and resources on this would make it easier for them to operate.

    The guilds were equally disinclined to assist. Mostly because they were tailored to a particular trade and didn¡¯t have any trained personnel spare to send out and scout around. More so than that, the people of any importance could evacuate to Katsu while the horde was busy devouring the mortals.

    To complicate this matter, no one even knew if the monolith was actually damaged. They only knew that the array patterns had begun to dim slightly. That wasn¡¯t enough incentive to take any actions.

    The only other party to send out people for scouting were the Shield Maidens and Sword Masters. They mostly operated outside the monolith influence anyway so it wouldn¡¯t be too much different than usual for them.

    -The Lab-

    After the Brotherhood had returned to the Guildhall, they moved to the arena to get some rest. After a few hours of mediation, they were once again moving around just as perky as if they¡¯d slept for a whole day.

    Down in the lab, James checked on the still unconscious Exsue, then joined Skay to continue playing with arrays. It was miraculous just how many patterns and full arrays the Gau Clan had been hoarding away. James was curious why they¡¯d never done more research into them and asked Skay.

    He was informed by the madman that it was because they were a bunch of cowards, too afraid of an array backlash to play with them.

    ¡°How the fuck else do they ever expect to learn about these things?¡±

    The mere thought that someone was afraid of discovering something new and interesting, just because of some little explosions, enraged the old madman to no end.

    What he failed to mention to James, was that if they ever made a significant mistake, even a small array could cave their entire lab in like a puddle of mud sliding into a sinkhole. The only reason no such mistakes had been made yet was because they¡¯d mostly been building the arrays on the computer or black-pad then projecting it onto the area they wanted to paint it.

    Just having a computer that gave them a means to store, organise and build arrays safely was a tremendous assistance for them in research. Just remembering all the different patterns would require a substantial amount of time.

    By feeding information into one of Skay¡¯s, ¡®built on the fly¡¯, programs, they¡¯d already managed to extrapolate thousands of different patterns from every stage of array production. They only understood about 30 of them for the moment, but that meant little to someone like Skay.

    Not only was he upgrading the program to try and determine the purpose of the patterns it had already discovered, but he¡¯d also managed to teach it to learn how to design simple arrays from the models they¡¯d tested already.

    The hope was that, eventually, this program could compile, extrapolate and deconstruct any array pattern you found or needed. The more information you fed into it, the faster it could learn.

    James was a little excited by the idea that one day he¡¯d come down here and discover Skay talking to his computer, only to have it talking back to him.

    When he had that thought, he suddenly remembered the monolith. Perhaps ... they didn¡¯t have to teach the computer everything. Maybe they could ... put a soul into it and it could learn everything itself!

    Before that dream had fully formed a ¡®bzzzt¡¯ rang through the lab. Skay stopped in mid-painting after the shock caused him to splash some paint, then walked back to his pad.

    After pressing a few buttons, he started yelling at the roof. ¡°Harvy you undead mother fucker! You¡¯d better have a good reason for interrupting me, or so help me god I¡¯ll come up there and start taking things off your lifeless fucking body!¡±

    Harvy¡¯s emotionless grating voice rang out through the laboratory speakers. ¡°Apologies Master. I only wish to inform you; Elder Grace has come for your scheduled training session.¡±

    James quirked an eyebrow then flipped open his pad to check the time. ¡°Harvy, go let Jessy know. Have the staff take care of the commoners for today. Tell them that if anyone stuffs up, they¡¯ll be joining you on team Ghoul.¡±

    With that said James shared a look with Skay and they both moved to the elevator.

    -Arena-

    When they arrived in the arena, a section was already being used by the staff for processing commoners. That left almost half the arena unused. Standing in that half was 20 odd people. Most wearing standard Gau grey robes with a sword and anvil. There was also about 5 disciples from the Hall of Forging.

    Standing at the lead of the group was Elder Grace. The name she gave herself was rather appropriate because even just standing around waiting she carried herself with poise and grace.

    As James and Skay approached the group, Skay was complaining about how much this would cut into his research time. James only half listening noticed that Harvy and Jessy were already present. By the time they were in ear range, they could here Grace urging Jessy into something with ¡°you may never get another chance like this¡± and other such clich¨¦ encouragements.

    Jessy seemed to be thinking rather hard about whatever it was exactly this chance was and clearly had the look of someone that wanted to take it. When the duo finally reached them, Jessy gave a firm nod and Grace¡¯s face lit up with a dazzling smile.

    ¡°How¡¯s it goin?¡± James greeted the Elder with something that could barely be considered a bow and a slang Aussie greeting. Skay, on the other hand, remained aloof from such affairs and made no move to display any courtesies.

    Grace hadn¡¯t interacted with these steppers much, apart from that whole thing with Harvy, so she was pretty surprised at their total lack of etiquette. If she weren¡¯t trying to recruit Jessy as a personal disciple, she¡¯d have slapped them into the ground.

    ¡°I see. Is this how you operate your Guild, Junior James? You arrive late for everything and show no respect for your Elders or betters. Jessy is wasted joining your rag-tag team of madmen and ... science projects.¡± While saying this last part, she threw a strange look towards Harvy, who was now always covered in bandages and smelling like the herbs section of someone¡¯s pantry.

    James just gave a harmless broad smile, as if this shot at his ego had just slid off. For now, he had no intention of stirring this lady up into a frenzy. If he did, she might just slap him to death right here. She had the power to do so.

    He understood well that so far in the journey here, they¡¯d only survived by luck and as much as he didn¡¯t want to admit, Hao seemed to be looking out for him. Also ... there was Exsue. James wasn¡¯t sure what sort of rules or regulations were imposed on a spirit in a monolith, but he suspected if he¡¯d encountered danger in the city then Exsue would start smiting things irrespective ... she seemed that crazy.

    Regardless of Exsue though, James wasn¡¯t about to antagonise this woman. Besides, eventually, he¡¯ll be strong as well, and when that day comes ... well, James ain¡¯t no saint.

    That being said. He wasn¡¯t about to start bending over backwards for her, as much as he hated not being able to talk equally with her, he hated bowing to her more. Not just her though ... Everyone!

    James would never truly bow down. His little courtesy before would be as far as he¡¯d ever go. If they took objection... ¡®Well, they can fuckin¡¯ kill me then. At least I¡¯d die with my pride intact.¡¯

 Chapter 20: Goliath

    After this short greeting, Grace took out a little crystal clear gem from her robes and handed it to Jessy. ¡°This is the testing stone. We only have two in the Clan, one of them I have and the other one is in Elder Jeng¡¯s possession. Just hold it and pour a little power into it. It will change colour and brightness to show how far your spirit power cultivation has progressed in the barrier realm.¡±

    Jessy held the stone in her hand and looked it over. Then without hesitation injected some spirit energy. The moment her spirit energy touched the stone, she felt a strange foreign warmth spread through her body, after a second it returned to the little gem.

    Skay¡¯s eyes were shooting light he was so excited. Something that can measure refined spirit energy, of course, the old madman was excited. This object was something they needed to get their hands on. As soon as possible!

    James to was slightly intrigued as well, and having worked with Skay for a while now he could tell the crazy old bastard might just swallow that stone in an attempt to steal it. He cupped his chin and watched the stone as it slowly lit up.

    The gem itself changed colours several times until finally settling on a dark blue. After it¡¯s colour settled down, a luminescent glow slowly came into existence filling nearly a third of the gem.

    Grace¡¯s hand was shaking as she reached it out and took the gem to examine it. She then gave it a few shakes, and it returned to crystal clear. She then poured in some spirit energy and the gem took on an incredibly bright yellow shine.

    James wasn¡¯t too sure what to make of all this. ¡®For starters, what does the colour mean? Doesn¡¯t it just need to shine a certain amount to show how much we¡¯ve filled our barrier?¡¯

    Skay had already flipped out his black-pad and started making notes on everything.

    After a moment of inspection, Grace gave the gem another shake allowing it to turn clear, and handed it to James. Then as if James didn¡¯t exist she completely ignored him and turned to Jessy with an expression of having just found a diamond in a cat¡¯s litter box.

    ¡°Little Junior Jessy, I should tell you that you have an incredible aptitude for cultivation. There are seven shades of colour, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue and purple. In that order, they represent a person¡¯s potential based. You¡¯re the first blue reaction I¡¯ve ever seen from the testing stone. Actually, you¡¯re the only blue reaction I¡¯ve ever heard of in the entire empire.¡±

    Meanwhile, the crazy duo was busy doing some experiments while Grace was distracted. Skay was busily writing things down, and James looked like he was placing some electrodes onto the gem. When they were ready, Skay glanced at James and started hitting some buttons to record everything. They both gave each other a nod and James slipped a little bit of energy into the gem.

    The moment his energy entered, a strange warmth flowed through his body. Then after going everywhere it could, it returned to the gem. At first, the gem had no reaction at all. For a whole 4 or 5 seconds, it just sat there like nothing had happened at all.

    Then finally it rapidly began changing colours ... and then didn¡¯t stop. It just kept changing endlessly and cycled through faster and faster, until the entire crystal looked black as all the colours merged together. At this point, a bright rainbow light started filling the insides of the gem until it had filled almost a third of it.

    Seeing this James had a very strange look on his face. He closed his eyes to check his spirit realm. When he came out his face was even stranger.

    ¡°Boy, what¡¯s going on? I thought you said you had nearly half your realm full now.¡±

    Skay seemed to be simultaneously excited and disappointed at these results. Most likely because he¡¯d already expected something else only to have that expectation blown away.

    James looked at the stone in his hand then cupped his chin again. ¡°Well, I can tell you right now old madman. My spirit realm is half full. My spirit energy covers half the area inside the barrier. I¡¯m definitely not wrong about this.¡±

    What James said was true. His spirit realm looked just like it normally did. Half the dome was filled with his wind nebula, inside of which was his lightning nucleus and on the ground remained his whirlwind of plasma. All together these things took up almost half of his spirit barrier.

    As he tried to process what was going on Grace had turned back around and was frozen on the spot watching the black crystal with rainbow colours inside of it. She then actually rubbed her eyes. Then she pinched herself. Then she looked at the other shell-shocked disciples to make sure they saw it too.

    ¡°Black? It¡¯s fucking turned black? What did you do to it?!¡± Before Grace had the chance to move forwards and snatch it James gave it shake and it turned clear again.

    ¡°Hmm, sorry I might have been operating my breathing technique while I did it. Let¡¯s give it another try shall we?¡± Saying as much, James made a conscious effort to stop his breathing technique.

    After stopping his breathing, he injected some energy again and the stone turned purple. After that it slowly glowed until half of it was filled.

    Skay¡¯s eyes glittered, and James¡¯ face grew a triumphant proud grin. He looked to Skay. ¡°What did I tell you. Breathing techniques can change everything. The more powerful it is, the more we can force into our barrier.¡±

    As the two started a discussion on the implications of this experiment, Grace just stared with a bitter face. It was truly absurd. One of them with blue and one of them purple. What kind of freaks were these people?

    After a short discussion, it was Skay¡¯s turn. Amusingly Grace¡¯s face just became even blanker, as Skay used the gem and got a light blue colour. His light only filled about a quarter of the gem. This was because he spent more time focused on research and rarely took the opportunity to train spirit energy like James or Jessy did.

    After a moment of congratulating each other, they reluctantly returned the gem. Just to be sure, Grace tested it again. Then shaking her head with a dry smile, she placed it back into her robes.

    It was finally time. Their first training session with Grace involved some basic tests to determine how strong they presently were. Grace was aware that regarding martial techniques and energy cultivation, there wasn¡¯t much she could help then with. Instead, she was here to cultivate their battle experience.

    For starters, she allowed them to sit in and watch some sparring between the disciples she brought with her. This way they could get an idea of what battle between cultivators was truly like.

    Over on the other side of the arena things proceeded slowly, and thousands of commoners gradually cycled through the system. Everyone there would occasionally glance over to the Gau Clan disciples and sigh in awe as they fired off martial techniques left and right. They could only hope to one day reach the stage they could freely use techniques like that.

    The first few battles were pretty exciting for the Brotherhood members, and they managed to get a good idea of just how much punishment a person could take when they used spirit energy to protect parts of their bodies and how much they could doll out with techniques.

    After a few fights, one of the Sword Hall disciples walked up to the centre of their training area. For someone so young he was a big guy. He looked even younger than Harvy had when they first met. The only glaring exception was his size and colour. He stood at nearly 7 feet, and his body was covered from head to toe in rippling bulging muscles. He had a head of short white hair which contrasted significantly with his dark skin. Most interesting was his fire red eyes. He constantly looked like he was holding back his anger at ... well, pretty much everything.

    His first opponent was a young man from the Hall of Forging who was so short and skinny, he made this battle look like a re-enactment of David and Goliath. Naturally on this world that battle ended differently.

    David made a polite bow and gave a ¡°let¡¯s have a good spar, I hope to learn a lot.¡± in a quiet, humble voice. Goliath just stood there with his arms crossed arrogantly looking down his nose at David. He made a harrumph in reply then before Grace even gave the signal to start he stomped down onto the ground.

    The earth seemed to ripple out towards David forcing him up into the air. Before David could even get his bearings, Goliath had approached and swung out one of his massive arms. A sickening ¡®crunch¡¯ rang out, and David shot through the air landing and rolling nearly 15 metres away.

    James was rather surprised. He knew things could often be brutal for Clan members when it came to grudges and resources, but to him, it seemed like this pair hardly even knew each other and furthermore, this was just training.

    Jessy seemed to take exception to the manner in which Goliath had won this spar, and while running forwards to check the injured David, she began to rebuke him. ¡°Just what the hell are you doing? This is only a sparring match! There was no need to use so much force and you sure as hell didn¡¯t have to use petty tricks. The fight hadn¡¯t even started yet!¡±

    Goliath just looked on with cold and indifferent eyes. ¡°Little girl, fists and feet have no eyes. I don¡¯t take any chances in any battles. Training, sparring or a true battle to the death. I don¡¯t care. Fighting is for proving your strength and beating down your opponents. If you feel so heartbroken for the boy, then come up here and challenge me.¡±

    James¡¯ eyes squinted slightly as he watched Goliath giving Jessy a verbal beat down. In all honesty, he was perfectly correct. In this world, what use is having a weak fist? If you train yourself to fight with half power, then it will become a limit to your development. In his opinion, he totally agreed with Goliath.

    Suddenly his face lit up into a huge smile. There must be some story behind all this. More importantly than that, some other thoughts were running through James¡¯ head at present.

    ¡®Him! I¡¯ve found him. He will be perfect. Now the question is ... how do I get him to join us? He looks like he probably isn¡¯t even planning to stay in the Clan much longer. He¡¯s probably the same as me. He¡¯s too proud to let something like the Gau Clan hold him back from reaching the limits of this world.¡¯

    Thinking this far James turned to Grace, who seemed entirely unperturbed by this matter, and with a small smile on his face, like he was just distractedly asking, he started an inquiry on the Goliath.

    ¡°Elder Grace, who is that young man?¡±

    Grace just let a small sigh slip out then eyed the ... man-boy, in the arena. ¡°That is Haungshu. His father and mother were killed in the city when he was young, and he witnessed the whole incident. At the time, there was a rather depraved character moving about who would find couples with a child and force them to do some unspeakable things to each other in exchange for the child¡¯s life.¡±

    Her eyes moistened slightly, as she remembered back to those incidents, she stared off into the distance as if looking back through time. James wasn¡¯t sure why, but he felt Grace must have a history with this serial killer as well.

    After a short second of being lost in her memories, she cleared her throat then glanced back to Goliath, who was now just standing there like a tower of muscle and looking at the yelling and screaming Jessy.

    ¡°Well, ever since then he¡¯s been somewhat uncontrollable. The clan isn¡¯t going to make an effort to change that because eventually, it will become his strength and drive. It will make him stronger, and by extension, strengthens the clan.¡±

    Finished speaking on the matter she went to stand up because Jessy was moving to engage Goliath. James waved a hand in front of her, then gave a gentle shake of the head.

    ¡°She has to learn sooner or later that her element isn¡¯t all-mighty. She¡¯s had it easy up until now because it¡¯s rather powerful against normal individuals, but now she¡¯s about to meet an abnormal with a powerful will. I suspect this battle will be good learning experience for her.¡±

    Grace made a bitter smile. To think she was being lectured on how to train someone from a fresh little barrier realm practitioner. She had to accept he was right and she soon changed her mindset somewhat.

    In her head, she was already thinking of Jessy as her personal disciple that she would train up to greatness. However, as an extension of that feeling, she¡¯d also become a little more protective of her than normal disciples. If she allowed that to cloud the girl¡¯s training, it would only limit her.

    In the training area, Jessy shot towards Goliath. Before she even got into striking distance, he through another earth ripple out with his foot. Jessy somehow kept her balance as the earth rose up in a wave under her feet. As she reached to the crest of the wave, she bent her legs and used the earth ripple to propel herself forwards.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

    Before she could get close enough to grab out or throw a punch a huge hand descended towards her as if covering the sky. Having the experience of numerous battles as a mortal martial artist, she adapted quickly and managed to spin her body in mid-air. As the palm passed through the space her head had once been in, she grabbed out and latched onto Goliath¡¯s arm.

    The moment she made contact a savage grin spread across her face, and she began to pump as much spirit energy into his body as possible. That grin very quickly turned sour as she only felt the arm continue to descend with unstoppable force, and she was smashed into the ground.

    The air was forced from her lungs, and her body was wracked with pain. She curled up into a ball onto the ground as she tried to gain control of her breathing. As she curled up protectively, a dirty great big boot came towards her, and she was launched into the air.

    James could tell at a glance that Goliath was going easy on her, despite what he¡¯d said earlier. If he¡¯d put some force into that kick, then Jessy would surely travel further than a few metres and the sound of things breaking would most definitely have been heard.

    James just sat and watched. He made no move to help Jessy, and he didn¡¯t even show any signs of concern. He just stood there with his arms crossed observing.

    Grace looked like she was about to run out again but somehow mustered enough willpower to stop herself. As everyone else watched on with their mouths agape, Jessy started to crawl up from the ground. Her cheongsam was dirty and ripped in places. Her red hair was a frazzled mess, and her face was flushed red with embracement and rage.

    To think that she had taking an ass whopping twice since coming to this world. As someone who rarely lost, she simply couldn¡¯t accept it. Furthermore, her trump card didn¡¯t even phase the guy. Well, technically that¡¯s not true because the evidence of its effect was visibly protruding out from his body.

    Jessy was stunned when she saw this. It looked like he was holding his body up with pure force of will alone. He was definitely affected by her lust element but managed to overcome it with sheer willpower. What kind of twisted mind did this guy have?

    Eventually, Jessy had crawled up from the ground and managed to stabilise her beaten and sore body. Instead of bowing out like most people expected from her, she lowered herself into a backwards leaning martial arts stance and raised her hands in front like two knives.

    She let out a long breath and calmed her mind and body as all her focus suddenly fell onto Goliath like a tonne of pressure from the sea. Goliath, noticing this change in her demeanour, also lowered his stance and raised his fists to his chest like a boxer.

    The entire arena suddenly became eerily quiet. Even the normal sounds of the commoners at the other end of the arena had dropped to nothing. Everyone was motionless as their eyes glued to the pair facing off in the arena.

    James seeing the tension building and the determined expression on their faces smiled to himself. ¡°It¡¯s perfect.¡± He muttered. Then with unnatural speed, he blurred from his position standing on the side and appeared in between the pair like a ghost.

    He glanced between the two of them, then with a slight smile looked to Goliath. ¡°Say, big fellow, I have a proposition for you. We¡¯re looking for members in our guild. Now before you decline, this membership is a rather special one. Regardless of that, let¡¯s make a little bet. If the girl can beat you, what do you say to joining our guild as an interim member for a little while? You can decide later if you¡¯re interested in staying around.¡±

    Goliath just continued to stare into the eyes of Jessy as the tension continued to build. Finally, he gave the nod. Although it might seem rather sudden to just follow this kind of thing, James had some certainty he¡¯d not turn it down. This kind of person seeks out strong fighters to challenge themselves.

    If Jessy won this battle, it meant he¡¯d run into someone at his own level that could defeat him, which was rare. In addition to that, the guild was young and was in an alliance with the Clan. They could sort something out later, but becoming an interim member until he could beat the girl would be fine.

    With that nod, James grin grew brighter. Then he took a gold coin out of his pocket flicked it into the air and blurred away again. As the coin spun into the air, the pressure in the arena grew by an order of magnitude.

    Even Grace was surprised by the psychological pressure these two barrier realm practitioners were giving off. If she didn¡¯t know better, she¡¯d have thought they were both already in the Palace Realm.

    Suddenly the ¡®ting¡¯ of the coin hitting the ground rang out and Jessy and Goliath both shot forwards like rockets. This time, instead of using lust element Jessy used her water element. Her hands cut through the air like high-pressure jets of water.

    One was chopping towards the neck of Goliath as the other stabbed out towards his stomach. His reaction was rather quick and agile for a bloke so huge. His body lowered and the strike to his head passed through the air as his hand shot out like a viper and grabbed onto Jessy¡¯s wrist before she made contact.

    Meanwhile, his spare hand threw a strike towards her head that seemed to carry the weight of a mountain with it. The moment he made contact with her hand, Jessy¡¯s motions changed and her stance slid backwards like flowing water.

    As if covered in oil, her hand slipped out from his grip. As she retreated, her head slid only slightly enough to the side, and his punch grazed her ear as it passed her face.

    While Goliath was drawing his arm back to a protective stance, Jessy had already jumped and spun in the air, throwing a whirling kick towards his open rib cage. His body twisted as his assisting hand slid under his extended arm grabbing onto her ankle. His body shook slightly from the force and before he could get a decent grip Jessy had slid back away like the motions of the tide.

    After this short exchange and testing of the waters, they both jumped back a step and created a little distance. Taking a quick breath and trying to figure out the best method to take down their opponent.

    Jessy was incredibly surprised. Now that she was being serious, she thought she¡¯d take the advantage in this battle. After all, being a short girl she had the most experience fighting big bulky opponents and could easily target and create weaknesses.

    To her disgruntlement, Goliath seemed to have even more experience fighting people smaller than himself and had closed up or protected almost all those weak points he¡¯d normally have. To make it worse, striking him was like hitting a rock wall and his agility was far beyond the norm for a man his size.

    On the other side, Haungshu was rapidly trying to process this development. The most pressing thing was that she seemed to be utilising a completely different spirit energy now. That could only mean that she had two elements.

    To make matters worse, she obviously had a great deal of experience. Even he wasn¡¯t prepared for that rapid kick to this ribcage. It was only because he¡¯d experienced something similar before that his body could react quick enough to defend.

    To add to all that, her element seemed to morph between as powerful and unstoppable as a volcano erupting, then as slippery and uncatchable as the tides of the beach.

    Making him feel even worse about this whole thing, was that the girl had apparently never sparred or trained with spirit energy before. Which meant that in this short exchange, she¡¯d already managed to adapt enough to using it in a battle that she could utilise it effectively.

    If he didn¡¯t finish this soon, she would only gain more experience with it, by that time he may not be able to take the upper hand without expending almost all of his energy.

    Coming to that conclusion, he suddenly took two consecutive steps back and then dropped into a horse riding stance. His left hand sat out in front of his body with a straight arm and his right hand sat at his hip in a fist. He took in a long breath then started to pour as much of his earth element as he could into his arm.

    The moment he¡¯d retreated, Jessy began to advance. She already had a good idea what would happen if she allowed him to create too much distance. His longer arms made it difficult to get into striking range already. If he managed to start firing off martial techniques, she wasn¡¯t sure she¡¯d be able to close the distance enough and would most likely be struck out.

    She reached him just as his hand started moving away from his hip. The moment his hand began to move the ground began to tremor slightly. His foot slid forwards, and his hand suddenly shot out like a bullet. Just as it was about to strike Jessy, her body leant back entirely as her front leg shot upwards and collided with Goliath¡¯s chin. She looked like a ballerina balancing on one foot, with her head leaning back nearly touching the ground and the other leg sticking straight up in the air.

    Luckily for her, she moved just in time to avoid any contact with the punch. She realised just how lucky it was as she looked back behind her from upside down.

    About a foot away from where her head touched the ground started a depression of compressed earth that reached to nearly 4 metres away. Presumably from the sheer force of the punch creating a massive projectile of air pressure. Like some kind of sickeningly powerful air cannon.

    Goliath, on the other hand, was lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the arena. He just stayed there and blinked a few times. Finally, a disgusting grin spread on his face, not too dissimilar to the one that Skay usually made when he discovered something interesting to play with.

    Goliath had lost plenty of times before. But he¡¯d never lost to another barrier realm practitioner. Only to true spirit realms. This was a first for him, and it meant that he¡¯d finally met someone that he could compete against properly. Someone that could help him propel himself higher. He swore he¡¯d beat this girl before he left Gau City.

    James just stood at the edge of their training area nodding his head sagely, as if he¡¯d just suggested the winning horse in the Melbourne Cup and had known from the very beginning it would win.

    All the barrier realm disciples stared slack-jawed at Goliath. The strongest barrier realm in the entire Clan had been taken down by a girl two foot shorter than him. Grace was looking rather proud, even though she hadn¡¯t actually taught Jessy anything yet and she wasn¡¯t technically her Master yet.

    After this short affair was finished, the commoners resumed passing through the system, and the disciples of the Gau Clan started doing some sparring again.

    After a while, a fairly arrogant disciple who¡¯d bested some younger men in the arena turned to James with a sneer on his face. ¡°I heard you were the one who killed Calso. You¡¯ve just sat there all day watching us fight. Even the little girl had a go. How ¡®bout it? Gonna come up here, or sit over there like a wimp and cower behind the Elder?¡±

    James just looked at the fellow for a bit, then a bright smile spread across his face. ¡°Oh? What¡¯s this? Are you a True Spirit Realm now? If you know I killed that grotty little bastard Calso, then you must know he was far more powerful than you are.¡±

    The man¡¯s face paled slightly and then after a moment of thought he gave a chuckle. ¡°You must have used some trick to win. In a fair dual, you¡¯d never win against Senior Brother Calso. I could probably beat you with a single wave of the hand.¡±

    James just continued to smile brightly but before he had a chance to respond, Skay let out a sigh. ¡°Fine then you little bastard. This old man here hasn¡¯t stretched in a while, let me have a go at you.¡±

    James was astounded. He was well aware Skay was mostly only here to record them using martial techniques and didn¡¯t care at all for fighting. He also knew that Skay didn¡¯t care a bit for shame or face and wouldn¡¯t step in to defend James for something like some petty words.

    It could only mean the crazy old bastard had something he wanted to test out. James suddenly had a terrible premonition.

    Skay made a great production of looking the feeble aged old man, as he hobbled out to the arena crouched over and holding his normally perfectly straight and fine back. Once he was facing the disciple about ten metres away, he stopped.

    The man just stared with a half bemused, half angered expression. ¡°Old man don¡¯t lose this Junior his face. If you somehow manage to win how could I live with myself, and if I beat you I¡¯ll be accused of bullying weak old men.¡±

    Skay just gave a devilish grin and started moving around like he was trying to stretch his legs and arms, which was made comical by his aged body giving out creaks and cracks every now and then. ¡°Oh shut it you little bastard. I¡¯ve scraped tougher stains out of my jocks. Wiping the floor with you will be like taking a breath.¡±

    A scowl formed on the man¡¯s face, and he gave Skay a glare. ¡°Fine then old man. You¡¯ve asked for it. Let no one say that I, Galtin Gau, am a bully of the old and weak. Just remember old man, fists and legs have no eyes. If I hit you too hard and you die, then don¡¯t blame me.¡±

    Having said that far, he cast a glance towards James and a grin formed. Skay remained unperturbed, then signalled his readiness to start. Grace was little worried that the old man actually would die. If not from a heart attack, then from a single slap. She didn¡¯t even get the chance to question him though because James¡¯ bright smiling face uttered out a ¡®go!¡¯ and the fight had started.

    Or was supposed to start at least ... Skay just started to hobble forwards very, very slowly while clutching his back. Galtin just stood there looking like even stepping forward to slap the man to death would be dirtying his hands.

    However, all this quickly changed. When Skay got to with 5 metres of the man he stopped. Then raised up a single finger and pointed it forwards. Suddenly a little glow appeared at the tip of his finger and focused onto the disciple¡¯s right shoulder like a laser pointer.

    James¡¯ eyebrows tried to crawl back up into his hairline. Suddenly it struck him what was about to happen, and he flipped out his black-pad to record everything.

    Galtin just stood there looking at his shoulder where the little dot was. ¡°What? A dot of light? That¡¯s your best? Old man, I¡¯ve had enough of playing. If you don¡¯t forfeit and walk away, you really might die when I strike you.¡±

    Skay¡¯s evil grin broadened, and then suddenly his finger flashed, and his arm made a chopping motion. Nothing changed, and the pair just stood there watching each other.

    Skay then blinked and looked down at his finger with a confused expression. After a moment of looking at and flicking his finger, he looked back at Galtin like he was expecting something to happen.

    ¡°That¡¯s enough old man. It¡¯s time for you to realise this isn¡¯t some game.¡± Saying as much Galtin stepped forwards and lifted his right arm back to swat Skay to death. The moment it raised above his head it started moving down. It wasn¡¯t moving under his own power, but sliding downwards. After about half a second a ¡®thud¡¯ sounded out and Galtin was suddenly missing an arm.

    Skay¡¯s disgusting grin returned, and he just turned and started walking back out of the arena. Inversely, Galtin was staring at his arm on the ground. At first, he felt nothing. Then his brain finally caught up to his body and the pain of losing an arm struck him like a bus.

    ¡°AARRGHH!!!¡± He fell to the ground of the arena as blood started pumping out of his now flat as a plate shoulder while he clutched at it screaming and crying out. James was just standing over at the side replaying the whole thing again and again on his black-pad entirely ignoring the whole scene.

    Grace was watching dumbfounded. ¡®Just what kind of power was that? To be able to slice through a person¡¯s body at 5 metres like it was nothing.¡± Grace watched Skay walking back to James¡¯ side. The look on her face was as if guardedly watching some ancient monster that could strike out and devour you at any moment.

    Finally, the rest of the people around caught up to the scene they just witnessed and began to run out to try and quell the blood streaming out of Galtin. Jessy just let out a long sigh and gave the two boys a glare that just bounced off them like light off a mirror.

    Skay just looked at her sheepishly like she was getting upset over some spilt milk or something. ¡°What? Little lass, you heard the boy, fists and feet have no eyes. How was I supposed to know he wouldn¡¯t try and dodge? These things happen when you¡¯re not careful in battle, you know?¡±

    Finished defending himself he crowded together with James and watched the replay of his massacring that poor little bastard in the training arena. James looked up to see everyone worrying over the disciples lost arm and gave out a long sigh. ¡°Harvy, take him to the lab. Skay, I guess we should at least patch him up a little. Poor cunts probably having a shit day now. Even if I suspect he was sent by Jeng to stir trouble, no point in having him bleed out in my Guildhall.¡±

    Once that was said he cupped his fists as a salute instead of bowing, then led the Brotherhood back down to the lab. He turned to Grace with a sorrowful expression before entering the elevator. ¡°I¡¯m sorry about all the trouble today Elder Grace. We¡¯ll do our best to help this fellow back onto his feet. I¡¯ve no doubt we can reattach the arm before any significant damage is done. We¡¯ll see you again in three days. Oh, and tell that giant fellow to stop by tomorrow.¡±

    He then turned, walked into the elevator and pressed some buttons, taking Jessy, Skay, Harvy and their new experieme ... erm, patient, down to the lab below.

 Chapter 21: Wrath

    -The Lab-

    While Harvy and Skay busied themselves with the now unconscious Galtin on an operating table, James went to check on their new residents. He had intended for the two of them to come train with them today, but circumstances prevented him from properly inducting Fatty and figuring out what his deal was. Exsue, of course, had still been unconscious.

    To his surprise, they both appeared to be awake and were pacing around inside their rooms. The moment he opened the door to Fatty¡¯s room, Fatty shot back against the wall with both hands holding his ass. ¡°Stop! Wait! You don¡¯t need to probe me, I can tell you everything!¡±

    James just stood at the doorway looking on with a strange expression. Then a smile broadened his face, and he walked back out. ¡°Let¡¯s go Fatty you crazy bastard. We only locked you up for a little bit for our safety and yours. You ate a lot of energy yesterday so we couldn¡¯t be sure you wouldn¡¯t explode.¡±

    Fatty cautiously followed James out to the main floor space of the lab. James sat him down then started putting some equipment on him. He took a hypodermic needle and drew some blood out of Fatty¡¯s hand, then turned on the computer screen as he placed it in an odd little device on the bench top. As the computer started whirling away, he got a detailed history paying particular attention to Fatty¡¯s spirit energy.

    He had to stop Fatty multiple times when he seemed about ready to launch into one of his crazy conspiracies. Instead, he focused on exactly how he triggered this element and what symptoms he¡¯d had recently.

    After he was done with his very basic check-up, he sat down with Fatty and spent an hour explaining everything. He¡¯d told some of this stuff earlier, but this time he was going to fill Fatty in on everything he could.

    Once that was done, he left Fatty to try and digest it all as Jessy started explaining everything again in simpler terms. James realised from this that he¡¯d apparently gotten a little carried away when describing cultivation.

    During his questioning, he¡¯d come to a new conclusion on elements that reflected a strong emotion. They clouded your judgment and influenced your personality. He¡¯d already been suspicious when he discovered Jessy had been taking men back to her room regularly, even after she¡¯d unlocked the water element.

    Now that Fatty had appeared, with what James could only describe as the gluttony element and was endlessly hungry, he was confident that unlocking an element that was an emotion would alter your personality slightly. If not your personality then it at least changed how your body reacted to certain stimulus. In Jessy¡¯s case, she was constantly horny. Fatty was constantly hungry.

    That meant that although these elements were stupidly powerful in comparison, they also had drawbacks. It also meant that just to maintain control, you needed to be strong willed enough not to allow it to consume you.

    Thinking this far, he wandered back and let Exsue out. As if to contradict Fatty¡¯s earlier cautions, Exsue threw herself towards the doorway with a huge smile and jumped onto James. No one was quite sure what to think when they saw James walking back trying to pry the girl off himself as she kissed his face everywhere and humped her hips into his waist with her legs and arms wrapped around him.

    The moment she attached herself to him, James felt like he¡¯d suddenly contracted an STD. No matter how he tried, he couldn¡¯t get rid of her. Eventually, he just gave a loud sigh and let her come along sitting on his back. Although she wasn¡¯t weighty, the constant hip grinding and gasping into his ear was incredibly distracting, for him and everyone else in the lab. Making it worse he felt a wet spot on his back that just seemed to be growing larger.

    After some time, and some now empty phials of questionable content later, Skay finished up with Galtin, and he was tossed into a room to recover. Now everyone in the Guild was together. Skay, James, Jessy, Harvy and the two newcomers, Exsue and Fatty.

    The first thing discussed as they all sat down was Exsue and Fatty. Jessy specifically questioned the nature of their relationship only to be glared at in a vile manner by Exsue and snubbed with a ¡°Noneya business¡±.

    Fatty, although still suspicious that everyone was disguised aliens, agreed to join the guild. They had the same goals, and they were people he knew, so he didn¡¯t hum and haw too much over it. Exsue, on the other hand, said she ¡°don¡¯t give a rats ass about the stupid guild.¡± She made her position clear that the only thing she cared about was James.

    That led to a discussion on exactly who she was. Most of which Skay had already somewhat guessed. Jessy just pinched her forehead as if she felt a headache coming on and Harvy remained partially dead as always and looked like none of this mattered to him.

    Now that Exsue was awake James took the opportunity to ask about how the monolith worked and what the consequences of releasing her would be. Now that she was out, Exsue didn¡¯t hold to much back. There were certain things she wouldn¡¯t tell them about, but she explained with two words the general situation now that she¡¯d escaped. ¡°City¡¯s Fucked.¡±

    Apparently, the monolith was normally the limiting factor on its protective range. In this case, things would be different, though. Typically, the monolith took advantage of the spirit beast trapped inside it to help power and control it properly. That meant that the stronger the creature¡¯s spirit was, the more it could accomplish and protect.

    Now that the spirit was swapped out with a little True Spirit Realm spirit ... well, I¡¯m sure your imaginations can tell what the result is. Not only does Little Blue now have to learn how to control and operate the monolith correctly, it also has to try and power it. This meant the range of the monolith had dropped to a radius of 4 km. Which was barely enough to cover a quarter of the city, let alone the thousands of square kilometres of grain it protected with Exsue in control.

    Having realised just how fucked they would be if the city were attacked, the Brotherhood sent Skay to get Hao, Anvil and Song down here. They needed to start some brainstorming on what exactly to do. James was averse to the idea of evacuating the city. Even if they travelled with the Gau Clan they may not necessarily arrive at their destination.

    To further reinforce his decision, was all the work they¡¯d put into erecting a guild here. Now they may not be attacked by a horde. But even if they just had an increase in beast activity, it could be detrimental to the test subjects in the city ... err, the residents rather.

    For another full night, the Brotherhood and Gau Elders discussed the potential damage to the monolith and countermeasures. They wisely chose not to mention any involvement in the events of the monolith and instead spoke entirely theoretically.

    -Brotherhood Guildhall-

    The next day, the number of people lining up had reduced significantly. A good deal of the population who could afford it straight away had already been processed by the guild. In their coffers was a silver coin from nearly 40 thousand people. Now the people queuing up were mostly people who had to save up some coppers to afford the hypno.

    This meant that half the population of the city was cultivators. If Exsue were still in the monolith, she¡¯d have noticed a huge jump in how far her control range had extended. Skay had seen a huge change in the cities average spirit energy as well. He concluded that spirit energy must be drawn towards areas that it¡¯s being ... taken, from.

    That meant the more spirit energy that was absorbed from the world, the more the world would try and fill the area with spirit energy. Amusingly, that suggested that the stronger the population in an area was, the more spirit energy would gather there. Indeed, the strong become stronger, and the weak become weaker.

    Needless to say, Skay had no aversion to raising the average spirit energy of the city. The only problem was when Exsue mentioned how the spirit beasts would be drawn more quickly towards areas with high primal spirit energy. They were essentially lighting a beacon for a beast horde to attack.

    James, of course, ignored this warning, he would never turn down the people¡¯s money. He already had nearly 400 gold. That would be enough to keep the Guild running for a couple of years straight. It also meant they didn¡¯t have to rush into selling any technology to the clans or guilds just yet.

    As the commoners were being processed, James went to the main hall that had remained mostly unused until now. Recently, some loose cultivators not tied to any organisation had expressed interest in joining the guild. Although the rules of the guild sounded rather strict, they were actually fairly lenient in comparison to others.

    They weren¡¯t restricted in how they operate and only needed to keep the guild in mind. That mostly meant they could do whatever the hell they liked as long as they didn¡¯t create trouble for the guild or give away information on the guild. In exchange, they got the chance to take any job they wanted and earn rewards. If this guild had the ability to hand out such a powerful meditation technique to commoners, then they surely had other far more powerful methods that could assist them in cultivation.

    James stepped up onto the little stage in the main hall and looked over the 15 odd people sitting and talking to each other. One of them happened to be someone that James had met. ¡°Haungshu, no need for you to join in this ceremony, go to the foyer and tell Harvy to take you down to the lab.¡±

    After saying that. he glanced at the remaining 14 then read them the guild¡¯s rules. Before they swore any oaths, he allowed them to ask a few questions. The first one came from an older looking lady wearing leather adventurer garbs.

    ¡°What sort of things can this guild offer us once we join?¡±

    James just smiled and gave her another look over. ¡°Oh? Offer? You make it sound like were going to just give you something for joining up. Like some kind of gift? You¡¯ve already got the wrong idea about this place if you think that¡¯s the case. You¡¯ll get nothing but an opportunity. If you finish any of the jobs, then you can earn something.¡±

    James then indicated to the two job boards on the walls. One of them already had about 10 different jobs on it. Each one had the outline of a star stamped on the bottom of it. This meant they had a Barrier Realm level of difficulty.

    Next to the star was a number. All of these job cards had a 1 to 4 written next to it. This was the number of merits they could receive from the guild on successful job completion. At the end of the job board was a piece of paper with a list of things they sold only to guild members and a list of stuff they sold to anyone.

    On the member-only list, starting at 5 merits was something labelled 616.3. The list went on and filled out to nearly 50 items or techniques from instruction on essential element control to the star point breathing technique that James had been working on recently. At the end of the list for 10,000 points was written two words. Arc Cannon.

    There was only one more thing currently posted to the job board. It had 100 merit points as the reward and had no star. The only thing written on the Job notice was ¡®Lab Assistant, 1 day¡¯. James was somewhat apprehensive about having such a large reward for this job, but Jessy believed even 1000 points was too little. This meant they eventually decided on an in between of only 100 points.

    In Jessy¡¯s opinion, anyone that can survive a single day in the Laboratory either had to be as mad as the pair that inhabits it or already be dead, much like the first lab assistant, Harvy.

    Once James had done speaking, 3 people got up and left. They said nothing and just walked out. Clearly, they were either scouting for other guilds or simply couldn¡¯t see any reason to join if the guild wasn¡¯t going to spoon feed them.

    The remaining 11 people became the first recruitment intake of the Dark Brotherhood, and they all swore an oath of loyalty to the Guild on the spot. One of them was even brave enough to immediately head to reception and register for the Lab Assistant job. James just gave a wry smile and went down to the lab.

    -The Lab-

    The moment he walked into the lab Exsue was glued to him. ¡°JayJay, you never come and play with me. All night you were talking about annoying things. Come and teach me how to cultivate again. I heard your bedroom is perfect for...¡± she paused in mid-speech and leant in close to his ear and whispered ¡°Dual Cultivating¡± as she nipped his earlobe.

    James was conflicted on exactly how to deal with this headache. He did want to try ¡®dual cultivation¡¯ with Exsue, but he was certain that would be like feeding a stray animal. It would just keep coming back and digging through his trash if he gave it anything.

    ¡°I thought you were some Ancient Lightning Dragon or something. Don¡¯t you have your own cultivation techniques?¡± James asked in an attempt to assuage his curiosity, just as much as he was trying to distract Exsue from any thoughts of them doing anything.

    Exsue made a cute pouty face at James¡¯ suave evasion. ¡°But that was when I was still a spirit beast. I¡¯m a human now and need to cultivate with human methods.¡±

    James was stunned. ¡®Human now? Does that mean this isn¡¯t just some kind of morphing into a human body dealy?¡¯

    He stopped at a bench and leant back onto it crossing his arms in thought. When he¡¯d organised his thoughts, he whipped out his black-pad. A few button presses later Skay¡¯s voice came through.

    ¡°Ah! Boy, perfect timing. I need a hand, the test subject from yesterday is acting up. He is refusing medicine. Come give him a little shock, so he doesn¡¯t fight back so much.¡±

    James felt a little bit dirty helping Skay subdue an abductee in his secret basement just so he could feed him something suspicious. Skay had made an attempt to make it look less suggestible by scribbling ¡®medicine¡¯ over the top of ¡®Harbinger 3.0¡¯. But the bubbling liquid in the test tube and the stinging in the eyes when it was exposed to air left James with no doubt of its questionable nature.

    He chose to pretend that he never noticed this discrepancy. After all, one day Skay might invent something with these herbs like another 616. Of course, he¡¯d never volunteer to test something Skay made without a thorough vetting process. At least ten subjects tested over the period of a week as the minimum standard of testing anything Skay had managed to squeeze into a test tube.

    After their captive was once again resting in his room, they returned to the work benches. Now I say ¡®resting¡¯, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a catatonic death state coma. If he could even still breath through the black foam dribbling out his nose and mouth, James would be surprised.

    ¡°Old Madman, I gave you a call because I think Exsue may be able to spread some more light on beast cultivation for us. I suspect you¡¯ve got a couple questions too?¡±

    Skay immediately flipped his pad out and eyed Exsue. James just smiled at the uncomfortable look on her face with the old madman eyeing her.

    Skay started poking his pad and scrolling through some lists. Then after preparing some easy starter questions and organising his lists, his trademark rapid-fire questioning began. Following this development the three of them spent an entire hour discussing beast and animal cultivation.

    From what they learnt, beast cultivation was vastly different than human cultivation. Although their spirit realms were referred to in a similar manner, they didn¡¯t actually have meditation or breathing techniques. Initially, they can intuitively draw in spirit energy.

    Every beast had an innate ability to cultivate some form of spirit energy and usually that energy would be specific to their environment. The little forest hopper, for example, was moved into an environment where it received endless shocks and lightning arcs. With a little assistance from one of Skay¡¯s potions, which James now assumed was 616.0, this helped it learn how to refine spirit energy properly, which a large number of spirit animals lacked.

    This meant that until it could learn to refine energy it would still be considered a spirit animal, even if it generated enough primal spirit energy to be considered equal to true spirit or palace realm. If it just remained an animal forever, it would just endlessly absorb primal energy and become an unstoppable force of pure instincts. Hunt, consume, mate.

    Eventually, once it had experienced a particular element enough, it would learn how to refine spirit energy, at which point it would develop a beast core. The beast core was a precious stone that a creature generated in their body with refined spirit energy and would essentially be their spirit realm, where all their energy was stockpiled.

    When Exsue mentioned this Skay almost jumped up and down with excitement. ¡°You mean to say that spirit energy can manifest as physical matter?¡±

    Exsue gave him a look like he was stupid. ¡°Well duh.¡±Stolen story; please report.

    Skay didn¡¯t even bother responding to that. Instead, his questioning intensified twofold. Exsue quickly learnt not to make fun of Skay for not knowing something. His fanaticism for knowledge frightened even her.

    In fact, as the monolith spirit, she never tried to read the old man¡¯s mind. Not after the first time. She felt like, if she had a real head, it would have exploded at the endlessly changing quality and quantity of thoughts the old man could process.

    His thought patterns were so fucking strange it mainly just came across as static when she tried to read his mind. Even James was difficult for her to read. Which was why she could only send short visions to him instead of creating a direct link and talking.

    When she had to implant the language into their minds after they arrived, the monolith actually had to draw extra power from her because it was having such a difficult time trying to force a change in their heads. It could only be considered their luck they were unconscious when they came through. Otherwise, the monolith might have had some trouble giving them the common language.

    Continuing on from that regression, spirit beasts were the first actual step of a creature onto the path of cultivation. It was them deciding to no longer follow the general script of the world and defying the heavens by reaching for the power of gods.

    After that first step, they would rapidly develop conscious thought similar to humans. When they were at the ¡®true spirit¡¯ realm, that was them creating a spirit realm instead of a reflection of their subconscious mind like humans did. They discussed into detail a number of realms higher than that when Exsue decided to withhold anymore.

    ¡°For now you¡¯re still only barrier realm cultivators. Even if I described higher realms of beast cultivation, it wouldn¡¯t help you at all. Instead, it may distract you from the things that are more important. Like your own cultivations.¡±

    With that, the discussion of beast cultivation ended. But not before James asked one final question which was the whole reason he even started the topic. ¡°You said before that you¡¯re a human now. That implies you¡¯re not a spirit beast. Can you explain that to us?¡±

    Exsue just gave a happy smile because James was acknowledging her existence and forcefully crawled into his embrace and encouraged him to wrap his arms around her. James didn¡¯t want to upset her right now because she would undoubtedly be spiteful with her explanation. She was apparently using this as an opportunity to take some advantages of James.

    Once she was nice and snug, she began to explain. ¡°Well, it¡¯s really simple actually. All beasts have one true goal in their cultivation. That is to achieve true sentience. By going against the heavens they are considered demons, and so the only way to truly escape their natural instincts is to become humans, who have two minds. One that controls your actions, and one that controls your instincts. I think you called it ... subconscious mind?¡±

    James and Skay shared a look between each other. Their thoughts were written on their faces. ¡®Intriguing¡¯. Exsue then continued on.

    ¡°Well eventually once they reach that stage they will have two choices. They separate instinct from action and become human. This will allow them to reach godhood and climb into the heavens. Or they fall to their instinct and lose all the rationality that they have spent those millions of years trying to get. They descend into madness and become a true demonic cultivator.¡±

    James pondered for a bit. Then suddenly he had a thought. ¡°How did you become human though, weren¡¯t you still a dragon when I first met you?¡±

    ¡°Well that¡¯s easy. The whole reason monoliths exist is because we were spirit beasts that were on the verge of divergence. We were about to become a demonic cultivator and the Great Ancient took us and forced us into the monolith. As a result, we were given a second chance.

    ¡°The key to becoming human is to spend time with humans and understand them and observe them. By locking our cultivation and sealing us into the monolith, we lose our physical body until we have stabilised our mind. At which point we can take the chance of rebirth but only on the condition another spirit takes our place.

    ¡°If we fail, we become a demon cultivator and fall to madness. If we succeed, we become human. Both of these come at the cost of our cultivation. It means we have to start again from scratch. A free spirit beast would become human without losing any cultivation. That was the price we have to pay for the chance to regain sanity and scale the heavens.¡±

    Exsue finally gave a long breath, finished her explanation. James looked down at her head as she snuggled into his arms and rubbed her bum against his pelvis repeatedly. ¡°Um ... so, are there like ... side effects of being dragged back from the brink of madness and becoming human? Like ... I don¡¯t know ... just a little bit of crazy sneaking through with you?¡±

    Exsue just smiled knowingly then turned around in his arms. She gave a coy look, stood up on tip toes and gave James a peck on the lips. ¡°Well, who knows JayJay? I¡¯m the only spirit beast I¡¯ve ever heard of that has escaped a monolith. Now let¡¯s stop talking about boring stuff. Teach me how to cultivate like a human.¡±

    Following this, James went through the motions of the meditation technique. When they unlocked her element, she took it upon herself to unlock an extra one. Naturally, her first affinity was lightning. This was quickly followed by the one she referred to as love. When James was affected by the element sticks aura, he was immediately envious of everything.

    Jealous of Skay¡¯s intelligence, envious of Harvy¡¯s cultivation level, he loathed Jessy for having managed to unlock an emotional element and he hadn¡¯t. This all quickly passed, but the feeling it left him with made him feel slightly dirty inside.

    Not because these things ¡®weren¡¯t¡¯ an honest reflection of his feelings, he readily admitted to himself he felt envious of all these things and wanted them for himself.

    But generally, his mind operated at a stable level in which he realised Skay¡¯s intelligence was bred from a greedy madness. Emotional elements like Jessy¡¯s affected a person¡¯s nature, so he wasn¡¯t ready to jump into one of them. And lastly, but of most importance, Harvy only achieved his cultivation through methods that James refused to accept for himself. If he had to be a lifeless corpse and suffer a cultivation deviation just to reach that level of power he¡¯d rather remain a commoner till he died.

    When he came down from this brief madness, he let out a long sigh. ¡°Why did it have to be her. I¡¯m sure I can create another one, but then there¡¯d be two. God damn, I really wanted someone less ... clingy, to fill that role.¡±

    Envy. The Brotherhood had just gotten their Envy member. When she envisioned her ¡®love¡¯ for James, it was more the feeling she had from him not being hers right now, and how she felt when she witnessed his lovemaking with Jessy, and then all the attention that Hao paid towards him. Not to mention everything she¡¯d witnessed him doing at Madam Sues with that Toller character.

    She firmly believed she was the best thing that could happen to him, and that no one else apart from her would ever deserve him. This was the fuel she poured into her new element, and that¡¯s why it created Envy. Hell, even her eyes turned green. If that wasn¡¯t envy, what the hell was it?

    James felt miserable with this turn of events. For starters ... her envy was almost entirely directed at him ... for some fucked up reason he couldn¡¯t wrap his head around. Secondly, if her element altered her nature even more, her level of crazy possessiveness towards him would be in a whole new league. He was afraid she might even actually go mad and start chaining him to a bed in his sleep, never allowing him to escape her sight.

    After this whole ordeal, the stress of everything was building up and after quickly running Exsue through the star point breathing technique he told her to go cultivate in the arena for a while.

    He then turned to Goliath who¡¯d been present for the last two hours busily doing nothing but watching and listening. To say he was intrigued by this group would be an understatement.

    Not only had they developed some method to unlock multiple elements. They¡¯d created a whole new method of cultivation. From elements to meditation to breathing. The three major areas anyone with spirit energy needed to focus the most on. This was followed only by martial techniques. Which they also seemed to have, if the old man¡¯s laser finger was any indication.

    To top it all off. They were the ones who created the raucous with the monolith by pulling that strange girl out of it. They had an underground laboratory that put the Hall of Forging to shame, and their public underground arena had the highest concentration of spirit energy in the entire region, perhaps with the only exception being the Jetsu Mountains!

    Before James even had the chance to ask, Goliath just cupped his hands together made a short formal bow and said. ¡°Please allow me to travel the path of cultivation with you.¡±

    James just made the smile of the devil and moved up to his side rubbing his palms like a Jewish salesmen. ¡°Certainly, there¡¯s only two problems. The first one is, if you travel with me to the top, there can only be one all-powerful God. If we help each other to that point ... well, I will immediately kill you.¡±

    Goliath made a strange grin like he¡¯d just been told that all his dreams will come true. ¡°Truly aiming for the top of the heavens. I agree, when we meet at the top. I will win.¡±

    James smile just brightened further, and his hands rubbed faster like some teenage hoodlum preparing to steal a car. ¡°Good, the second one is that there is a particular element I want to help you unlock. Apart from that, you¡¯re free to come and go from the guild as you like. Just remember, if you chose to leave and start spreading anything we teach you here. I¡¯m going to kill you. Don¡¯t think I don¡¯t have the means. I could probably kill that crotchety old bastard Jeng if I wanted to.¡±

    ¡°Fine, that¡¯s only natural, I can swear an oath if you like.¡±

    ¡°No need, no need. That will take half the sport out of it if you run.¡± James just smiled and waved his hand after Goliath mentioned an oath. He didn¡¯t want the core group he¡¯d be working with tied down by pledges or promises or some other natural law crap. He wanted trustable like-minded colleagues, not puppets.

    Goliath just gave a wry chuckle when he heard that. He already liked this James fellow. To already be looking at the peak of the mountain while standing at the base. They were birds of a feather, so to say. Finally, he couldn¡¯t contain the building curiosity. ¡°So this element you want me to unlock. Why is it so special?¡±

    James gave a wry smile and started to move over to a room. He then indicated inside. ¡°I¡¯m going to start calling you Goliath. That will be your 7 sins moniker. The Goliath of Wrath. Now Goliath, how¡¯s your anger management? Do you feel angry a lot? Perhaps you always feel angry? How do you deal with it.¡±

    Goliath was a little surprised at the question. ¡°Anger? I guess you could say I¡¯m always angry. But anger has a purpose, the stronger it is, the more power it brings you in battle. Controlling it is easy. You just bottle it away and accept that for the moment, it has no use. But one day, it will all come forth at once. That is how you control your anger. Just remember that one day ... it will have a purpose.¡±

    James was smiling and nodding as he sat up a little chair in the middle of the room. ¡°Excellent, well today, I want to test just how well you control that rage of yours. Just sit here for, oh well, until you can¡¯t I suppose.¡±

    James then left the room with the door wide open and strolled off to start playing with some array patterns with Skay.

    Goliath wasn¡¯t too sure what he should be doing and continued to remain sitting. Soon his anger grew because he¡¯d just been left sitting here like some child being kept out of the way, but he quickly remembered that James had said this was a measure of his self-control. If that was the case, he had to stay here for as long as possible without giving in to any emotions.

    After another half an hour the black glass on one side of the room became clear and Goliath saw James seating an obese man at a desk. He then placed down a little box and pressed something on it.

    ¡°Now Fatty, remember we want to catalogue every theory you can come up with about everything you¡¯ve witnessed in this world. We never know when it could come in handy. I¡¯ll just leave this door open so if you need anything feel free to give a yell.¡±

    After saying such, James turned to the black glass of the room and smiled at Goliath.

    At first, Goliath was confused at what was going on. He then very quickly realised exactly what was happening. He¡¯d never heard so much infuriating drivel before in his life. He also understood why James had called this a test of self-control. Knowing that the door to both rooms was open, he was almost prepared to stomp around to the other room and brutally kill this fat man.

    This persisted for an entire two hours. By this time it was just after midday and Goliath had spent 3 hours in this little room. 1 hour doing nothing, and a whole 2 hours listening to this fat man¡¯s theories on everything and how it was all connected to anal probing by space aliens.

    After another hour of this, he witnessed the fat man eating and talking at the same time after James brought him some lunch. When Goliath thought he was finally starting to grow numb to the droning of the fat man, James finally came and collected Fatty. As he left the room with a devilish smile, the glass went black again.

    Goliath sat waiting for another 2 hours. He was really starting to get mad now. This James fellow was clearly having a great time playing with him. When that thought struck him a little screen popped up and showed the outside lab. The camera was aimed at Skay and James who both seemed to be painting an array while laughing loudly.

    He then heard them talking. ¡° ... and so I left the fuckin moron sitting there like some tool. I thought he¡¯d give up, but he just continued sitting there. Fucking must have a brain like a post this guy. Well, I went and got Fatty to see if I could stir the guy up a bit. He didn¡¯t even flinch as he sat through 3 hours of that fat bastard talking about his theories. HAHAHA! It¡¯s so fuckin funny. He thinks he¡¯s here to join the guild!¡±

    Skay was joining in with the act as they painted. ¡°HAHAHA, it¡¯s brilliant. Fucking moron is probably still sitting in the room thinking he¡¯s going to get to join our guild.¡±

    This carried on for a while, and the duo managed to call Goliath every demeaning thing under the sun. Once they¡¯d played it up a bit they just ¡®happened¡¯ to notice that the camera seemed to be on.

    They made some motions at a computer before James asked Skay. ¡°Is it off?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, yeah, it should be off now. Do you think he heard all that?¡±

    ¡°Nah probably not. It can¡¯t have been on that long. Besides, guys so fuckin stupid. I¡¯ll just say it was part of the test and he¡¯ll be all ¡®Oh okay¡¯. And if he acts up, we can just bring the girl down here to give him another whipping. He already lost his balls to her once.¡±

    Finished their little play, Skay returned to drawing arrays and James moved over to the room. When he walked into the room, he saw Goliath standing in the chamber with his fists and teeth clenched. His whole body was shaking, and he looked so close to exploding it was as if any moment now a volcano would erupt. James could even vaguely feel tremors running through the ground.

    When he saw this, he smiled. This man truly had some self-control. To stand there and listen to this tongue lashing without actually tipping into a maddened rage. When he saw that James had entered, he just stared at him with bloodshot eyes. Like an enraged beast one step away from launching forwards and attacking.

    ¡®All he needs now is a little push.¡¯ Thought James as he smiled sinisterly. He dragged in another chair then sat down opposite to Goliaths seat and eyed him.

    ¡°I¡¯m surprised you managed to sit through that little test. How about we finish up then aye?¡±

    James gestured to the seat. Goliath just looked at it, then back at James. He was sure that whole thing truly was a test of his willpower. James didn¡¯t seem the type to go through all this effort just to torture someone. He was sure this was all leading up to something. And if it weren¡¯t, then the Dark Brotherhood would just join the list of people he planned to eventually kill.

    He sat down and took a deep breath to calm himself a bit. Before that breath left his body, James threw him a curve ball in the form of a question.

    ¡°I heard you did nothing and watched as your parents were tortured to death by some sicko. Elder Grace told me when they found you, you were rutting away on your mother¡¯s corpse like some disgusting little pervert. Why don¡¯t you tell me all about what happened back then?¡±

    When he heard this, Goliath¡¯s eyes nearly popped out of his skull, and the veins on his face visibly began to pulsate through his skin. His hands gripped so tightly that blood began to pour out from his nails digging in.

    ¡°Who told you about that?¡± He managed to rasp out.

    James gave a careless smile and wave of the hand. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter, actually if you really want to know I can tell you. Old Jeng even told me about it when I asked him. Went into great detail about how he had to pry you off your mother¡¯s corpse because you still hadn¡¯t got your rocks off. When I enquired further, he even said you were the one who¡¯d helped that sicko torture your parents.¡±

    If Goliath looked enraged before, then now he looked truly demonic. The whole room had started shaking, and his skin was turning darker and darker from all the blood rushing to the surface. Blood vessels in his eyes had begun to pop and dyed his white into red, not at all dissimilar to Harvy¡¯s meltdown at his execution.

    ¡°Well, is it true? You¡¯re such a fucked up monster you didn¡¯t even give that old pervert a chance at your parents and killed and fucked their lifeless corpses yourself? To be honest, from the things I¡¯ve heard about what you did back then, I¡¯m a little reluctant to let you into my guild.¡±

    Finally, Goliath had reached boiling point. He couldn¡¯t handle this torment any longer, and with the last little bit of will power he had remaining he marched out of the room and made a beeline towards the elevator.

    James just smiled and followed after him as he tucked the stun gun he¡¯d been holding back into his robe. Truthfully, He was very impressed. He suspected even he didn¡¯t have the ability to take a verbal thrashing like this fellow had. If their positions were reversed, he was confident that he¡¯d have exploded and tried to murder someone by now. James had weak points as well, and if someone poked them, he would react violently.

    As Goliath started mashing the elevator button, James caught up then took a stick out of his robe. He then flicked it towards Goliath.

    ¡°Hey big fella, catch!¡±

    Goliath spun and snatched the stick from the air. When he saw his enraged face, James started to feel some fear. The man was crying blood. So great was his hatred and rage for that time in his life, he was actually crying blood.

    ¡®He¡¯s perfect!¡¯ James thought to himself.

    ¡°So here¡¯s the deal Goliath. I want you to take every last little bit of rage you¡¯ve built up in your life. Everything that you¡¯re feeling right now, and then pour it into that stick.¡±

    Goliath just looked at the element stick. Then it clicked. He suddenly realised what James had been doing. What better way to unlock an emotional element than to build that emotion up to fever point. The moment in time when you truly understand it the best is when it¡¯s all you can feel.

    His frown deepened as he came to this conclusion. He then closed his eyes and thought back to that time. To that moment. What James had said was somewhat close to the truth. He was the one who¡¯d killed his parents. He cut his father¡¯s throat and stabbed his own mother in the heart. It wasn¡¯t for some sick twisted reason like James had suggested.

    It was because he didn¡¯t want them to suffer for him anymore. He fully realised how strong his parents love for him was as he watched that sick motherfucker forcing them to cut little pieces off each other for his own amusement.

    They were weak within the clan and had no real talent, and the man was too strong. He had to be in the palace realm at least. To make it worse, he let the boy sit huddled In the corner because he knew no matter what he¡¯d be able to kill the kid if they tried to rescue him somehow.

    If they died too quick. He promised he¡¯d kill their little boy. If they didn¡¯t kill each other nice and slow, he¡¯d torture their boy right in front of them. Haungshu saw true parental love at that moment. For nearly half an hour he was forced to watch, as his parents had to slowly cut little pieces off each other, while that fucking twisted man pleasured himself.

    Finally, he couldn¡¯t take it. He ran forwards and picked up a knife and swung it. His father¡¯s breath stopped in his throat, and he gave his only son one last sad, worried smile as he fell backwards into the peace of death. In the same motion, he stabbed the knife downwards into his own mother¡¯s heart. The whole time the man just beat himself faster and faster laughing with madness.

    As the last flickering candle flame of life dimmed from his mother¡¯s eyes and the laughing man ejaculated across the room, his mother reached out and held him in her embrace one last time. With a final whispered ¡®I love you¡¯ she pushed him backwards out of the window, and he fell two stories into the street below.

    With the vision of his parent¡¯s death repeating and the laughing man¡¯s face etched into his mind, he gave his energy a little push into the stick. It soon began to flow, then flood and finally like a tsunami of rage and hatred the air around him began to vibrate and a red mist and the smell of blood and carnage rose up around him.

    This single moment of release was glorious for Goliath. He¡¯d never felt such a massive release of his rage and hatred all at once. But it still wasn¡¯t enough. It wasn¡¯t the true release he would feel, when he found the laughing man and smashed him into a mashie pulp with his bare fists.

    James, having long since backed away a safe distance, just smiled as the blood mist rose up around Goliath. He certainly looked like a wrathful war god bathed in the blood of his enemies.

    That was number 4. Gluttony, Lust, Envy, Wrath. Only three to go. He already had a pretty good idea of two of those. He wasn¡¯t ready yet, but he was sure he knew what he¡¯d unlock when he tried. There was nothing else in the world he cared more about. Although he had plenty of all the sins. There was only one that resonated with him the most and kept all the rest in check.

    He had a feeling Skay would represent another one. That left only one more. It would most likely be the most difficult position to fill, and if it comes to it, he may even have to create someone that could fit the bill.

    With this episode complete, Goliath of Wrath joined the Brotherhood as their fourth sin.

 Chapter 22: The School

    -The Lab-

    The laboratory had settled down rather quickly after this whole scene finished playing out. It should be said that James wasn¡¯t just heartlessly torturing the man.

    If he was going to grant someone the element of wrath, then he wanted to make sure that person had the ability to contain it. If the emotional elements affected a person¡¯s nature like he suspected they did, then the last thing he¡¯d want is someone constantly angry at everything.

    To say that Goliath had passed with flying colours would be an understatement. The fact that he could maintain any sort of self-control with someone picking at his scars is an accurate measure of his character.

    After Goliath had cleaned himself up a little, James ran him through the basics. His earth element was already rather strong, so he didn¡¯t go into much detail about that. Besides, he knew that as helpful as that was, actual experience with the earth was worth more.

    After imparting the meditation and breathing techniques, they left him to go up to the arena and get some practice in with his new element.

    Skay and James both took this quiet opportunity to return to array research.

    At the moment the computer had started being able to pick out distinct patterns trying to guess how they worked. The duo would draw up a little test pattern and then input the outcome to the computer. The more they did this, the faster the computer managed to understand what the different patterns did.

    They now had a backlog of nearly 40 different patterns from foundations to lores. At last, someone who could accomplish this time eating task for them appeared. A young man looking around 20 was escorted into the lab by Harvy.

    Skay looked at him sceptically. ¡°Harvy, you bringing fucking riff-raff into my lab now? Are we going to have to go back to level 3 and start our liquid testing again?¡±

    Harvy made a curt bow and his stiff expressionless face ... well, it did nothing, because of the poor bastard basically being half-dead. He probably tries to make expressions, but can¡¯t, because the rigour mortise is like superglue for facial muscles.

    ¡°My apologies Master, Lackey 1 has offered his assistance with the lab job from the board.¡±

    Skay perked up the moment he heard this. ¡°Oh? Boy, you already started clawing these ... err I mean, recruiting fresh faces?¡±

    James ignored the old bastard who was already moving towards the direction of a nearby workbench, he gave the man a look over.

    He was the most average looking bloke James had ever seen. 5 foot 9, brown hair, brown eyes, fair skin. Not fat, fit or skinny. He looked like he was printed out from the compilation of every average looking man on the planet.

    ¡°You know the rules for this job?¡± James asked him.

    The man gave a nod. ¡°Yes, Guildmaster. I¡¯m to swear an additional oath to never discuss, mention or even refer to the lab or anything I witness in the lab. In the lab, I am only to respond to a name given to me by the Lab Master, or to my assistant number. I am required to do a full 24 hours in the lab before I¡¯m awarded any merit points, and my number of merits can be anywhere from 100 to 1000 depending on my performance.¡±

    James just made a ¡®tsk¡¯ sound when he heard the last part. Apparently, Jessy had written this on the contract for the assistant job while he¡¯s been down here.

    He didn¡¯t want to award anyone that many points, if someone, somehow, managed to survive 10 days in the lab and did exemplary work, they could request an Arc Cannon. That was just asking for trouble if one of those got out of his control.

    He only put it on the merit list because he wanted to show off his pride and joy to the new recruits and give them something to aspire towards. It would encourage them to earn more merits, and by extension do good work on job¡¯s contracted to the Guild.

    Skay¡¯s eyes glowed unnaturally, and he beckoned Lackey 1 to come over to him. ¡°You any good at painting? Calligraphy? Doesn¡¯t matter just get over here. Your job is to draw these patterns. I¡¯ll set up the computer to project a different pattern once you¡¯re done. All you have to do is paint the designs exactly the same as the projection. You understand? Don¡¯t make any mistakes.¡±

    Lackey 1 just nodded and then took the brush and paint from Skay and started painting onto a big sheet on the ground.

    ¡°Now listen carefully. Each time you finish just say it out loud, the computer should understand. Put this sheet away over in that room then paint the next one.¡±

    Skay then left Lackey 1 to do this job. He and James had another important project they wanted to work on.

    ¡°Boy how many PG batteries do you think you¡¯d be able to charge up?¡±

    James thought for a moment. ¡°Well, that depends. In a day of doing nothing else, I could probably charge up maybe 3 the size of the one we used for the Arc Cannon. But if they¡¯re smaller, it might only take a fraction of the time.¡±

    Skay nodded his head a few times then walked over to an available computer, after some playing around he pulled up a design for a little toy quadcopter.

    ¡°Well, these little things use fuck all. The battery would probably only be the size of your fingernail.¡±

    James looked on for a moment at the design. He then realised what the old madman was thinking. ¡°Do we have the capability to build these?¡±

    Skay just gave a mad grin. ¡°Well not yet. We have two jobs for the next few days. I want to assemble some automation for the lab. A couple 3D printers, some electronics manufacturing, you know. The basics. We¡¯ll have to get Jessy to start buying up the necessary resources. That also means that the 400 gold we just made will probably fall back down to something like 50 gold.¡±

    James cupped his chin. ¡°Well that¡¯s true, it would be a significant investment. But the automation would speed up everything. The things we¡¯ve been limited in creating so far will be in reach, and we can start making some ... I guess this world would consider them artefacts. Then we¡¯ll be raking the cash in.¡±

    Skay gave few nods. ¡°Good, we should start on this immediately. The second project is some cataloguing. Have you imagined how fast the computers could run if they were made with LS3? I could build a super computer the size of my palm. What we need to do is start cataloguing the full properties of all their weird spirit materials. If we can assemble a decent list, we would be able to replace everything in a computer with something better. The only issue is, there¡¯s only two of us.¡±

    James was leaning on the bench, and his mind was spinning away madly. ¡°Well, I suspect we may be in this city for a while, and there¡¯s no great rush. Let¡¯s do this instead. We set up automation for the lab. That one I agree on wholeheartedly. Once that¡¯s done, we can assemble a simple set up to test and record the properties of materials for us. All we would need is some lab assistants to replace things now and then and make sure nothing explodes.

    ¡°Instead of focusing our attention onto that, let¡¯s design a basic training package and educate some people. Once we have a few who know the basics, they can then educate more. This Guild was never going to grow over night. The fact we¡¯ve already achieved so much is a testament to the amount of gear that got sucked through with us.¡±

    Skay scratched his head and then let out a sigh. ¡°For the greater picture, this is the best option. I should warn you in advance, I don¡¯t do teaching well.¡±

    James just gave a wry smile. ¡°Well, you only have to teach a few at first. After that, they can teach each other. I think our best bet would be some of the Hall of Forging Disciples. Any of them that show promise through the first round of teaching we will try and poach them from the hall.¡±

    With this said they began to design and develop lab automation.

    -2 Weeks-

    For the next 2 weeks, everything was rather uneventful. Apart from a few more beast sightings than normal, there was no sign of a horde attacking. The Brotherhood was now only processing a handful of people a day for meditation because almost the entire rest of the city had already been able to scrape up the money to pay for it.

    In total, the Guild made nearly 800 gold from this little endeavour. Which was close to half what the city earned every 6 months when they sold their grains to the empire.

    The automation for the lab was somewhat more complicated for the duo of madmen than they¡¯d thought it would be. They ended up digging out another 400 m<sup>2</sup> room on the other side of the elevator that became manufacturing and processing. After they had finished the first few machines, everything became a little easier, because the machines could replicate the parts needed to build more of themselves.

    The guild members had risen to nearly 80 people, and the guild was getting an increasing number of jobs. Some of the more adventurous types even hunted some weaker spirit animals and beasts to trade the materials in for merits.

    Once the guild¡¯s automation was done, they could necessarily pour in resources at one end and then the computers would pump something out the other end. It sped things up even more than they initially expected.

    By now they had three lab assistants at the same time who had somehow managed to survive mentally and physically for three straight days in a row. One of them seemed the most worrying because he was almost as mad as Skay when it came to playing with alchemy on level 3.

    For the first time, Skay named a Lackey. And so Lackey 12 became Norman. He and Harvy seemed to hit it off really well for some unexplainable reason. He was put in charge of making sure nothing untoward grew on level 4 and has almost never left the bottom levels of the lab. Skay was of the opinion the man had a natural green thumb and took him under his wing as an alchemy prot¨¦g¨¦e.

    By this time the group had gone to training multiple times and started developing some martial techniques. James had created 2 he was rather proud of. The first one was throwing a lightning bolt.

    If he used both plasma and lightning element when he used this technique it was capable of blowing a 3-meter hole in the arena¡¯s wall. That made it almost as powerful as an Arc Cannon, the only downside is that it depleted nearly all his energy and caused him to bleed from every orifice.

    The other technique he quite liked was levitation. He couldn¡¯t take flight yet because the moment he was too far away from the ground, it required an exorbitant amount of wind energy to maintain the stability or move around. But if he was just using it in synchronous with pushing off the ground he could jump pretty high and move around fluidly.

    Mostly in spar¡¯s he just applied lightning energy and ran around though. In that situation, it was more useful to move faster than the opponent than to have more fluid running and jumping.

    By this time Grace mostly just gave tips on how to operate in combat like maintaining awareness of your surroundings in battle and observing your opponent correctly. She¡¯d stopped bringing other disciples with her when she came because no one in the barrier realm could contest with any of these freaks.

    Skay hadn¡¯t made another appearance since the first time they trained and neither Grace or the other members of the Brotherhood were too upset about that.

    Since his arrival, Goliath had only become more freakishly strong. Jessy now had to apply everything she had just to close the distance when they sparred.

    She¡¯d started creating a technique as well, and the only reason she still won any matches against him was because of this technique. She began carrying a hip flask of water with her everywhere and used her spirit energy to create a lance of high-pressure water. Just touching it would be enough to cut through to the bone and it meant Goliath had to be extremely careful whenever she splashed some water on the ground.

    If she stepped into it, then she could create a water jet that shot up from below and from out of sight. He actually got impaled a few times, and the only thing that saved him was his wrath energy. Which seemed to increase his regeneration speed by a full magnitude and visibly started closing his wounds.

    Skay was almost prepared to start cutting pieces off him to test it, and the only thing that stopped him was James¡¯ reminder that the man was the incarnation of Rage.

    The Merchant¡¯s Guild grew to love the Brotherhood. This came about for two reasons. Firstly, the Brotherhood purchased vast quantities of all sorts of cheap materials through them. They bought so much over the past two weeks the merchants guild had doubled their annual profits.

    The second reason was that some odd requests the other guilds and sects wouldn¡¯t touch, the dark guild would almost always take on. Although some of the jobs were morally grey areas and rather questionable in nature, James didn¡¯t even blink and posted them on the job board. Hell, a few of the jobs joined the Lab Assistant Job in the ¡®black¡¯ section of the job board.

    Of course, any job that might offend other parties or faction that could threaten the Brotherhoods peace was posted with rather high rewards from the Guild or Clan requesting it.

    It wasn¡¯t just the Merchant¡¯s Guild that posted questionable jobs to the Brotherhood. Although the guild only had mostly weak members in the barrier realm, they always seemed to complete a job. This was mostly thanks to some ingenious contraptions or cheap tactics that James and Skay had thrown together for certain jobs.

    Just as an example, the farmers guild was having a problem with a plague of Grain Fly¡¯s that had started a feeding frenzy in some of the paddocks.

    James just built some little fly traps similar to some on Earth and then started selling them. Gau city then had a massive influx of nearly a hundred Golden Grain Fly¡¯s and the market almost fell on its head.

    James, of course, wasn¡¯t aware at the time how much Grain Fly¡¯s were worth and had only sold the Traps for a gold coin each. Although he¡¯d sold nearly a hundred of them, the 100 fly¡¯s that went into the market got sold for approximately 3 or 4 gold each.

    Not to mention he¡¯d now released a method to help catch the Fly¡¯s, so everyone was jumping up and down trying to create some traps and he¡¯d be unlikely to make any money from that venture again.

    Over the past two weeks a number of strange occurences happened around the city. Products that James¡¯ guild were selling started seeing copy cats or similar products popping up in large quantities for cheap prices.

    James wasn¡¯t too worried and had started cutting back the quantity of production that was allowed to be sold from the guild anyway.

    In addition now and then a few strangers managed to find a way into the guild and stirred up some trouble. Most often than not they would take a receptionist hostage and demand to see the Guild Master or try and break things.

    Sometimes they were just suspicious looking vagrents that hung around the guild for a few days in a row or tried to tail guild memebers that went on jobs. Very quickly these people would suddenly disappear into the depths of the Guild and never reappear.

    -The Lab-

    James and Skay sat in the lab watching Lackey 1, who¡¯d just come back after a short two weeks recuperating from a little accident he had while painting an array pattern. He was now bald ... everywhere, and his once very average looking face had a big burn on the side of it.

    James couldn¡¯t figure out for the life of him why this guy would come back down to the lab after that business with the flames, but he was quite impressed with how perfect the man¡¯s array painting had become. If he¡¯d made any mistakes in painting then it wouldn¡¯t be more than half a millimetre out.

    Lackey 2 hadn¡¯t been as lucky as 1. She had been engulfed by a strange spatial anomaly and Skay was still picking little pieces of her out of unusual places in the lab. The pair had long since automated a painter controlled by the computer, but it was still in the testing phase, and they weren¡¯t about to rush to finish it now that 1 was back.

    Lackey¡¯s 4,7 and 11 also had also met misfortune in the lab do to some carelessness. James had been fairly certain one of them had tried to smuggle an Arc Cannon out of the lab and got obliterated by Goliath on the way out of the Guild Hall.

    Goliath never mentioned it and James only found out after he¡¯d been caught a different interloper and started rewatching security footage and seeing goliath bringing the cannon back down to the lab.

    After that, they started to ramp up security of the lab a little more. To prevent things wondering out and strange people getting in.

    James sipped some tea as he watched 1 wiping the sweat of his intense concentration from his brow. ¡°Old madman, is it ready yet?¡±

    Skay looked to a screen and pushed some keys. ¡°Nearly. Should be ready by tomorrow. Do you want to make this a public learning experience and charge money for it? We¡¯re running out of LS3 stones and were going to need the money to purchase some more. On top of that, there are some exotic metals I¡¯ve read about that I want to buy for some testing.¡±

    James placed his tea down for a bit then got up and stretched his back. ¡°Alright sounds good. I think this may be the best idea Harvy has ever come up with. Let¡¯s see if the guy next door has settled on those sudden debts he incurred from the Merchant¡¯s Guild yet. If he hasn¡¯t, we¡¯ll be able to set up a school next door. That way, the hall will remain for members and the riffraff can go next door.¡±

    After saying this much, James walked over to a bench and started pouring lightning energy into a little grey cube the size of a Lego block. Once it looked like it was full of lightning snakes, he placed it into a small quadcopter about a foot in length and width.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°You sure these are gonna survive out there Old Madman?¡±

    Skay glanced back with a grin as James placed the little copter into a dark little shoot on the wall that led up to the surface.

    ¡°Well, QC 1 has been out there for almost a week and hasn¡¯t had any issues yet.¡±

    James pressed a little green switch and the copter launched into the shoot. He then walked over to a screen and watched as a live feed came up with QC 100 written in the corner. On the side of the screen were a whole bunch of numbers and graphs from atmospheric readings to average spirit saturation and even compass readings.

    The drone quadcopter then shot off towards the south. While this was happening a little red ¡®alert¡¯ popped up onto the screen. After pressing it, the screen flicked over to a list of drones from 1 to 100. Written next to about 20 of them was the words Endless Forest in flashing red.

    One of them was flashing yellow. After James had pressed on it, the screen switched to a live stream, and he watched as it came flying back towards the inner city and the launch shoot.

    ¡°Oh? Old madman, looks like one of the forest drones is back.¡±

    Skay shot up and ran over to check out the readings and graphs it had. ¡°Haha! I knew it. There¡¯s no way that magic forest is on this planet. It¡¯s got to be an entirely different world, I¡¯m sure of it!¡±

    James then pressed the side of the screen and watched as the fast playback of its week long adventure in the forest sped past on the screen. James was surprised to see just how far it had travelled. At one point it even spotted and investigated some spirit beasts.

    When he witnessed it rapidly flying away from a tiger with wings on its back he nearly fell over. ¡°Holy crap, no wonder it¡¯s back so early. It had to use half its energy just to escape that thing. Hey Old Madman, how fast did you say this thing can go?¡±

    Skay thought for a second. ¡°Well, your spirit energy, combined with the materials we used from this world to build these things, I measured it at about 180 km/h.¡±

    James turned back and eyed the winged tiger chasing the drone through the air. He then chose to ignore the fact that this world had flying tigers and changed the topic again.

    ¡°How¡¯s the computer going with the study on the monoliths array patterns?¡±

    Skay scratched away at this head and readjusted his spider eyes. ¡°It¡¯s fucking not. They¡¯re so fucking complicated it can¡¯t make heads or tails of them. Fucking piece of shit. It needs to be about a 100 times more powerful in my opinion.

    James gave a sigh. He really wanted to figure out how it traps something¡¯s consciousness in it. That way, he would be able to build a living computer that could learn and process faster than any modern computers. Although, if they could start building a computer from this world¡¯s materials, that would be just as good.

    The only problem was, designing something as complicated as a computer was thousands of times more complex than building some little motors, gyros and sensors for the drones. Even the computer parts inside the drones had to constructed from conventional materials for the moment.

    They decided to stop thinking about these things for a while and focus on something more fun.

    The pair wanted to start playing with the array patterns again. For the moment their knowledge about these things was still limited. Both of them readily acknowledged they didn¡¯t understand anywhere near enough.

    One of the first things they wanted to test was a theory Skay had about the nature of each pattern being more synchronised to certain catalysts.

    They separated the primal spirit array into its base patterns. In total, they found that it had 3 different foundations. A storage pattern, an attraction pattern and a gathering pattern.

    They placed the storage pattern with the PG paint. Then they added some other recently created paint that encouraged the effects of collection and attraction.

    Of the support patterns, they found 3 as well. The first two connected the storage and gathering patterns. They determined one of these patterns acted as a limiter for the rate that energy could fill the storage pattern. The other one they weren¡¯t exactly sure what it did.

    The third one connected the storage and attraction patterns and presumably acted as the power link for the attraction pattern to pull energy towards the array. Naturally, the attraction pattern was the biggest foundation pattern.

    Finally was the Lore patterns, they numbered 8. Some they were certain of, some they didn¡¯t even have an idea. The 2 Lore¡¯s written together connecting the limiting support and the storage, they guessed was how the support pattern knew when to stop the flow of energy.

    The other support pattern there had two Lore¡¯s on it as well, but because they couldn¡¯t figure out what that support did they couldn¡¯t guess what the laws were supposed to do.

    Each Foundation had a Lore written on it, and the duo assumed these were like a note saying what the foundation pattern was. Like giving something a name, so everything else knew what to call it.

    The final Lore was written on the support linking to the attraction pattern. This one they guessed was something like telling the link which direction to allow energy to flow.

    First, they changed the storage patterns paint over to Power Gel. They then swapped the gathering and attraction patterns for a black-iron based paint. When electrified, black-iron normally had a great attraction. Al-be-it with metals, they hoped it would influence the design somehow.

    They left all the support patterns in LS3, after all, LS3 had excellent conducting properties so hopefully, this would allow immediate energy transfer without creating any heat or anything else the array could possibly produce.

    Finally, the Lore was all written in a paint they just created. Skay called it Code Paint and it was apparently a mixture of damn near every paint they¡¯d ever created plus some other things he wasn¡¯t very specific about.

    Once they were finished, James bent down and powered up the array. It wasn¡¯t even a second before he could feel a huge rush of energy into the lab. The little measuring device on the computer workbench started glowing, and the graph on the screen was shooting up. 10, 20, 30, 40 ... It kept going until about a half hour later it began to steady out at nearly 300 times average.

    James and Skay couldn¡¯t pull their eyes away as they sat in chairs next to the screen drinking tea for another hour. Although far slower the graph had continued to rise until it reached nearly 315.

    They both let out a long sigh and gave each other some back patting. This was a huge success for this experiment. So it turned out painting an array with multiple different catalysts increased its effectiveness 10 fold. Probably more.

    While they were sitting there admiring their handiwork, James suddenly snapped his fingers together in a lightbulb moment.

    ¡°Old madman. That last support pattern. I probably know what it is.¡±

    Skay turned to him and after waiting for a moment got impatient. ¡°Well don¡¯t make me fucking beat it out of you boy! What is it?¡±

    James just grinned then leant forwards resting his arms on the bench.

    ¡°It¡¯s a conversion pattern. It converts the primal spirit energy into whatever kind of energy was injected into the array originally. If I¡¯m not wrong, that means those other two Lore¡¯s should be something like ... the code telling it what spirit energy to convert to, and telling it to convert from primal to refined. If we changed that one, I suspect it would go backwards and convert refined into primal.¡±

    Skay slapped the bench in excitement. ¡°Haha! Yes, that¡¯s a brilliant deduction. That would be why it was always full of lightning energy and why the pattern is self-sustaining.¡±

    After this discovery, the pairs vigour was renewed, and they spent the rest of the day and night building and playing with arrays.

    -The Next Day-

    The morning of the next day the Antiques Shop that used to be next door to the guild was sold to the Brotherhood.

    There was some obviously shady dealings between the merchant¡¯s guild and the Brotherhood in regards to this sudden departure from the owner, who had been a little family that was running the place since for about forever.

    Perhaps the owners weren¡¯t in the know why the merchant¡¯s guild had suddenly started applying enormous pressure for them to sell, but they jumped at the chance to move when the Guildmaster from the guild next door came by and said he¡¯d heard they were in some financial trouble and wanted to buy their shop.

    Having been in the business for a long time, you¡¯d think they could pick out a snake oil salesman when they meet one. But either because they already knew what was happening and just gave up fighting it, or James truly was good at playing the devil selling wishes for souls, they agreed to sell their real estate to him for a reasonable price.

    Within a matter of hours, the entire hall was renovated by the experienced crew of the builder¡¯s guild. Once they¡¯d finished, a few members of the Brotherhood were sent in, to install some equipment under Skay¡¯s directions.

    By brunch time, the entire shop was now separated into nearly twenty rooms. 4 Rooms were the size and layout of a movie cinema. Each one was big enough to seat about 40 people, and they had 4 in total. One was specially reserved for meditation implants and had a little array circle built into it that Skay and James had thrown together.

    This array was a little more reigned back and was calculated by the duo to max out at standard 50 in 3 days. This would be enough for patrons to generate the energy to test an element.

    They had agreed to keep the pattern they built last night a secret, even from the Clan. Besides, the clan had already purchased the services of James and Skay to make them a pattern equal to the one in their arena. Plus a few others around the place.

    In fact, they sold ¡®meditation mats¡¯ in the guild that maxed out at about 10 times standard and could be purchased by anyone that had 10 gold on them. This was actually a very reasonable price in comparison to everything else they sold. The mats were cheap to make, but the LS3 paint was nearly 1 gold coin a tin. Although they only used about half a tin on the mats, that was irrelevant.

    The best part about selling the mats was that anyone could try and copy the array pattern, but without lightning spirit energy to power it up, it was basically useless. Plus, not many people had any idea how to create a suitable catalyst to build a working pattern anyway even close to the same standard.

    The other rooms were smaller and limited in seating to about 4 or 5 people, but no less important than the theatres. Each of these rooms had special locks to prevent unauthorised access and were much roomier and comfortable.

    Well regardless of all that, the duo had built this ¡®theatre¡¯ for one purpose. To educate. The plan was to generate a hypno-implant with the basics of knowledge from their world. It was actually rather easy when they tried it. The computer already had the experience of creating one for the meditation techniques so only needed another 5 days to create the new ones with actual knowledge in them.

    The first one had almost everything the duo thought they could jam into someone¡¯s mind with this kind of method, it was separated into 12 diplomas. This implant spanned the spectrum of knowledge from engineering and sciences to arts and drama.

    This was basically receiving a university education by sitting down in a trance and watching a movie for a couple hours. Even James planned to sit down for it once they¡¯d tested it a few times.

    The other one was a commoner level basics and was developed to implant the absolute basics in 4 sessions. This was equal to completing up to grade 12 in physics and chemistry. That was still considered a huge leg up in this world, considering it could grant a massive amount of assistance in a person¡¯s element control.

    Now, this whole set up only had one major issue. That was that the implant wasn¡¯t omnipotent. It could push all this information into your head, but understanding it properly was still up to you. Just because you memorised how something is meant to be, doesn¡¯t mean you actually understand why it is the way it is.

    A perfect example would be the times tables. If you didn¡¯t actually understand the purpose of multiplication and how it worked, then all you would have memorised is a bunch of numbers. You still wouldn¡¯t even be able to multiply two piles of shit.

    This meant that after sitting for one session, a person would need to go away and try to understand everything they could about what was just jammed into their head. Only then could they come back and try the next one, or alternatively they could get the first one again as a refresher.

    Just consider for a moment how difficult that would be though. Some people might even need years to process everything they get from the first couple sessions.

    So essentially, maybe no one will benefit much from this education, and maybe some freak of nature will appear that doesn¡¯t even need to think about it too much before he understands it all.

    With that said. Jessy had reasonably priced the commoner implant sessions at 1 gold for the first part of the implant then 2 gold for each of the other three. Naturally, the university degrees weren¡¯t available outside of the guild and could only be purchased with merits.

    To prevent frauds trying to sneak in, Skay had built a little magnetic chip that was put into the medallion every member received when they registered with the guild. This allowed them to authenticate their members more thoroughly and keep track of merits. They even took a person¡¯s fingerprints and photo for the database in the guild.

    This might sound like an expensive price since most likely only about a third of the city could reasonably afford this, but James and Skay both felt it was a huge risk freely releasing knowledge to people like this. Although it¡¯s only a grade 12 education, it would be like arming children with rocket launchers.

    As such, they may as well make a profit off it now. Besides, by the time it was a problem they would probably be long gone. After all, this was a long term project that whoever was left behind at this guild would have to oversee. It wouldn¡¯t be theirs once they were powerful enough to deflect bullets ... or whatever.

    It wasn¡¯t just these things they planned to run through the ¡®school¡¯ either. Eventually, they planned to record and compile breathing and martial techniques that a person could learn in the school.

    Now that the ¡®school¡¯ was ready they opened the doors and started spreading the word. Once again no one knew what to expect from the brotherhood, and a few braver souls opted to go in first.

    After the whole thing with the meditation techniques, everyone was interested. But because this time it was a hundred times more expensive, everyone was a little more cautious about their money.

    As if to contradict this nature the Gau Clan sent nearly fifty Hall of Forging disciples down as soon as they found out about the opening of the school. Naturally, they had been informed earlier about its purpose and willingly threw some members at it to see just how effective it was.

    For the first few days, nothing particularly special was said about it. That was because everyone that went in and experienced it came out dazed, confused and looking lost. They all immediately went home and started meditating to process all the information they¡¯d just sucked up.

    After about a week of only having tens of people come through, the Brotherhood suddenly rose the prices by 10 times. No one could figure out why until suddenly the merchant guild showed up the next day with nearly twenty of their members trying to weasel a lower price out of the Brotherhood.

    Apparently one of their lesser members had splurged the huge sum of 1 gold to test it out, because a friend of his was in the Dark Brotherhood and assured him it would be worth it. After spending the entire week in meditation, he rocked up to the Guildhall one day and started raking in cash from his guild brothers smashing their accounts for them like a boss.

    The first session didn¡¯t have a lot of the science and focused more on maths. What more could a merchant ask for if he was going to gain an education in something?

    The second and third session focused on Physics, Chemistry and Biology which were intrinsically linked and so had to be taught simultaneously in what was referred to as basics and advanced courses. The last session was miscellaneous things like art, social sciences, graphics design and a few other things all mixed and crammed together.

    Initially, when James opened the school, he was hoping for some more excitement from the city¡¯s populace and so offered each of the other guilds half-price to send their members over and have a shot. This way it would increase some of the hype for their newly released product.

    Unfortunately, they all declined because they felt it was too pricey. One silver per person for meditation was a steal, considering cultivation is more important than anything. For some education, however, none of them felt it was worth it. What could they possibly learn in a few hours?

    James, being the spiteful person he is, waited until he started to hear some news from one or two guilds then jacked up the prices of the school by ten times. Jessy was in full agreement with this action, feeling it was the best business decision he¡¯d ever made, and the other 4 core members didn¡¯t care because it wasn¡¯t their pride being damaged by the other guilds lack of co-operation.

    Plus, James and Jessy were generally the only ones who had a say in guild operations anyway. Everyone else just spent their time training, researching, eating or pestering the shit out of James. It shouldn¡¯t be too hard to guess which members were doing which.

    -Guildmaster¡¯s Office-

    James was sitting in his guild office with Exsue swinging off his arm and Jessy going over some papers on the round table. Harvy, the mummy, stood in the corner wearing a suspiciously large black robe and smelling like burnt hair and lemons.

    At the other side of the table sat the Guildmasters of the other eight major guilds in the city. For a rare moment, James was actually eating something and enjoying a drink from a gaudy looking golden goblet.

    While he ate, the Guildmasters were pleading and begging him to drop the prices back to 1 gold. Almost all the guilds had one or two people that came on the opening day and used their own money to purchase the first implant session.

    Although maths didn¡¯t sound important for guilds like the Tailor¡¯s Guild or the two Sects, you would be surprised just how much it was used in everyday life and just how little commoners in this world learnt of it. In addition, this was only the first of 4 implants. Naturally, they¡¯d thought they could just send one person to get them then have that person teach them. But that was a lot slower.

    In addition to that, the present moviegoers all complained that they just couldn¡¯t process everything in one go. Even after a week, they all felt they¡¯d only touched the little bit they could comprehend the easiest and fastest. All the rest still seemed like gibberish, and they could promise it would be impossible to teach someone else to understand it correctly if they didn¡¯t have the implant as well.

    Toller was the only guild master not trying to talk James into reduced prices. He only threw out a sack with fifty gold in it. ¡°Sorry about the lack of support you little bastard. Sign up five of my members. We¡¯ll be ready to go in today.¡±

    James stopped eating. The other guilds all became quiet. Jessy looked up from her papers. Apart from Exsue who was presently biting James¡¯ arm because he was ignoring her. The office froze for a silent minute.

    James then grew a huge grin. ¡°Tell you what Toller, you old goat. I was a bit hurt even you didn¡¯t trust me enough to throw some patrons my way, but I like your attitude. It¡¯s good to take responsibility for when you throw mud in someone¡¯s face. Take in ten members today. Let¡¯s do half price on all the rest you send over in future.¡±

    Saying as much, he leant forwards and swiped the coin sack from the table. ¡°By the way Toller. Heard something interesting on the grapevine. A little bird told me Madam Sue loves white roses.¡±

    Toller didn¡¯t stick around after that. He was well aware he¡¯d stepped in it when he rejected James¡¯ offer previously. Especially after one of their designers came into the guild yesterday with some design that even Toller couldn¡¯t figure out how it worked. Apparently, he¡¯d learnt about something to do with certain shapes and load bearing and some other nonsense while he meditated on everything he¡¯d gained from his implant.

    Apparently, people who had experience with some areas of maths found it easier to pick up little pieces from those parts of the implant easier than others.

    Once Toller left, the guilds weren¡¯t certain what to do. Finally, the guild master of the Tailor¡¯s Guild had enough. He slammed a hand down onto the table creating an indent of his hand and a huge crack spread through the table. ¡°I refuse to accept this. What makes you think you can extort these extravagant prices from us? You¡¯re creating enemies out of all the guilds in the city. It was one thing to put up with you taking on any job you wanted. But to try and force us to pay such unreasonable prices for a simple service like this is outrageous!¡±

    After this outbreak, the other Guildmasters started to get agitated as well. After a few minutes of this, they noticed that James had become unresponsive. He was just staring at the big crack in his beautiful marble table.

    It wasn¡¯t that he was surprised the Tailor Guild¡¯s Master could achieve that sort of power with a swing of the hand. After all, of the eight guilds, the weakest guild master was half a step into the palace realm. They were all powerful cultivators which is how they¡¯d managed to survive as long as they did without competition killing them off.

    What he was upset about was his table. ¡°My table.¡± James mumbled. Finally, he stood up and pushed his chair out. Exsue released his arm seeing that he wasn¡¯t his usual self. His face had become cold like stone and as blank as a sheet of paper.

    When he stood up, all the guild masters did so as well. The Imperial Branch Master just gave a sinister smile. ¡°What is it little boy? Finally realised that you¡¯re playing with fire? We¡¯ve let you have some fun, but it¡¯s time to stop playing around. You¡¯ll let our people into your school for free, or our guilds will band together and isolate you. How do you expect to operate in the city without our support? If we wanted to, we could just crush you to death right here. You¡¯re out of your league you pathetic runt.¡±

    James cold eyes turned and focused onto the Imperial Branch Master. He then swivelled and looked over at Harvy who remained standing in the corner like a statue. ¡°Harvy, kill this man.¡±

    With that simple sentence, the motionless Harvy took a step away from the wall for the first time. The black robe he¡¯d been wearing fell away from his body and Harvy lifted the Arc Cannon 2.0 up on its shoulder strap. Before anyone could respond to this unexpected life-threatening situation, a sonic boom rattled the room and the wall on the opposite side of the office blew outwards creating speeding shrapnel that rained down onto the plaza outside.

    The Imperial Branch Master was now painting the surrounding Guild Masters red. Well some of him anyway. When the slug from the cannon connected with him, it exploded and turned the man into a bloody mist and gore. The majority of him had followed the jet stream of the shattered projectile out the now missing wall and coated a number of citizens down in the plaza.

    In that single moment, everyone once again froze. All the ¡®guest¡¯s¡¯ eyes were fixed onto Harvy and the white weapon he was holding in his hands. As the seconds dragged out into minutes and the pressure the Guildmasters were feeling only seemed to be growing stronger, the Tailor Guild¡¯s Master suddenly deployed a movement technique to make an escape.

    Before he even got to the blown out wall, the arc cannon sounded out again, and the man¡¯s leg disappeared like a sickening magic trick.

    His body fell from the sky and landed outside the Guildhall in the plaza below.

    James then looked over the now pale-faced Guildmasters who didn¡¯t dare to make a single motion. ¡°I will only say this once. Don¡¯t break my stuff and don¡¯t threaten me. You all seem to think I¡¯m some push over because I¡¯m still in the barrier realm. In my world, we have a saying that you may like to take to heart. Knowledge is power and now you know. I suggest you all leave now. Take note, today, not only have you angered me. But you have insulted me. This conversation will never happen a second time.¡±

    With a wave of the hand, James then spun around and marched out of the room. Harvy remained stationary with the cannon fixed on their guests until they all decided it wasn¡¯t worth it to try and test their luck against the Zombie.

    Once they¡¯d all left, James sent a message to Toller telling him that if he could get his office fixed up today, then he could send his guild members in for regular admission from now on.

 Chapter 23: The Auction

    James was rather upset that everything had devolved like that. For starters, why did he react like that? He¡¯d never been so touchy about such things before. Normally he would have just let it slide for now and make a note to take his own back later.

    Then a sudden thought hit him. ¡°Oh no!¡± he mumbled. He then closed his eyes and entered his spirit realm. When he appeared in his realm, he started looking everywhere. He even separated his lightning nucleus and plasma whirlwind. After a while, he gave a sigh of relief.

    That was when he finally noticed it. ¡°Fuck, that¡¯s got to be it.¡± After mumbling to his spirit self, his apparition of a spirit body floated over to a golden fog. At first, when he noticed it, it was only a tiny little cloud mixed in with his wind nebula. The moment he saw it though, it started to swell and grow. His other energies suddenly stalled, similar to when he was regenerating a refined energy he¡¯d been using.

    When he reached the rapidly enlarging golden cloud and waved an arm through it, he let out a forlorn sigh.

    ¡°Fuck, when did I even generate this fucking thing. Was it perhaps in the battle with Calso? That¡¯s when I first remember feeling like my pride had been damaged. Fuck fuck fuck! I wasn¡¯t ready yet. I still needed to do some more observation. Is this why my affinity control has always felt so stiff after I generated plasma? Because my energies were out of synchronism? FUCK! GOD DAMNIT! MOTHER FUCKER!¡±

    James opened his eyes. Then he made for the lab at a brisk pace.

    Skay was playing with something at a workbench as Lackey 1 painted array patterns, and Lackey 16 was carrying boxes of something out of the freight elevator they¡¯d hooked up to level five¡¯s storage to supply things to auto manufacturing.

    Skay looked up when the elevator gave a ding and saw an anxious and determined James walking out of the elevator. ¡°What¡¯s wrong boy? You look like someone stole your favourite jocks.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got it.¡± James replied.

    Skay made a face. ¡°Got what? The clap? You pissing fire? I told you to find something to use as protection while your down that whore house boy.¡±

    James just shook his head. His face remained stoic and severe. ¡°No Skay. I¡¯ve got ¡®it¡¯.¡±

    Skay stopped joking and then stopped every other action. ¡°Wait, what? You mean ... but how? What, did you unlock it on purpose boy?¡±

    James just gave another shake of the head as he sat down heavily on the seat next to the workbench. He then waved over Lackey 1 and sent him to get some tea.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know when I got it. I think I¡¯ve always had it, but because I never looked for it, and because I never thought I could have it, it just sat there doing nothing. I suspect it¡¯s like if a commoner accidentally unlocks a rare element but the misconception that they could only control the four elements prevents them from realising they have it. Perhaps if I¡¯d never realised I was being influenced and looked for it, it would have stayed like that till I got to true spirit and then disappeared once I merged with my spirit.¡±

    Skay blinked and then suddenly a shocked look came onto his face. He closed his eyes and about five minutes later his reaction was much the same as James¡¯ had been. ¡°Motherfucking, crack smoking, cock sucking, piece of fucking shit! God fucking damn it! Why¡¯d I even fucking go in and check?¡±

    James just gave a wry smile. ¡°Well, you wouldn¡¯t have been able to avoid checking your spirit realm now and then. Just knowing you could potentially already have it probably encouraged it¡¯s growth anyway. If I¡¯m not wrong, you developed greed?¡±

    Skay just gave a nod. ¡°The moment I touched it I felt my need for knowledge multiply by an entire magnitude. It was like everything in the world had to be understood by me. Like how I normally am. But worse.¡±

    James rubbed his face in frustration. ¡°I figured as much. At first I thought you¡¯d be some messed up lust, but in the end, lust has the connotation of sexual interest. There was envy as well, but that one is different in that you long for things other people have and you don¡¯t. Greed was the only logical conclusion because you get no sexual thrill from discovery and you don¡¯t care if other people know things you don¡¯t, you just care that you don¡¯t already know it.¡±

    Skay then gave a long sigh. ¡°So how long do you think we¡¯ve had these? Do you think they are really affecting us that much?¡±

    James gave another nod. ¡°Oh yeah. In a big way. I just had Harvy kill one of the Guildmasters of the big eight and blow the leg off another one. All because of some harmless little threats and because they broke my table.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Holy shit. Hahaha! You fucking killed a palace realm with the cannon? How was it? Was his spirit energy enough to withstand the slug?¡±

    James gave a wry smile and just gave Skay a look. After a moment Skay suddenly realised what James was thinking. ¡°What, you believe that this is the influence of the element? Hah! Codswallop! I wouldn¡¯t have cared if you demolished a church full of Nuns and then tested it out on a boy scout unit on the way home. Even on our world, some nobody¡¯s death wouldn¡¯t faze me in the face of real science.¡±

    James took a moment to process this. ¡°Well, perhaps you¡¯re right old man. I didn¡¯t really think about it before, but everyone¡¯s a little different on this world. Jessy probably fucks whoever she wants because she¡¯s messed up about the world ending. Fatty is eating everything under the sun possibly because of something he ate in the forest and not from his element.

    ¡°Now I think about. Exsue and Goliath haven¡¯t really changed at all from when I first met them. Exsue¡¯s just as crazy as before, not much more or less. Goliath actually seems even calmer than he did when I first met him. In all honesty, if I had the power to, I might have done what I did back on Earth as well. The only thing holding me back there was our social systems and a lack of ability to get away with it.¡±

    The duo decided that they weren¡¯t sure either way and made the decision to start doing some testing. Now that they both had emotional elements they decided to start recording their behaviour and seeing if it corresponded to how they suspected they¡¯d have acted if this was the same situation on Earth.

    Things once again returned to calm after this whole incident. The guilds all meekly showed up the next day and paid ten gold each for some their members to go to the school.

    The Builder¡¯s Guild was the happiest guild in the city, mostly because they¡¯d managed to get back into the good books of the Dark Brotherhood.

    To be entirely honest everyone in the city was now a little bit afraid of the Brotherhood. For starters, they turned a Guildmaster of one of the big eight into a messy rain of blood and flesh. Then to top it off they dismembered another one, all done while 5 other big powers of the city watched from not 10 feet away.

    Even the three clans who¡¯d been working in the background to try and start putting pressure on the Brotherhood began to go quiet. After everything had calmed down a little, the Elders of the Gau clan stopped by for a visit and to give James a slap on the wrist.

    Naturally, they didn¡¯t make a big scene out of it, and basically only told him to kill people in a less flashy manner in the future so as to avoid upsetting the commoners. The last thing they needed was people hiding away in their homes, afraid that the Dark Brotherhood would just start a massacre in town when someone stepped out of tune.

    In a strange turn of events, the most excited Elder was actually Jeng. It was inexplicable why he was so well behaved and it made James incredibly suspicious.

    Coming in at a close second for excited was Anvil. He¡¯d long since been privy to a little bit of knowledge about the Arc Cannon. Mostly just it¡¯s specs, like firing speed, projectile velocity, etc.

    His excitement was due to the fact he¡¯d heard that the new arc cannon fired twice in a row. James admitted that after some redesigning they¡¯d managed to get the firing rate up to ten rounds before the stress deformed the weapon too much.

    He even openly admitted they could all be shot in the same breath. All this was said in front of all the Elders and resulted in a unified ¡®gulp¡¯ coming from their throats.

    About a week after this incident James sent out a message to every wealthy family, clan, guild, sect or whatever, that in another 5 days they would be holding an auction. Listed on the invitation was about 50 different products with a short description or no description at all.

    All of these products had been vetted by the Gau Clan. The original list had nearly 70 things on it, but the Gau clan paid out the ass just to secure some good things off the market. Some of the things they couldn¡¯t afford to buy at all, let alone buy non-circulation rights to prevent its sale. Mostly they bought some arrays and potion recipes.

    When they¡¯d offered them the patterns, they never suspected they would understand them to the point they could start selling completed arrays, and so never made that request in their bargaining. The only problem was that they¡¯re computer system discovered things faster than the clansmen could learn or memorise them.

    To make it worse, they couldn¡¯t ask for a similar system because the Brotherhood refused to release that technology to anyone. When asked why, James just replied with; ¡°The computer is the most powerful weapon our people have ever built. I¡¯d call it a tool, but the fact remains that it can be used to create things even more frightening than the Arc Cannon. As long as I live and breathe, the Brotherhood will never sell a computer without my direct permission.¡±

    Included with the auction list was a letter of invitation allowing people to invite anyone that believed they could afford something to come and try their luck. Anyone who could offer a rare or interesting resource could also use that to trade.

    For the next five days, everyone was busily trying to scrounge up something that would tweak the Dark Brotherhood¡¯s interests. On the eve of the auction, some new guests arrived in the city and were put up by the Gau Clan in some local manors. That afternoon while James was training in the arena with Goliath, Hao stopped by.

    He just took a seat in the spectating seats at the edge and watched as James and Goliath traded blows. Over the past three weeks, James spirit energy had grown significantly, and he could now sustain a prolonged battle with Goliath for nearly half an hour.

    It went without saying that Goliath always won because of his experience, but he¡¯d started feeling a little pressure from James. He felt like the Guildmaster picked things up too quickly, and in battle, he had no shame. He took every opportunity and chance he could find to throw a sneaky punch or blast a lightning bolt at Goliath from behind.

    After James once again ended up on his back, and the ever stoic Goliath was bending over with his hands on his knees breathing heavily, Hao finally made his presence known.

    ¡°Guildmaster James, I¡¯d like to ask for a moment of your time.¡±

    James climbed up from the ground and lead Hao to the office. When James wasn¡¯t training or in the lab, he would spend most of his time up here. He and Skay had set up four arrays they were calling ultimate spirit collectors in the Guildhall. The first two were in rooms near the arena and one was for a special group while the other was a merit reward for members who could pay a hundred points an hour.

    Keep in mind that a single hour in the room would be the equivalent of 300 hours in any random place in the city.

    The other two were here in his office where he typically meditated and down in the lab.

    Just as side note, Galtin was still in the lab in case you were wondering. Apparently, he developed some kind of... ¡®something¡¯, and the Gau Clan just left him with Skay to ¡®find a cure¡¯. He¡¯s been in that little room for 3 weeks being force fed strange things.

    As James sat down cross-legged to regain some spirit energy, Hao started filling him in on what was going on.

    ¡°It would seem that some people from Katsu and the nearby city of Felsine have been hearing some things about your guild. They¡¯ve all arrived in the city to represent different factions and parties from both cities to try and negotiate some trade with you.¡±

    James opened one of his eyes and glanced over at Hao. ¡°Oh really? Interesting, I had expected that we would get at least a year of peace and quiet in Gau City before we had to start worrying about outsiders. It hasn¡¯t even been a full two months yet. So, give me the run down, who are these people and what are the chances of them being friendly.¡±

    Hao made wry smile. He¡¯d come here to warn James to be a little more careful around these people because they all had significant backers. It seems there wasn¡¯t a need to though. He already had an idea that things wouldn¡¯t be so easy anymore.

    He then began to explain. ¡°In total, there are 6 factions to keep an eye on. The first one is the Katsu Sects people. They pretty much rule the region, and they¡¯re powerful. From what I understand, they have people in the realm above palace realm in their upper echelons. They also don¡¯t like people throwing any weight around in their territory.

    ¡°You then have the Katsu Merchant¡¯s guild. The guild here is an offshoot of it, so they will already be well informed about you from the Guildmaster based in our city.

    ¡°The last two factions from Katsu are both powerful clans that have close ties with the Sect. Although they are essentially all the same faction, the Susso and Telly Clans are both at each other¡¯s throats trying to gain power inside the Sect.

    ¡°The last two are factions from Felsine city and are the ones you have to be the most careful of. One of them is a representative of the Adventurer¡¯s Guild, which is made up of a collaboration of people from the three great nations that train and hunt in the Jetsu Mountains.

    ¡°The other is a representative of the Yansho Merchant¡¯s Guild. They too are primarily run by people from the three great nations and they usually deal with the trade of all the best materials that the Adventure¡¯s Guild sell from the mountains. They also run the majority of trade between the three great nations. Apart from the Imperial Family, they are the most dominant faction in the entire Empire.

    ¡°Apart from that, I can¡¯t tell you much more. It¡¯s rare for anyone from these factions to come to Gau City. Apart from some common level artefacts and grain, our city doesn¡¯t have much to attract these kinds of powers.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

    ¡°I suspect the methods and artefacts you¡¯ve been showing off recently have attracted a lot of attention and probably even people as powerful as the Imperial Family are now trying to keep an eye on you.¡±

    James let out a long breath then opened his eyes from his meditation. ¡°Well, it was only a matter of time I guess. I may have sped it up by being a little impatient, but it was an eventuality anyway.¡±

    He then moved over to the round table and wrote a few letters. He handed them to Hao. ¡°These are invitations to tomorrow¡¯s auction. If they want to chat with us about trade, tell them to take a look at our wares first.¡±

    With that, James showed Hao out then flipped open his black-pad. After a few button presses, his voice rang out across the entire Guild Hall.

    ¡°Skay, Jessy, Exsue, Goliath, Fatty, Harvy. All of you need to get your asses up to my office ASAP.¡±

    He then pressed a few more buttons and sat down at the brand new marble round table.

    Once everyone had assembled James filled them in on everything he¡¯d just been told by Hao. Jessy pinched her brow as if a massive headache had just come over her. She then let out a long sigh.

    ¡°So, what exactly do you expect us to do? We can¡¯t stand up to these factions like we could with the guilds in the city. These people have actual power and influence.¡±

    James gave a nod as he cupped his chin. ¡°You¡¯re right, we are once again at the bottom. We went from big fish in a little pond to little fish in a big pond. We were always going to get to this stage eventually. I just didn¡¯t expect it so soon. I called you all here to brainstorm some ideas on how we should act from now on and what direction the guild should be headed in.¡±

    Jessy, being the only other person who paid attention to what exactly James had been doing with the guild, responded first.

    ¡°Well for starters, stop making waves. The guild is generating enough income now from the school, jobs, and sales of things like 616 and the meditation mats. I feel like you¡¯ve gotten away from your original purpose in even starting the guild.¡±

    James thought about that for a moment. It was true the guild had been escalating quickly since it started. Its original purpose was to slowly build a strength base and create connections with influential backers by selling some technology. Instead of that, they were empowering commoners with cultivation techniques and knowledge and had risen to be one of the top powers in the city.

    The problem was, they started doing those things precisely for the revenue. They had hundreds of things they needed and wanted to implement or research in the lab. The problem was, the more interesting it was to research, the more expensive it was to get your hands on it.

    In addition, he¡¯d previously said he¡¯d wait before bringing in members but already had nearly 100 of them.

    He gave a sigh. At this point, Skay interjected into his thoughts. ¡°I don¡¯t see a problem. The Lab needs money, and this is creating it. It aligns with our original goals. We wanted powerful factions to take notice of us so we could pull them in as backers. It might be a bit faster than we¡¯d expected but that¡¯s fine. It just means we need to be more cautious in our dealings until we can defend ourselves.¡±

    After another minute of quiet thinking, James smiled. ¡°I agree. Let¡¯s use this to our advantage instead. We have things these people want, and we can make it so that if they try to force us, we will just release everything to everyone. This creates a scenario of mutual disinterest. We don¡¯t want to be bullied, and they don¡¯t want rival factions getting their hands on things we have.¡±

    With that said the core members of the guild then discussed the auction tomorrow and everyone deferred to Jessy in order to get everything ready.

    The next day, hundreds of people filled the seats of the arena. At one end of the arena was a large stage set up during the night. Some guild members were running around making sure everyone was settled comfortably.

    In the closest seats to the stage sat 7 people. These were representatives of each visiting faction, plus Hao, who was there because he was essentially the ¡®mayor¡¯ of Gau City.

    Behind them sat the Heads and Elders of the city¡¯s Clans and behind them the eight guilds. Lining all the seats behind these groups was the slightly rich and influential, along with a number of ¡®free cultivators¡¯ not with any faction.

    Seated among the crowd were also a few people hiding their faces behind bamboo hats and wearing long black robes. Nobody could tell who they were or if they represented some larger powers.

    It was a general rule of thumb not to aggravate a cultivator if you didn¡¯t know who they were. As such, these people generally stuck out because nobody would sit next to them.

    Standing at the two front corners of the stage were Harvy and Goliath. The both of them made no bones about swinging the Arc Cannon on their shoulders around occasionally just to remind everyone they were there.

    The newcomers who didn¡¯t know what they were all seemed confused at first. That was of course until their retinue or Hao filled them in. When they all heard those weapons had obliterated a palace realm expert in the blink of an eye, they started to sweat a little bit.

    They then made an effort to not show too much of a covetous gaze towards the two Arc Cannons. Finally, a smiling James ascended the stage with Jessy in tow.

    James then clipped a little microphone onto his blue robe then faced the audience.

    ¡°Greeting everyone. Firstly I¡¯d like to thank you for coming. From what I¡¯ve heard a few of you have even come from quite a distance away so a welcome to those guests.¡±

    James smile then sank, and his lifeless dead eye¡¯s surveyed the crowd. ¡°Secondly, this auction is free trade and anyone planning to throw their weight around in here can leave now. I only have two rules, don¡¯t break my stuff and don¡¯t try to threaten me. Just to be sure no one has any ideas, Harvy do the thing!¡±

    Hearing his cue, Harvy swung his Arc Cannon around and fired off a shot towards the wall in the distance. The sonic boom shook the air and the wall at the other end of the arena nearly 150 metres away, suddenly disintegrated, leaving a huge crater with sand and rock pouring out of it onto the ground.

    The crowd made a collective gulp in unison and then James smiling face returned. ¡°Now that we have that unpleasant display out of the way, I¡¯d like to introduce you all to the Gau Branch¡¯s present Overseer, also known as the Lady of Lust, Jessy!¡±

    Jessy stepped forwards from behind James revealing her slender figure in a tight black cheongsam, not dissimilar to the one she first wore when coming to this world. She¡¯d taken quite a liking to this style of dress and had even started putting her red hair up in a bun with chopsticks.

    Today her face was covered with a black veil, and it is hard to see her features until she removed it. When she did, the same strange phenomena of the world losing its light and her being the only visible thing happened, just like the first time she wore this dress.

    After a brief pause and another audible gulping in unison, Jessy kicked off the Auction in a soft voice.

    ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen please allow me to introduce the first item for today¡¯s auction.¡± As she spoke, Lackey 1 who had somehow managed to stay alive in the lab until now, walked out with a bandaged face and hands carrying a tray. On the tray was a phial of purple liquid.

    ¡°This is a new product that is quite hard to produce and has been affectionately named ¡®Dragon Skin 1.2¡¯ by Norman, its creator. I can¡¯t say what exactly it was created from, but I can tell you that if you drink it, you will grow scales as hard as dragons. This dosage is enough for a full 24 hours. Even our Arc Cannons would need two shots just to break through these scales and cause some bleeding. I must warn everyone in advance, that at the end of the 24 hours when the scales fall off, you will suffer from severe itching and your skin will feel like its burning. This generally only lasts for an hour, but you must be careful not to scratch.¡±

    When she finished her description, the crowd went mad. They all readily recognised that the Arc Cannon was a powerful weapon that only the strongest palace realm experts could match up against.

    This phial of liquid could take two hits from a peak palace realm cultivator. That basically made it a lifesaving treasure. Principally for the few groups of people that had come over from Felsine city. Those people walked a fine line between life and death in the mountains, and something like this could be the treasure that saves their life when they meet a powerful spirit beast. The side effects were a little worrying, but it was an excellent trade-off for keeping your life.

    It should be noted that in advance to this moment quite a few Job requests with rather lucrative rewards had been posted on the job board during the week.

    A few poor saps had volunteered, and one was brought up to the stage. Jessy placed a single drop onto his tongue, and after 30 seconds the man¡¯s entire body was covered in green scales. Once he was ready Goliath lined him up with his Arc Cannon and fired a shot into the man¡¯s stomach.

    It goes without saying that the man was blasted across the arena like a pebble skipping across a lake. After a minute the tester slowly climbed up to his feet wiping away a little dribble of blood from his massive shit eating grin. He then returned to the stage and showed off the only slightly cracked scales on his stomach and gloated he could hardly feel a thing.

    Jessy then chimed in sweetly. ¡°We would be willing to start bidding for this item at one hundred gold pieces. I¡¯d like to remind everyone that we are willing to accept materials and resources you may have with you at Gau City Market Prices.¡±

    Once she said that everyone finally realised why Brotherhood members were walking around with leaflets that listed the market prices for materials that were rare and unusual in Gau City.

    After a brief scuffling, everyone was suddenly holding one these pamphlets and their eyes were shining. That was because market prices for decent materials were through the roof in Gau.

    Since the city mostly relied on grain, there were few factions apart from the two Sect¡¯s that brought beast materials or resources into the city. The Gau Clan had the Endless Forest that they could pull resources from, but that was limited by their lack of ability to properly explore it. Also, the place was crawling with spirit beasts after the first 15 km from the Gateway.

    Almost anyone that had 100 gold started bidding. It only took a few minutes before the price had risen to nearly 400 gold. After a few more intermittent bids it was sold for 415 gold to a mysterious hat-wearing cultivator who sat right in the middle of everyone about 6 rows back from the front.

    The next item brought out was a recipe for some kind of lotion that could be made from cheap regular herbs. It could clot the blood of open wounds and assist in preventing infections. This went for nearly 200 gold.

    This sort of trend continued on until they got to the last few items. Jessy was having a great time taking these people¡¯s money. Unsurprisingly, it was the six major faction and a few mysterious cultivators in the crowd who¡¯d bought the majority of the recipes, potions and arrays the Brotherhood had sold.

    ¡°The next item on our list is something that was developed by our Guildmaster and vice-master. This object has the ability to hold any type of spirit energy and can maintain a charge close to infinity. We¡¯re selling three of these today, and they are Spirit Batteries from the 1.4 series.

    ¡°Each one can hold enough charge to fire the Arc Cannon 4 times if that gives you any idea of how much power can be stored away in them. So that you realise just how useful and vast the application of the spirit batteries are, we have a few examples.¡±

    A few guildsmen set up some little rectangular boxes on the stage that were about the size of a palm. They then started doing various things with them. One of them was heating a cauldron, another was using the water energy to condense moisture out of the air, and another was creating a strong wind.

    Jessy then chimed in at the end of this display. ¡°I guess the most useful application of the battery isn¡¯t any of the ones you¡¯ve seen yet. If you were to fill a battery with your own spirit energy, you could potential use it as a saving grace from energy depletion. This means you can reabsorb energy you¡¯ve put in the battery. This and it¡¯s other applications are all thanks to a series of arrays created in our lab that are embedded into the battery. To operate them all you have to do is envision what you want to accomplish with the stored energy, and the array will mostly do the rest.¡±

    The initial reaction to the batteries was pretty average. It was basically a multi-tool with a large energy storage for hunting parties in the mountains. It could light a fire, condense drinking water, and the wind, if applied correctly, could help to mask your scent.

    The reaction after she mentioned that you could re-absorb your own spirit energy blew the responses of every item before it out of the water.

    To be able to keep a personal energy back-up would make many things possible. For starters, during a hunt, the biggest problem for human cultivators was that spirit beasts in the same realm actually had almost four times as much energy. Even though they couldn¡¯t control it half as well and they weren¡¯t particularly smart with its uses, they could still just wait out a cultivator in a battle then eat them once they run out of energy.

    Seeing everybody in the crowd suddenly perking up Jessy gave a dazzling smile. ¡°Bidding for a single battery will start at 200 gold.¡±

    After the sale of the three batteries, the guild raked in nearly 2100 gold.

    ¡°Finally we reach the last two items in our auction. These ones are rather unique, and I¡¯m not sure if many cultivators will be interested. These items should actually be considered 5 articles, and it is a means of transport. One of them is rather large and unfortunately, has been being assembled outside as we speak, so we can¡¯t show that one to you in here. The other is a personal transport that anyone can learn to operate.¡±

    Finished the basic introduction she glanced over at the elevator. Soon the elevator gave a ¡®ding¡¯ and the doors opened to reveal Lackey 21 riding what could only be described as a hover board. After leaning his front foot forwards a little and moving the board back and forth, the board floated out towards the stage at about the same speed as a quick jog.

    The board resembled a short surfboard, the only exception being that it was surfing on nothing but air. Apart from some foot straps that strapped the rider¡¯s feet into a little indent that allowed you to control the board, there was nothing else on it.

    No one was quite sure what to make of this. It was impressive that they could build an artefact that could levitate, but it was so slow.

    As if reading their minds Jessy just smiled brightly. ¡°Ladies and gentlemen, I apologise, but we are going to have to step outside for this demonstration.¡±

    After a few minutes of leading everyone out to the plaza, Jessy stepped out to the front with 21 in tow. ¡°Everybody, from what I understand it¡¯s not unusual for strong factions to capture and train spirit beasts as mounts. Can anyone tell me the fastest mount you¡¯ve ever seen?¡±

    After a little discussion, it was agreed the fastest mount in the entire continent had to be a Black Tip Falcon. It was large enough to fit two people on its back and could travel from one side of the empire to the other in about an hour. That meant it was going about 300km/h. Jessy just smiled politely then turned and gave 21 a nod to begin. Although the board couldn¡¯t get that fast, she was certain that everyone would still be impressed with it.

    Everyone watched on as the hover board started to increase its height and then after lowering his centre, 21 pushed his weight forwards and the board suddenly rocketed off into the distance, leaving behind a wake in the air like a boat does in water.

    After about 15 minutes, he¡¯d returned holding onto something. When he landed everyone realised he was holding a piece of paper from the Katsu Cities Merchant Guild. It was dated for today and even signed by the Guildhall, desk clerk.

    To make sure no one could be a nay-sayer, she asked a few people to volunteer something in Felsine city that 21 would be able to collect for them. After another 20 minutes, he returned with about 4 things that confirmed his trip to and from Felsine City.

    Before everyone could work themselves up into a tizzy of excitement Jessy interrupted again. ¡°Dear guests, this board has the speed to travel from Katsu city and back in a single 15 minute round trip. It also doesn¡¯t have any of the limitations of a spirit beast. You don¡¯t need to catch, train or feed it and thanks to some clever array designs from the boys in the lab it has a self-sustaining energy supply.

    ¡°The charge can last for an entire 3 hours at maximum speed, and it takes only half that time to recharge. Now the only limitations are your own ability to operate it properly and that it not take any significant damage.

    ¡°Before we bid on the four hover boards we have for auction, I should introduce you to Big Berta.¡±

    As if on cue, they saw a massive green box rising up into the air from off in the distance. It literally looked like 8 green shipping containers were welded together and somehow managed to just float around in the sky. That was, apart from the glass cockpit on the upper right-hand side.

    ¡°Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Big Berta. This is a shipping vehicle capable of transporting close to 300 cubic meters of goods which would be equivalent to about 200 tonnes of grain. At full load, it can travel for 2 hours at a speed of nearly 150 km an hour. That would be enough time and speed to cross close to half the empire. Unfortunately, this is our prototype and anyone that buys it isn¡¯t guaranteed anything. It will also be up to you to defend it should you be unwise enough to travel over the Jetsu mountains with it, or anywhere else that is lived in by flying spirit beasts for that matter.¡±

    Finished with the introduction, she lead everyone back inside.

    The following bidding war was astronomical. For as single board they were bought up at nearly 1,200 each. Big Berta was the biggest seller and unsurprisingly the Merchant¡¯s Association from Felsine City bought it for resources equivalent to almost 7,000 gold.

    The Brotherhood had suddenly become one of the richest guilds in the Kantsu region. Even the Gau family couldn¡¯t pull together 7,000 gold on short notice let alone the other 12,000 gold the Brotherhood had just raked in.

    Once the bidding was over, the guild exchanged all its sales for the resources and gold the attending factions had just stuffed into their pockets. James personally greeted all the important guests and agreed to meet with them all tomorrow once the guild was settled down.

    It should be said that initially, James hadn¡¯t planned to sell any hover boards, and he wanted to hold out on Big Berta because it still wasn¡¯t as ready as he¡¯d wanted it to be.

    It also couldn¡¯t get as much height as the boards when it was fully loaded. If they stacked it to maximum capacity, it would be stuck at about 30 meters off the ground. When it was completely unloaded, although it could get some decent altitude, it still couldn¡¯t keep up with a board. It wasn¡¯t in the least bit aerodynamic.

    The only reason he¡¯d pulled out all the stops for this auction was because of the factions from the other cities. That¡¯s why they had to make a rush job and assemble it on the day out in the fields.

    For the time frame they had to put it together, they were actually pretty quick. Although all the parts were produced in the auto-factory and could be easily assembled, they still had the problem of getting everything out there.

    By the time the guild had cleaned up and calmed down from the day¡¯s events, it was already night time.

 Chapter 24: The Monk!

    Now would be a good time to explain how exactly they managed to achieve all of this in the 2 weeks since they built their auto-factory. Also, you¡¯re probably guessing at how exactly those boards were floating around no?

    Well, let¡¯s start with, how so fast? In truth, almost everything they sold had been assembled by computers in the auto-factory. Hell, after they completed the first couple machines Skay just programmed it to auto-manufacture itself, so the fuckin factory could produce just about everything as long as you had some time and the materials to pump in at the other end.

    What sped everything up so much wasn¡¯t just the auto-factories ability to build parts for just about anything. It was a breakthrough Skay had in adapting spirit materials to computer technology. The reason he¡¯d been having so much trouble initially was that he was trying to start by directly creating a modern CPU microprocessor.

    He quickly found it to be damn near impossible to adapt it to the right levels to prevent strange or abnormal data loss and program errors. Then after James made an offside comment about having to redesign everything from resistors and transistors to diodes and logic gates Skay had a eureka moment.

    With James¡¯ comment in mind, he spent twelve hours having the lab manufacture all sorts of basic electronics then tested all its properties and started pumping it into the computers. Once that was done, he repurposed nearly every bit of processing power they had at their disposal to help the computer system rebuild a model of a computer using all the information he¡¯d just started jamming into it.

    After nearly twelve hours of the rest of the lab being shut down because the computers were busy, the whole guild lost power ... apparently, the poor old generator couldn¡¯t handle feeding every single computer they¡¯d managed to set up in the lab while they were drawing every watt it could provide.

    When this happened, James and Skay both went through a short moment of madness and created a new generator. This one didn¡¯t use conventional energy creation. Instead, it was built from all the patterns they¡¯d pulled out of the primal spirit array.

    Once they¡¯d reassembled it and after a few rocky tests, rebuilds, and tweaking they connected their array generator up to the system. This generator later becomes the prototype for the energy of the boards and Big Berta. There were a few things different with this from conventional generators, though.

    Firstly was the refined lightning spirit energy instead of conventional electricity. They had to set up quite a few little subsystems to smooth out its waveform and then convert it to the appropriate voltages and current.

    Once the new computer was finished, they would be able to remove all that stuff because the nature of the LS3 was to only pass through energy that was being used. Skay had tried to use the characteristics of other materials in this world that would do all the conversion and prevent short circuit conditions from occurring.

    That meant that they could let the chaotic lightning energy be directly hooked up to the system. The only downside to this was that everything would need a full refit to spirit material standards. Mostly that would mean the auto-factory would need to a full new fit out with everything being upgraded to spirit materials instead of conventional materials. Amusingly, they probably made enough money at the auction to attempt this madness.

    The second difference was that they had no idea just how much this new array could generate and store. It was essentially a primal spirit array, but instead of only having a little gathering array to power the attraction foundation they installed an extensive collection pattern and storage pattern. This meant the array was gathering almost all the energy the attraction pattern pulled towards it.

    Anything that wasn¡¯t used by the system went into the storage array which had now also become relatively larger. They set up a little primal energy measuring device, hereby referred to as a PEM, as the best way to see when the storage was full.

    When the storage was full, the gathering array wouldn¡¯t be able to pull in more primal energy for conversion, and it would then just start building up energy on level 5 like a standard attraction array would.

    If the average primal energy in the generator room ever dropped, they would know they¡¯re using more power than the array could pull towards it.

    After they sorted out the power issues, the computers fired back up at full force and powered on for another 8 hours until they finally completed the prototype spirit computer 1.0. When they set it up, they quickly realised a problem.

    It was so god damn fast that the operating system they were using was actually holding it back. The most amusing thing was when Skay hooked it up to his network and the AI he¡¯d been working on recently downloaded to it. The first thing it did once it was operating off the spirit computer was to re-write the primary operating system, and then it re-wrote half of its own code.

    When it was finished, the spirit PC processed so much information it left the combined processing power of the 15 other lab computers in the dust. It was so fucking fast that it could run the entire lab and still had enough processing power left over to run the array deciphering program at nearly a hundred times the speed of the old computers.

    Now you might think this machine pretty damn impressive, but it had one downside. It was fucking expensive! Not just that, some of the spirit materials they needed for the core parts were as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. They only managed to get their hands on a tiny amount of them, and it had bankrupted them when they realised how much they needed to finish building the computer.

    Interestingly, it had now paid for itself twice over with the end of the auction. Speaking of which, this was how they managed to finish so much awesome shit before the auction. The spirit batteries they sold had nearly 20 intricately connected and intertwined array patterns. The Hoverboard was slightly more advanced and had just short of 300 different patterns in it.

    Big Berta was a whole other story. Although it took some designs from the boards, it actually had even more advanced models continuously running in flight to keep everything stable and maintain air born motion once it was loaded up with 200 tonnes of shit. It wasn¡¯t mentioned, but the thing could damn near run endlessly when it was unloaded. It was only when fully loaded it had so many problems.

    There were also some potions that Norman and Skay had been working on. They had a similar operation to the array¡¯s going. They tested certain substances then pumped the information into the system and let it extrapolate potential uses and combinations for it.

    According to Skay, alchemy in this world was absolutely fucked up, and he loved it. Some books he¡¯d managed to get a hold of told stories about great alchemy masters having created tonics to do everything from re-growing hair on a balding head to dissolving an entire mountain.

    James was fairly sure Skay didn¡¯t care about his balding head, so that only left dissolving mountains. He once again reaffirmed his decision to never drink something from Skay that hadn¡¯t first been tested.

    -Guildmaster¡¯s Office-

    Early the next day James felt like he had d¨¦j¨¤ vu. Sat next to him was Exsue biting into his shoulder and Jessy doing something with paper. In the corner stood a statuesque mummified zombie in a big black robe. Across from James sat 7 people.

    The only new addition to this scenario was Goliath and Fatty who both volunteered to sit in with this talk as well. Apart from Skay, who was busy doing ... god knows what, the gang was all here.

    The 7 guests starting from left to right were, Gustov from the Katsu Merchant¡¯s Guild. He was a fat man with a full head of greasy black hair. Although he looked suspiciously like one of those greedy characters that would sell his mother for a copper coin, he was always polite and jovial and seemed in the best of moods all the time. This only made James even more suspicious of him.

    Next to him was an older woman whose hair had started to grey. She carried herself with an air of dignity and superiority and acted very much in the manner of an upper-class noble lady. She even held her tea cup with her pinkie finger extended. This was the Katsu Sect¡¯s Elder Xenshi.

    Next to her sat two men. Both looked middle-aged and if they didn¡¯t spend almost every spare moment arguing and throwing insults at each other James would have picked them out as brothers. These where Hang and Danto also of the Katsu Sect but had come representing their Susso and Telly Clans respectively.

    Seated next was Elder Jeng, who had apparently volunteered to assist the 6 factions in their dealing with James. This was agreed upon because the Gau Clan and Brotherhood had a trade treaty and if anyone was going to ensure it was properly enforced it was Jeng. Even Hao was in agreement with this decision.

    Of all the Elders the last person who wanted James selling cool shit to other people was Jeng, so it went without saying that he volunteered in this role. He was mostly just here to remind James about their treaties and to inform these factions that the Brotherhood was limited in selling certain things.

    That was essentially the same as saying, we already own this stuff so if you want to buy it, you¡¯ll have to buy it through us.

    The last two people seated at the round table were the most mysterious. Lucas Doe and Emily Smith. These two weren¡¯t the representatives that had been bidding yesterday, but they were apparently now here to represent the Yansho Merchant¡¯s and the Adventures Guild respectively, the curious thing was that they declined to comment on their positions in the guilds.

    Lucas was a thin, wiry man with glasses and a head of shaggy long brown hair. He was dressed in scholarly robes and had the aura of a knowledgeable guy. The odd thing about him though, was his eyes and the way he carried himself. If James didn¡¯t know better, he¡¯d think the man had somehow had an experience exactly like Harvy¡¯s.

    This was because Lucas had big dark bags under his eyes and moved everywhere in a slow meandering fashion like he was about to collapse. The bloke looked so bloody tired James thought he might actually be asleep with his eyes open right now.

    Emily Smith was a shorter blonde gal. She looked no older than James or Jessy and was very fit and healthy looking with no strangeness about her. She wore leather travelling clothes and at her hip sat a long cross-sword. On her back lay a round shield that was pot marked with dents and bends and little holes. It was even still covered in soot like she¡¯d used it to escape a fire.

    James had heard her saying something earlier about ¡®fighting dragons¡¯ when Lucas had been in a strangely lucid moment of wakefulness and asked about the shield.

    The two parties started off with some tea and some introductions. Then James put on his business face. ¡°Well let¡¯s get started. I originally planned to meet you all individually but decided against it for two reasons. Firstly, although we¡¯re not disinclined to back door dealings with any of you, you¡¯re all representing someone that is far more powerful than us. This means, that for the present, it¡¯s best to maintain open discussions and let all parties be involved, to prevent any dissatisfaction.

    ¡°Secondly, I want to say something that all of you should hear. Because you¡¯re all representing powerful factions, we have gone to the trouble of setting up some countermeasures. Foremost among them is what will happen if you try and kill any of us. Should we disappear, all of our knowledge and everything we¡¯ve researched until now will become public. Everyone in the entire continent will know how to do what we can do.¡±

    ¡°This was implemented 2 days ago and is precisely because you all represent such powerful groups. I¡¯m sure none of you wants another party to start building Arc Cannons or deploying hoverboards like leaves off a tree.¡±

    The 6 representatives all stared wide-eyed at James. What kind of trade negotiations was this? He didn¡¯t even dance around the issue and jumped straight into the deep end with both feet tied to a rock.

    This was essentially the same as a threat to all these powers, it was saying two things; ¡®If you try to take from us you will get nothing. You¡¯re going to have to protect us if you don¡¯t want everyone else to have our stuff.¡¯

    This was outright extortion. The first person to react was Jeng. To say he was surprised by this opening foray would be an understatement. He¡¯d long since come to suspect that he¡¯d been underestimating the steppers, but now he was certain. To begin trade negotiations with a clear threat was a whole new league of madness.

    A bright smile blossomed on his face. ¡°Boy, are you planning to break your oath to my Gau Clan? If you release your methods freely to everyone, that would be an outright violation of our trade treaty!¡±

    James gave a solemn nod and stared straight at Jeng. ¡°I¡¯ll be honest old goat, I know you¡¯re here to try and stir trouble and I¡¯ll tell you right now this is a threat against you as much as everyone else here. This is for my guild¡¯s protection. If I¡¯m dead, it won¡¯t matter if I break my oath.¡±

    Jeng¡¯s fist tightened, and his face dropped into a scowl. Gustov, the Kantsu Merchant¡¯s Guildmaster, just gave a deep chuckle. ¡°It¡¯s fine, I have no problems with this. We merchants don¡¯t have the means to steal from you in that manner anyway.¡±

    The Kantsu Elder, Xenshi, also just gave a quiet nod of acknowledgement. ¡°I take no issues with it. Keep in mind boy, that doesn¡¯t mean my sect plans to take any actions to protect you. We will just accept our loss if you die.¡±

    James looked at the rest of the dignitaries and seeing they had nothing to add he moved on with a bright smile. ¡°Excellent, now that the unpleasantness is out of the way, let¡¯s begin. What can I do for you all today?¡±

    Before anyone else could jump in, the blonde Emily said one word that everyone else had been thinking. ¡°Weapons.¡±

    James just gave a coy smile. ¡°Please allow the old goat Jeng to field that one.¡±

    Feeling the encroaching pressure of these influential people falling on him, he forced his way through an explanation of why the Brotherhood couldn¡¯t sell weapons.

    Hang, from the Susso Clan, didn¡¯t seem too pleased and said as much. ¡°You mean to say you¡¯ve monopolised the Brotherhoods weapons business? This is unacceptable.¡±

    For a rare change, his twin Danto Telly agreed. ¡°That¡¯s right, it shouldn¡¯t be difficult to annul their oath to you. I can understand you trying to rope them in earlier, but they¡¯ve created things that even the best Forge Master¡¯s in the empires would have trouble matching up against. Now that they have people like us turning up to make them a profit, you¡¯re limiting their growth.¡±

    In one form or another everyone agreed. After all, the Arc Cannon was a rather unique and incredibly powerful weapon. If it could be mass produced it would change the face of the entire continent.

    James just shook his head when everyone started getting a little riled up. ¡°Everyone please calm down. You can¡¯t focus all your dissatisfaction on the Gau Clan. The main reason we agreed to this treaty condition was that we didn¡¯t plan to sell weapons to anyone in the first place. I¡¯m afraid that if you only came here for the Arc Cannon, you will all be disappointed.¡±

    For the first time, Lucas joined the conversation sounding half dead and looking like he was half asleep. ¡°Well then, what do you plan to sell, and how much can we buy? Say, for example, your school. What if we offered to buy that and everything it can do?¡±

    James cupped his chin and thought about it. ¡°No. I can¡¯t sell the school or any of its capabilities. What I can sell though is usage. I can sell you as many tickets as you want for as many people as you want. Hell, if you pay out the ass end, we will establish a university of knowledge and for the right price can even help people understand the experience the implant provides. That will be in the future though.

    ¡°For now, our guild only has a few goals. That is to stockpile resources and learn everything we can about this world. If you can help us achieve this aim, we can sell you just about anything you want apart from the technology to build some of our things. Weapons and the school are good examples.¡±

    Lucas gave out a long sigh and leant forwards with his head in his arms like he was preparing to take a nap right here in James¡¯ office.

    ¡°Well then, how about this. We will exchange rare resources that trade through the Yori Empire from the three great nations. We¡¯ll sell them to you at the Yansho City¡¯s market prices. In exchange, instead of giving us gold, you can log all your purchases from us as our guilds account. We can then send whoever we want to Gau City for the school, and you can deduct from our account.¡±

    ¡°This will also act as a slush fund, and anything you¡¯re selling we can buy it with the account. Of course, that includes direct orders. Say if we wanted to buy some more of those ... air boards. We could then put in a manufacturing request, and you fill the order.¡±

    James wasn¡¯t sure what to make of this. He turned and looked at his business tycoon, Jessy. Seeing it was her cue she perked up from her papers. ¡°That would be acceptable. However, we reserve the right to refuse any requests and to limit purchases as we see fit. Also, the raw materials we need for production will be supplied by the interested party. We can chalk up a basic outline of things we are willing to sell, their price and the materials we¡¯ll need you to supply. We¡¯ll also tell you how much of it were able to trade. This will be updated say ... every two weeks and it will be your responsibility to gather this report from us.

    ¡°Prices will be subject to change in our workload and the effort required to complete your order promptly. Any accounts we hold for you will be taxed for operating expenses, if your account empties, it will be closed. If you have no objections, we can draw up a simple contract for your accounts right now. To ensure you we don¡¯t plan to cheat you, we can swear an oath as a guild to treat your accounts fairly and with due diligence.¡±

    For the first time since he¡¯d arrived, Lucas perked up. He sat up straight and stared at Jessy. So intense was his staring that Jessy began to blush and move around in her seat until he spoke again. ¡°Fine, these conditions are acceptable.¡±

    Having said that, everyone present jumped on the bandwagon. When results of the meeting travelled around the city, all the guilds in the city jumped at the chance to start a business account with the Brotherhood.

    After these people left the city, things once again began to calm down. Apart from a few attempts to infiltrate the lab by unknown factions, everything remained calm in Gau City for another week.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    -Sword Hall-

    In the sword hall, Xanzu was busy cultivating his spirit energy on one of the arrays the clan had James set up. He was close. So close! The Palace Realm! He would be the first person in the clan since Jeng to enter the Palace Realm before he turned thirty.

    So you realise how incredible that is, in the entire Empire, Palace Realm experts under 30 years of age numbered in the dozens. Palace Realms older than that were in the hundreds. People in the Realm above Palace numbered in the tens, and almost all of them were once cultivators that broke through to the palace before 30.

    He wasn¡¯t there yet. But he was close. When he finally got there, he would get his chance. Soon he would be the leader of the Gau Clan, and when he was, he would destroy those steppers and take that slut to his dungeons.

    Xanzu had spent the last month training to reach the Palace Realm. He wanted to go and cause trouble for James and the Dark Brotherhood, but he¡¯d had to focus on his training. Amusingly, the greatest help in his rapid development was all thanks to creations from the lab that Jeng had been paying a pound of flesh for.

    Jeng too felt somewhat held back in regards to the Brotherhood. He never would have allowed them time to settle into the city if he knew they would grow so fast. To make it worse, they rarely left their Guildhall.

    If he wanted to try and get rid of them, it meant he¡¯d have to risk paying to send people in there. He already knew, the moment someone invaded the guild they would be blown to pieces by one of those blasted Arc Cannons.

    It only got harder to try and act against them after the incident in James¡¯ office. Originally Jeng had made quite a few promises and back door deals to try and get the other guilds to start putting an embargo on the brotherhood. That all quickly changed when instead of trying to discuss the issue James just turned some guy into a bloody mist and blew another¡¯s leg off.

    The Tailor¡¯s Guildmaster was apparently still recuperating from his missing leg.

    Jeng and Xanzu were both making plans, but everything was once again uprooted when James threw that bomb out at the meeting after the auction. To make it worse, he¡¯d tried limiting James in other ways by saying he was breaking the oath by selling array patterns that the Clan wanted to sell.

    James simply replied with ¡°When the Clan starts selling them we will stop¡±. The reason he could get away with that was because even though they¡¯d been feeding back information on the arrays to the Clan as they had agreed to, the clan members could hardly make heads or tails of it.

    Without explanations, they had trouble making sense of the Brotherhoods notes, which was only exacerbated by the duo changing back and forth between different terminologies. For example, they would often interchange lore and source code, or foundation and hardware.

    The only one who had any idea about the arrays was Anvil, who the boys in the lab had no issues with. The problem was, he had no computer to do all the busy design work and cataloguing, so he had to rely on memorising everything and going through hundreds of documents to try and find certain patterns.

    As such, Jeng felt the last resort was to speed up his plans to take control of the Clan. Once that happened, he could find a way to trick James into annulling their oaths and then nothing would be stopping him from killing that bastard himself. All he needed was to be close by and before his goons could fire off the cannon James would be dead and Jeng would be long gone.

    Jeng stood nearby watching Xanzu training. ¡°How long boy?¡±

    Xanzu opened his eyes and looked back at his master. ¡°Not long Master Jeng. I¡¯m close now. I feel like I¡¯m already half a step into Palace Realm.¡±

    Jeng scratched at his scarred eye and gave a grunt. ¡°Good, I¡¯ve secured some more of their 616. I don¡¯t care if they release all their technology anymore. It¡¯s too late to stop them, and because of that stupid father of yours, we lost the chance to control them. If we don¡¯t kill them now, it will be a disaster for us later. I already think Hao is growing suspicious of us and if he gets help from them before we¡¯re ready we may lose our opportunity.¡±

    ¡°Yes Master, I will be ready. I¡¯m so close now. Please remember not to kill the girl. I want that little slut for myself.¡±

    Jeng just gave another grunt then walked out leaving Xanzu to train.

    -Brotherhood Guildhall-

    Standing in the plaza outside the Brotherhood Guildhall were two people. One dressed in the garb of a Tibetan monk with prayer beads around his neck and a bald shaved head. He looked as old as time itself and his entire face resembled a wrinkled prune.

    Standing next to this man was a young boy about 13 or 14 dressed in the traditional cloth get-up of a poor pitiable commoner.

    They both stood out in the plaza looking at the Guildhall. ¡°Master, are you certain this is the place? The name alone makes me question if these people have any morals. It¡¯s definitely an evil organisation, right?¡±

    ¡°Eh heh heh. Little Casper, even in the yang there is some yin, and in the yin, there will always be yang.¡± The old monk just rubbed the boy¡¯s head then started walking towards the door.

    The boy looked at him with a sour face. ¡°You crotchety old bastard, do you ever speak a single sentence of sense?¡±

    ¡°Oh ho, Little Casper, you must remember that a proverb is the teachings of a thousand men and one proverb tells of a hundred stories.¡± The old monk just muttered another terrible proverb about proverbs then entered the guild.

    James and Skay were playing with something on a work bench when the elevator gave its customary ¡®ding¡¯. As they looked up, they both stopped what they were doing. Skay dropped his soldering iron onto the bench, and James was already reaching for a big red button nearby.

    The moment he pressed it, red lights started flashing everywhere, and two enormous rods made of LS3 drop out of the ceiling aiming at the elevator doors.

    The old monk and the boy just waltzed out of the elevator like they were in their own home, paying absolutely no attention, what so ever, to the massive arcs of lightning that had started dancing along the Tesla Cannons that just aimed directly towards them.

    The moment the old monk¡¯s foot set down outside the elevator, the Tesla Cannons unloaded almost the entire energy reserves of the array generator into two long violent arcs of lightning. To James and Skay¡¯s great surprise, the old monk just lifted his left hand and a barrier of water condensed out of thin air.

    After a minute of the Tesla Cannons blindly spraying lightning and the lights flickering, the lab became quiet. The elevator was shrouded in a mist of rising steam from all the water vaporising on contact with the lightning, and there was no movement or sound.

    That was until they watched the completely unharmed old monk walking out of the steam nonplussed as if he was walking through a garden. The boy shortly followed after him, waving his arms around generating a little bit of wind energy and blowing the steam away.

    James eyes nearly rolled out his head. Those Tesla Cannons made even the Arc Cannon look soft. Generally, the amount of energy they just released should have completely obliterated anything that walked out of that elevator. Hell, even the elevator should have been vaporised by the huge arcs of plasma that had been created.

    After glancing around like he was looking for someone, the monk focused on James and his wrinkled old face split with and equally wrinkled smile. The boy, on the other hand, was staring wide-eyed at the Tesla Cannon in the ceiling. ¡°Holy crap. Master, it was incredible. I want one.¡±

    ¡°Oh? Haha, Little Casper, give a man a fish, and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.¡± Replied the monk as he walked towards James.

    The boy following behind him just gave another groan.

    James was freaking the fuck out right now. Before he had a chance to process what was going on, Goliath appeared out of one of the equipment testing rooms and lined up an Arc Cannon. A sonic boom rang out, and everyone watched as a bubble appeared around the monk and the projectile deflected off and smashed into a wall, disintegrating a good four metres of solid rock.

    Goliath, being a relatively straightforward creature, just started firing off more, until ten new holes of dust and rock debris lined the roof, wall and floor on the other side of the monk. The boy behind the monk just watched on with wide sparkling eyes.

    After a few more steps the old prune-faced monk was standing in front James eyeing him up and down. ¡°Oh yes yes! Good, planning a day ahead, is planning for a lifetime.¡±

    James stood stock still like a rock, with his lifeless dead eyes staring back at the monk. Meanwhile, his brain was spinning faster than it ever had before. ¡°What?¡± He finally replied.

    The old monk just smiled pleasantly then pulled a bench stool over and sat down. Then he gave James a nod to sit down and replied with more proverbs. ¡°This morning¡¯s tea makes yesterday distant.¡±

    James couldn¡¯t tell what the fuck was going on. ¡®Who the fuck is this guy? More importantly, just how fucking powerful is he to be able to deflect ten shots from the Arc Cannon 2.1? Especially after he just diffused two lightning arcs that could disintegrate through 5 metres of solid metal. Dude hasn¡¯t even worked up a sweat.¡¯

    Casper walked over and grabbed a stool as well. After sitting down, he looked expectantly at James. After James¡¯ placid face just sat there staring back for a whole minute, the boy finally spoke. ¡°What the Master means is that serving some tea now would lead to forgetting about that whole ... thing, just then.¡±

    Skay, who had just rescued whatever they¡¯d been working on from the soldering iron, looked at the boy. ¡°Tea? Forget? Are you fucking out of it kid? Are you fucking threatening us? You barge into my lab, and fucking ask me for tea?! Fuck your tea! I don¡¯t want to forget!¡±

    Geo just gave a sagely nod. ¡°All things are forgotten and the moments lead to the future. Tea, however, is eternal.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes were bloodshot, and he looked about ready to reach over and strangle this old bastard. James held out a hand to stop him then motioned for Lackey 31 to go and make some tea. Once it was served James immediately felt a little better.

    He used to be a coffee man, but now tea helped him to relax and think. Because shit was always going wrong around here, he drank a lot of tea. Finally, after a few sips, he put the cup down, and his focus fell on the old man.

    ¡°They say a single word can mean a thousand things and a thousand words paint a single picture. If a single word can paint a single picture, why do we need a thousand words?¡±

    The old man¡¯s dried plum of a face seemed to constrict and collapse in slightly, and he gave a slight chuckle. The boy looked at James oddly, and Skay just scratched his head. After a moment, the boy gave a long sigh and mumbled. ¡°Wasn¡¯t even any reason for me to come here. This guy¡¯s just as fucking crazy as the crotchety old bastard.¡±

    ¡°Haha, Little Casper, all lines intersect, but great minds think in parallel.¡± After the monk said that he turned back to James.

    ¡°Nurture the plant one year, ten days of flowers. To build it fast took a hundred years, to fall it took a day. Beast and Man share one goal but walk two paths. To grow stronger is not to grow faster and running is to miss the view when walking. When growing a tree, patience is the key. All things end at the beginning and begin at the end.¡±

    Once he finished the bald old monk stood up as if this whole show had been to say just these few lines. Then just as he walked into the elevator, left one last proverb. ¡°Two paths move in the same direction, but they¡¯re blocked by the trees. Remember to see the trees ¡®and¡¯ the forest.¡±

    With that, the boy and the monk left. Finally, Skay couldn¡¯t take it anymore and slammed a fist down on the bench as he focused on James. ¡°What the fuck was that? You speak in fuckin riddles now?¡±

    James remained stoic as he eyed the elevator. After a few more seconds of silence, he let out a long breath. ¡°I¡¯ve got no fucking idea what all that means. I was just curious if I could have an entire conversation in proverbs.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyes were so close to popping out the only thing holding them in were his stupidly thick-lensed glasses. James threw him a sidelong glance and took another sip of tea. ¡°You want to know the thing I¡¯ve learnt the most in this world? There are some situations you simply can¡¯t change. If that man had wanted to kill us, we¡¯d have been dead before I even had a chance to push the purge button. We¡¯re not in Kansas anymore old madman. If we can¡¯t at least enjoy it a little, what¡¯s the point? I think if I¡¯ve learnt anything apart from that, it would be that sometimes, you have to roll with the punches.¡±

    Skay was shaking from rage. ¡°Boy, are you playing with me? Did that fucking nutter give you some sickness? You going to speak to me in truisms and proverbs forever now?¡±

    James gave a bashful smile. ¡°The lobster sheds its shell and grows a new one in the face of adversity. If it never sheds its shell, it never grows.¡±

    After teasing Skay for a little longer, he whipped out his pad and called the envious crazy bitch down to the lab. He figured if anyone could decipher the monk¡¯s cryptic nonsense, then it would have to be Exsue. After all, she¡¯s millions of fucking years old, surely she¡¯d heard a few proverbs in her time.

    Hearing that James had summoned her, Exsue was so excited she sprinted from her room on the second floor down to the lab. She damn near tried to pry the elevator doors open on the way down. When she flew out of the elevator like a bullet from a gun, it was only a blink of the eye until she was glued to James.

    James immediately regretted this decision. Typically, he tried to avoid Exsue as much as possible. When she first got resurrected, she was stuck to him endlessly, which meant he could never get anything done. After some half pleading half negotiating discussions, they¡¯d worked out sort of a schedule.

    Exsue wasn¡¯t allowed to be in contact with him at all during the day unless it was for guild things. In exchange, James had to allow her a single hour a day that she was ¡®authorised¡¯ to be present in his company. Initially, Exsue wanted the whole day but realising she was only making James mad she eventually relinquished those fantasies.

    Amusingly, this only made her envy grow even stronger, especially when she thought about how Jessy always seemed, in Exsue¡¯s mind, to be making up guild related excuses to be nearer to James. Jessy had started to grow more comfortable with this world by now and was, in fact, making no special efforts to see James at all.

    Goliath walked over after placing the Arc Cannon into the auto-factory for recycling. Although he remained nearby while the monk was still here, he wasn¡¯t about to walk over. Guy just bounced Arc Cannon fire off a fuckin bubble after all.

    Goliath accepted that there was nothing he could do if that freak just decided to kill everyone and so decided to do what he did best. Stood off in the distance while menacingly eyeing the old monk.

    As Exsue crawled all over James and Goliath sidled up next to James and Skay, the elevator gave another ¡®ding¡¯. Everyones eyes automatically diverted towards it slightly panicked. When it opened out stumbled Fatty who was eating something out of a bucket. Presumably, grain, because it was cheap.

    Behind him was Jessy, who gave a cautious glance around the lab before sending Harvy out with a Cannon strapped to his shoulder. The reason for this was because the Tesla Cannons were still deployed and that meant one of two things. They were being tested again, or someone had just been standing here in the elevator that shouldn¡¯t have been.

    After Harvy swept the lab and saw his Evil Overlord and Master drinking tea looking only slightly bemused, he gave the all clear.

    The moment Jessy was in earshot, she was throwing out questions. ¡°What the fuck¡¯s going on down here? The whole guild was shaking. I thought someone had attacked us.¡±

    The trio that had already been in the lab just gave wry smiles. Seeing that James and Skay were having a short conversation with their eyebrows and head motions, Goliath was the first to speak.

    ¡°We had an unauthorised intruder. James deployed the emergency protocols, and the man made a shield of water. Then when I saw him still advancing, I fired a full clip from the Arc Cannon, which looked like they were bounced away. He then said some strange things and left as quickly as he¡¯d arrived.¡±

    Jessy pinched her brow while thinking furiously. ¡°So what did he say?¡±

    Fatty, who usually wasn¡¯t allowed to speak much, on account of never having anything constructive to add, chose this moment to start theorising. ¡°A stranger just walked in here you say? And he was so powerful that nothing worked against him? He must be one of the overlords. If I¡¯m right, the aliens of this world are all made up of strange and powerful factions. But they fight with each other internally. No doubt this man was an alien of the rebel faction and wants to assist us.¡±

    James reached out a hand and gave Fatty a slap. ¡°Shut up Fatty. We already told you. On this world, we¡¯re the aliens. Now, Exsue, you¡¯ve been around for a while. Surely you¡¯ve heard a few proverbs in your time, right?¡±

    Exsue was straddled over James¡¯ knee and humping back and forth. She seemed to be rather enjoying herself. Everyone present just ignored it. They had long ago accepted this girl was absolutely shameless when it came to James, but in regards to anything else refused to lower her status by deigning even a hint of interest.

    After James replayed a video from the lab and Exsue heard the man¡¯s words she stopped humping away. ¡°How strange. That man must be a deviator.¡±

    Everyone gave her an odd look. Before anyone had a chance to ask, Harvy chimed in as he freshened James¡¯ tea. ¡°I am a deviator, my Lord. The term refers to someone who has gained faster cultivation speed and power at the cost of some part of their soul. It is a free will thing. If you reach a point in your cultivation where you stand at the crossroads of life and death, then you can grasp more power in exchange for sacrifice. I sacrificed free will, this man sacrificed sensible speech.¡±

    James gave Harvy a strange look. ¡°Harvy I thought you were the runt of the litter. When did you learn about this stuff?¡±

    Harvy placed the teapot back down once he¡¯d finished, and returned to standing nearby like a ghoulish mummified butler. ¡°Master has given me permission to peruse and research from the database in my free time. Some of the books we purchased earlier had mentions of deviators.¡±

    James gave Harvy a serious look. ¡°Harvy ... you have ¡®free¡¯ time? As in a time you¡¯re not doing something else?¡± James then looked at Skay. ¡°Harvy has free time Skay? Doesn¡¯t sound like you to be so benevolent.¡±

    Skay just gave a sinister chuckle. ¡°Harvy is my chief lab assistant. I need him to know everything. Besides, even if he found a way to reverse his deviation, he has sworn his life to the Brotherhood. I give him a few hours to peruse now and then.¡±

    James cupped his chin and gave a nod. ¡°Sure, sounds good. Harvy, I don¡¯t need to tell you what will happen if you start keeping secrets. If you find anything interesting while going through the database, I want to know about it.¡±

    He then turned back to Exsue. ¡°So, any ideas what the old man was saying?¡±

    Exsue just snuggled up to James and forced his arm around her waist to hold her to him. He inwardly sighed at just how fuckin needy this bitch was. She then finally began to speak. ¡°Well baby, don¡¯t hate me if I interpret it wrong, okay? Oh and also you did really well. That dual truism of yours was a perfect opener and probably the only reason you¡¯re not still here trying to decipher him.¡±

    James put a cocky grin on his face. ¡°Of course it was, it¡¯s not hard to throw together some random proverbs. The problem is trying to interpret other people¡¯s proverbs.¡±

    The other members of the core group all made strange faces with cocked eyebrows. Finally, Skay chipped in with a vein sticking out of his temple. ¡°What do you mean it¡¯s not difficult?! You just told me a minute ago, you don¡¯t even know what the fuck you said!¡±

    James looked at him with a raised eyebrow. ¡°When did I say that? I just said I had no fucking idea what the old coot was saying. I knew perfectly well what I was saying.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eyebrow began twitching. ¡°Fine you little shit, so if you understand proverbs so well, why can¡¯t you decipher him?¡±

    James cocky smile returned. ¡°Mostly, I want a second opinion. After having thought about it for a while, I basically think he¡¯s telling us to slow down and refocus our research and cultivation. I¡¯m pretty sure he¡¯s also of the opinion we¡¯re trying to build the guild up too fast, and that if we keep going at this speed, it will make it weak in the long run.¡±

    Everybody made different faces hearing this. Fatty looked the most surprised. ¡°How did you gather all that from those few sentences of gibberish?¡±

    James just gave a knowing smile and said nothing. Exsue seemed to get very excited. ¡°Oh JayJay, you really are perfect. You were so close to understanding everything you probably wouldn¡¯t have needed me at all if you¡¯d really focused.¡±

    James just gave a sigh while Jessy made a gagging motion. James wasn¡¯t fooling himself. He was an arrogant guy and loved to soak up some praise now and then, the only problem was, he felt incredibly dirty when Exsue praised him. He felt like a toddler again and getting praised for taking a crap in the potty for the first time.

    Of course, this wasn¡¯t because she praised him in a demeaning way, but because she praised him for any and everything. The worst part of all of this was, he knew she believed every word of it. Just that alone made him feel like going for a wash.

    Exsue then began explaining. According to her, James was mostly correct. The old man was telling them they needed to broaden their research instead of how they¡¯d recently been putting so much focus onto arrays. He was also telling them to be more careful as they built their guild.

    Apparently, there was also going to be a beast attack soon. Exsue sheepishly explained how eating cultivators and other spirits beasts was the fastest way for a spirit beast to evolve. This was why they were drawn to areas with higher spirit energy saturation. Because usually, those areas had other creatures that were cultivating.

    The last thing he said was basically, ¡®they would meet again¡¯, and he was also warning James not to lose his focus on cultivation so much. James had to admit he¡¯d been far more wrapped up in array research and the guild recently and had lost some of the focus he¡¯d had on cultivation.

    After the old monk¡¯s display today, James realised that as powerful as their technology was in this world, it wasn¡¯t as powerful as a real expert cultivator. Although he was sure they could one day reach that level with better materials and designs, cultivation was still the key to real power.

    The most significant news was naturally the beast attack. Exsue had somehow correlated 10 days of flowers with tens peaceful weeks of building up the guild. They were in week 9 right now, which meant in a week¡¯s time, the city would be under attack.

    Having finished the dissection of the monk¡¯s words, the team started setting up some jobs. Firstly, they reallocated the scouting drones back to the limits of Gau City as an early warning system. They also started sending some out further, in the hopes they could see where the beasts were gathering, or with the hope to find anything actually.

    James posted Fatty to the auto-factory to take charge of it. As a fitter, Fatty had a pretty good idea how to move heavy things and bang on stuff so James was sure it would be fine. All he really had to do was make sure the Lackey assigned there was filling the right materials into the right places so the 3D printers could do the rest.

    He reallocated Goliath to member training. Goliath usually spent most of his time training in the arena anyway, so most the members knew him. They even set up basic combat training as a Job Request on the boards that anyone could accept. This was primarily paying them to go and train their fighting skills with Goliath.

    Jessy was tasked with the diplomacy of the Guilds in town and contacting the account holders to see if they could give any aid ... for a price of course. When he suggested this he said; ¡°You should get in contact with your boyfriend. I¡¯m sure if it¡¯s you he¡¯ll help out.¡±

    Jessy¡¯s face scrunched up when James said that. ¡°What boyfriend?! You¡¯ve got a boyfriend!¡±

    James gave a chuckle. ¡°You know, the tired guy, errr ... Lucas. He seemed to like you.¡±

    Jessy just gave a snort, like noticing some scrawny scholarly type was beneath her.

    Skay and James stayed in the lab to start setting up some things that would be useful in the worst case situation. James also had Skay start assembling a proper brain scanning machine. He wanted to kick research into cultivation up a notch.

    Exsue of course did ... whatever the fuck it is that Exsue does when she¡¯s not attached to James like a bad smell.

    Once they had their Jobs assigned to them, everyone split up again.

 Chapter 25: War Council

    -The Arena-

    James and Goliath were having a daily training session and exchanging some blows. James was like a blur as he shot forwards, released a few blows then flittered back like a gust of wind.

    To Goliath¡¯s great consternation, James had recently been practising his control over two elements simultaneously. After some recent brain scans, they¡¯d figured out that having an unlocked element that wasn¡¯t building with the rest had been limiting him.

    After he found and acknowledged his Pride Element, his spirit realm had equalled out rather quickly. Amusingly, his pride energy pervaded everything. Even his lightning had golden streaks through it from his pride energy.

    He and Skay both believed the reason he felt so much pressure from having three elements was actually because he had 4 but one was in a constant state of depletion. This also led James to believe that his plasma element had actually been created after his pride element. Which meant that he had pride before he even had the battle with Calso.

    Now that his spirit realm had regained equilibrium he felt a great deal more control than before. To the point that he could use two elements without getting any backlash for nearly an hour.

    Technically it would be more accurate to call it three elements, because he found he couldn¡¯t actually use his pride individually like the others could with their elements. Instead, his pride was a part of everything, and no matter what element he used, the pride energy would be mixed in with it.

    Once James felt the pressure from having an unbalanced spirit realm release, he had no troubles learning more elements. However, he quickly ran into some issues. He unlocked nearly twelve. But they were so weak they got consumed by the other elements.

    After some testing and the much-appreciated sacrifice of two interlopers that recently tried using subterfuge to enter the lab, Skay concluded that everyone in the core of the Brotherhood who had an emotional element was limited, or rather helped, in some fashion.

    They also found that generally, anyone who tried to unlock too many elements, without an emotional element¡¯s support, would suffer catastrophic backlash. Ordinary people would bottom out after 2 or 3 elements.

    In the end, James managed to unlock the 4 elementary elements of earth, fire, water and wind. However, once his spirit realm had 7 different elements, it seemed to obliterate everything else he tried to refine.

    Even things he had a better concept of than the four basics, like electromagnetism, got absorbed and refined by his other energies. This phenomenon was already abnormal, because energies in his spirit realm couldn¡¯t usually refine each other. Or they simply chose not to, it was uncertain.

    Skay gave it a try and said he could unlock as many elements as he wanted and they all just floated around in his spirit realm getting along great. He quickly discovered a problem once he got to about 16 elements. Once they were all there, he couldn¡¯t get rid of them.

    The problem with that being, that they all shared his maximum spirit energy and this meant even his strongest element only had a bit more than one sixteenth of his maximum energy. The only saving grace to this was that the massive number of elements made his alpha waves shoot up through the roof, and his recovery and gathering speed shot up along with it.

    When they reached this point, they decided that if an individual emotional element created opportunities and restrictions, then why not get some more?

    They even called Fatty down and volunteered him to try and unlock another emotional element. When he tried to unlock something he was rather strong in, namely suspicion, it was immediately gobbled up by his gluttony, not just this, though, any element he tried to unlock was gobbled up. Humorously, similar things happened with everyone else.

    Goliath tried to unlock grief only to have it dissolved by wrath. Exsue tried again to unlock love, but of course ... nothing happened, and she claimed her ¡°spirit realm must be broken ... or something¡±. Jessy tried to unlock something, but she refused to tell the others what. She claimed when it started to generate her lust energy just engulfed it and then it was gone.

    Skay¡¯s greed naturally consumed any new emotional element, similar to how Fatty¡¯s had reacted. That only left James. The only other strong emotions he felt he harmonised with were the other sins. As such he tried to unlock all of them. He quickly realised that his pride wouldn¡¯t accept any other elements like itself in his spirit realm and it obliterated them.

    The most comical part, was that it didn¡¯t even do it on its own. It ¡®encouraged¡¯ all his other elements to take action on its behalf. It was as if it didn¡¯t even feel that the other sins were worthy of it personally taking action to destroy them. James could only give a wry smile as he watched his plasma tornado sucking in his greed element like a puff of smoke into a spinning fan.

    They decided that emotional elements truly didn¡¯t like to share. After this day of testing was finished they discovered that apart from James and Skay, everyone else was somewhat more limited.

    Fatty couldn¡¯t unlock anything apart from his gluttony. Jessy only managed to unlock wind, which gave a total of three elements including her water.

    Goliath unlocked the fire element to join his earth and wrath. Which honestly didn¡¯t surprise anyone.

    Skay decided he had plenty enough at 16 but apart from the 4 basics and light he declined to comment on the rest, just saying; ¡°It¡¯ll be a surprise, haha hahaha HAHAHA!¡± his maniacal laughter spread out through the lab for a full minute after that comment.

    Exsue declined to unlock any more elements. She said that having more isn¡¯t better, it just means there¡¯s more to distract you from what you should be focusing on. When she said this, she ended the comment with ¡°like loovvveee.¡± while making suggestive eyebrow movements towards James.

    This whole scene played out over the course of an entire night. Which is why James was now in the arena with Goliath.

    Returning from this digression, James had been trying to practice using multiple elements at the same time. His pride element actually seemed to create none of the stress he typically felt using two elements and James assumed it was because of the nature of the energy.

    In actuality, it was now far easier than before. He still ended up deciding to fast switch between elements in battle, though. This was for two reasons, it was because this got along better with his breathing technique, which was essentially the action of instant switching between elements like glittering stars.

    The other reason was that trying to sustain two elements was still an enormous strain on him over time, and trying to maintain two elements while he was breathing was even harder.

    His breathing, by now, was almost entirely subconscious. Although he occasionally altered it, he had gotten to the point he never had to think about it. At first, he found he¡¯d have to remind himself and restart the breathing technique every 5 minutes, then it slowly became 10, then 20 and after 4 weeks had become rarely to never.

    He decided after he ascended to True Spirit Realm he¡¯d sit down and re-hash it again. Especially now that he was feeling less backlash with multiple element use.

    As James and Goliath started gasping for breath in the arena, a ¡®ding¡¯ sounded through the speakers. ¡°Boy, it¡¯s Skay. There¡¯s beast activity in the black forest.¡±

    James reluctantly ended their battle and moved towards the lab. Goliath gave a sigh of relief and made his way to the meditation room. James was getting better much too fast. Now that he was using elements simultaneously Goliath felt a mountain of pressure from their duels.

    He hardened his resolve and decided that he would need to double his training. Although James had forbidden them from breaking the barrier yet, that didn¡¯t mean he couldn¡¯t ¡®reach¡¯ the barrier.

    To his further disgruntlement, that seemed to be taking longer than he thought it would. After he started the star point breathing technique, his energy just seemed to keep building up even after he thought he¡¯d filled his barrier.

    -The Lab-

    When James arrived, he saw a bird¡¯s eye view of the Black Forest south of Gau City. It was the forest Fatty had been lost in and also bordered on the edge of the Black Forest Mountain, which was a natural habitat for quite a few True Spirit Realm beasts.

    The map had a red glow overlayed on it. ¡°What¡¯s going on Old Madman?¡±

    Skay pointed to the live feed from the drone. ¡°The spirit beasts have been congregating in this area for nearly three days. This red glow covering the edge of the forest is the heat map from the drone. All that area is lit up like the 4th of July.¡±

    James cupped his chin for a while. ¡°Harvy, put up a job for some delivery boys. I want every faction in the city to get a copy of this map and an explanation. Tell Hao, it¡¯s time to call a war council. Make sure only the leaders of each faction know about this. No loose lips, or so help me, I¡¯ll start making examples.¡±

    The lifeless form of Harvy gave a nod and began to move towards the elevator. Before he could enter, it gave a ¡®ding¡¯ and Anvil walked out. He looked rather excited as he marched past Harvy towards the duo standing at a screen.

    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t believe it! We found one of his old caves!¡± Anvil said excitedly.

    Skay and James shared a glance. ¡°His old caves?¡± James couldn¡¯t stop himself from asking.

    Anvil gave them both a sly grin. ¡°You¡¯re going to love this. The Clan Founder! One of the disciples training in the Endless Forest discovered one of the founder¡¯s caves. It couldn¡¯t be worse timing though. Song is supposedly having a 300 years birthday this week. Oh, I was told to invite you by the way. I¡¯ve just been wrapped up the last few days with the cave business.¡±

    James thought for a while and then signalled for Lackey 1, who seemed to be missing an arm now, to go and prepare tea. The armless, scarred faced and tired looking Lackey 1 climbed up from the pattern he¡¯d been painting and moved off to make some tea.

    James couldn¡¯t figure out for the life of him why this guy was still coming down here. First was the array accident that left him scarred. Then there was an accident when he was sent to help Norman in the alchemy lab, and the whole fiasco when he was assigned to feed the caged earth lizard they¡¯d acquired from the Gau Clan.

    The strangest part was that he had long since accumulated 10,000 points for an Arc Cannon, but still hasn¡¯t spent a single one of them. He just kept coming to the lab day after day and getting injured in bizarre lab accidents.

    If James didn¡¯t know better, he¡¯d think the man was a spy. But he could sense his oath was still intact through the Guild Seal that was floating around in his spirit realm, so he knew the fellow wasn¡¯t saying anything he shouldn¡¯t to anyone he shouldn¡¯t.

    They¡¯d even posted a drone to follow him around endlessly and track his guild medallion. This turned up nothing and only left them more confused. They never bothered to ask and as long as he kept doing his job they didn¡¯t plan to yet. He was perhaps the most experienced Lackey they had. Certainly the longest lasting one at least.

    After this divergence of thought, James turned back to the Elder. ¡°Anvil, I¡¯m afraid we¡¯re going to be upsetting your plans. For both Song¡¯s celebration and your cave diving. As curious as I am to go see it, if we leave the city anytime soon, we¡¯ll be coming back to nothing.¡±

    Anvil made a strange face then it clicked. ¡°You¡¯ve detected something?¡±

    Skay gave a solemn nod then pointed to the red overlay on the screen. ¡°Everywhere that is red has at least one spirit beast to every 10 square meters. So you¡¯ve got an idea, this map is scaled at 10,000 square meters.¡±

    Anvil shot up from the stool he¡¯d just sat down on. ¡°1000 beasts? All in such a small area? It¡¯s ... have ... are they moving yet?¡±

    Skay shook his head then hit a button. It showed a screen that was normal and then the slow build up over three days. ¡°No, they¡¯re just congregating for now. If they don¡¯t move for another day, I expect them to nearly double, that is, if the current trend continues. If they start moving, we will probably only have about 2 days before they reach the city based on their movement patterns while congregating.¡±

    Anvils face was white as a sheet of paper. ¡°Good Heavens, I must return to the mansion. We have to warn the city!¡±

    James reached out and stopped him. ¡°Just wait for a moment. We¡¯ve already sent people to inform the major factions. We can¡¯t let this spread to the commoners just yet. If panic starts to spread the city will definitely fall. The last thing we need is looters and riots and people killing each other to try and run out of the city. Go remind Hao to start the war council. We¡¯ll be there soon.¡±

    After he¡¯d said this, he sent Anvil on his way. As he picked up his fresh tea and turned to Skay. ¡°Do you think we¡¯ll be ready for that many beasts Old Madman.¡±

    Skay just grinned madly. ¡°Why wait to be ready for them to get here? You of all people should know better. Modern warfare is the speciality of our world. We should be sending out some disciples now to start harassing tactics. At the very least we can stir up some trouble, and they¡¯ll move before they congregate too many. It¡¯ll be easier to deal with less with fewer preparations than it would be to deal with more with only a few extra days to get ready.¡±

    James gave a nod. He then opened a draw and started writing up a new Job Card.

    <hr>

    Black Class Mission

    -Dangerous-

    Open to: All members

    Assignment by: Guildmaster James

    I¡¯m seeking someone brave, courageous or just someone stupid enough. I need 10 or more people in the main hall by high noon. This job requires you to engage in hit and run tactics on an enemy numbering into the thousands. Prior experience with the Air Board Testing will be valued.

    You get to shoot Arc Cannons.

    James.

    Difficulty: No Stars.

    Rewards: If you survive. All implants in the School will be free or the equivalent merits.

    Any members with family will receive compensation for death in the line of duty should they not return.

    <hr>

    When James went to the Main Hall at midday, 50 members were sitting around waiting for him. It was even more than he¡¯d expected. The only members not here were out on other jobs. Most of them had formed little parties and groups, so even though they were only on 8 jobs, it was nearly 40 people.

    When he saw the turnout, he gave a smile. He wasn¡¯t sure if these people were here for the opportunity to fire an Arc Cannon or because of the job rewards, but it was a pretty decent crowd.

    Of the guild members, a good number of them had joined for the techniques and to be able to train in the arena. After they set up the arrays for the Gau Clan, the only other cultivators that came to borrow the arena were from the Sects.

    In total, almost everyone here had completed enough jobs to get the basic guild package. They got the meditation and breathing technique and had done at least one course in the commoner classes at the school. In addition, because they could use the arena for free to train and meditate, almost all of them were in the upper quarter of the barrier realm. They¡¯d even had two or three people that had managed to break through.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    James stood in front of everyone with a bitter smile. ¡°Looks like everyone is here for the job?¡±

    After a few affirmatives, James just grew more bitter. ¡°Well, you should all know in advance that you may not survive this Job. I have 12 Arc Cannons at my disposal for this operation. I should warn you now. These are the 2.1¡¯s and can get about 12 shots out of them. Fatty and Goliath will be running this mission, so I expect you to take their lead.¡±

    After saying this much, Goliath got up on stage and started to walk everyone through the core mission outline. He seemed to have a flare for leading troops, and James was not averse to putting him in charge. Fatty was just there because he needed some experience and out of everyone apart from Skay and Harvy, he was the only one who could operate a Big Berta properly.

    When he saw that the briefing had started, James gave another bitter smile and left towards the Gau Clan with Skay and Harvy.

    -Gau Mansion-

    The ¡®War Council¡¯ consisted of the heads of all the same factions that had been sitting here when James first came for a town meeting after the monolith incident. There were only three exceptions.

    Firstly, the head of the Imperial Branch had changed to the vice head. Secondly, it seemed the Guild Master of the Tailor¡¯s Guild had mysteriously disappeared along with the vice-master, and there was now a young lady sitting in their place.

    The final difference was that two new members were sitting at the table. One of them was Emily, and the other was Lucas. James assumed they must have used an Air Board to get here this quickly. How they managed to get the news so fast was something he could only guess at. More questionable was why they were even here, James was sure they probably didn¡¯t care too much about Gau City.

    Also similar to the last meeting was Afro-face in his teal robes and Hao in his purple robes standing at the head of the table arguing loudly.

    ¡°I don¡¯t care if your little pet guild fucking walked out there and used a recording stone. I don¡¯t trust them, and I haven¡¯t heard anything from anyone else about beast activity increasing in the south.¡± Afro face was yelling loudly right at Hao while pointing towards the trio that just entered.

    Hao¡¯s face grew even more displeased. ¡°It¡¯s precisely because there¡¯s been no reports of activity that I¡¯m inclined to believe. That there hasn¡¯t been a single sighting reported in the South while every other direction has doubled, is the whole reason I¡¯m so fucking worried.¡±

    ¡°Nonsense! There hasn¡¯t been a spirit beast sighted leaving the black forest for years! They¡¯re not about to come out for no reason and furthermore they¡¯re not about to start any fucking Beast Hordes!¡±

    James and Skay sat down while Harvy stood behind them. Everyone in the guilds could already tell he was carrying an Arc Cannon, because the last time he had one, he was covered with a thick black robe similar to the one he wore now.

    The Clans weren¡¯t as clued in and didn¡¯t pay too much attention to Harvy. When he was all wrapped up in bandages and smelling of fruit, he looked rather harmless.

    As the duo who sat down had some tea served, Lucas gave them a quick glance. He gave a disappointed look then leant forward and looked like he went to sleep on his hands.

    Emily gave them a quick cursory glance as well but seemed to only acknowledge their existence and returned to watching the steam rise from her tea. After a short moment of listening to the pair at the head of the table argue James interrupted.

    ¡°Hao, don¡¯t worry about him. If there is a beast attack and he makes no effort to help defend the city, we will just annihilate his clan.¡±

    The moment this was said the hall fell quiet. Afro face was visibly enraged ... at least probably, his afro started shivering which was really the only tell. ¡°Just who do you think you are boy?! I¡¯m the fucking head of the Housue Clan, and you¡¯ll fucking show me some respect! You think you¡¯re so strong because you have some fucking toys! What would you be without those weapons? You¡¯d be fucking nothing! You¡¯d be a fucking stain on the bottom of my shoe!¡±

    James just ignored him and drank some tea. Then as if he¡¯d not heard a single word he glanced around at everyone else who seemed rather busy looking at anyone but James. The only exception was the Builder¡¯s Guild. Toller and his wife both just giving wry smiles. Out of everyone here, they probably knew James¡¯ personality best.

    James then continued to talk after the Housue Head ran out of steam. ¡°Well then, moving on, when we heard about the monolith potentially being damaged our guild got together with the Gau Clan to start putting some defences in place. I suspect none of you have really noticed though, because you¡¯ve all remained too busy backstabbing each other by using my guilds job board or trying to fill the gap left by the sudden missing personnel from the Gau Clan that have been out there protecting this city for you.

    ¡°Before you all jump up and down to defend yourselves, I¡¯m going to tell you that I don¡¯t give a shit what your opinion is. Whether you like it or not, this city is about to face a storm, and every single one of you are going to be responsible for it if you can¡¯t find a way to divert the flood water ... so to speak. Basically what I mean is, it¡¯s time for you all to get off your fat asses.¡±

    Finished his little speech he freshened his tea and took another drink while the hall exploded with outrage.

    ¡°Just who the fuck are you to tell me how to run my guild?!¡±

    ¡°Our Sword Maidens live out there hunting spirit beasts! We¡¯ve been keeping the peace in the outer areas of the city¡¯s reach!¡±

    ¡°My guild isn¡¯t built to handle battle, how can you expect us to send people out to fight beats!¡±

    ¡°Our clan has been settled in this city for hundreds of years! We don¡¯t need some young punk still sucking his Mumma¡¯s teat telling us how to protect it!¡±

    The comments varied, but all fundamentally shifted blame or claimed they¡¯d been protecting this city from the start. James just let them hurl abuse at him for a while with a mellow smile. Once they were done, he eyes squinted into slits, and his smile brightened further.

    ¡°Good, then that means you¡¯ve all got this whole thing under control and are more than prepared for the incoming beast horde. My guild will be packing up and leaving the city tomorrow, in addition, we won¡¯t be closing your accounts. Anyone who dies in the coming days, well, whatever is still in your account will be forfeit by right of seizure. Emily, I was wondering if your adventures guild would be happy to assist our clan rebuilding our operations in another city?¡±

    Emily gave a bright smile and smacked the sooty shield on her back. ¡°No problem, for a price our guild would be happy to assign an escort mission and help you to relocate to any city you want.¡±

    Lucas lifted his head up from the table and wiped his sleepy eyes. ¡°If you choose to leave, we would be happy to assist you in making some connections in the Capital. I¡¯m sure your business practices will be very much encouraged there.¡±

    Jeng shot to his feet when he heard this. ¡°This is unacceptable! You can¡¯t just leave whenever you want! You have a responsibility to this city and my Clan! If you leave, you will be breaking your oath of mutual defence.¡±

    James gave a sly smile. ¡°Oh? You¡¯re worried about that now? I¡¯ve fulfilled my reasonable duty of care by providing intelligence to you and the rest of the city. We had even helped your clan start preparing counter measures. My guild has fulfilled its end of the oath by assisting in the protection of the Clan in times of need where it is capable of doing so. That doesn¡¯t mean we have an obligation to stay here and sacrifice ourselves for you.¡±

    Jeng grit his teeth in anger. Although it was somewhat a twisting of the words, it was the truth. That was one problem with the oath. As long as the guild fulfilled the oath to a level that both they and the heavens thought were acceptable, then it was in essence a grey zone, even if one of the parties felt they got stiffed.

    ¡°Well, then what about your weapons?! If you can¡¯t even provide us with those, then you are definitely breaking the oath!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m unable to do that Jeng you stubborn old bastard. You see, I¡¯m afraid I swore an oath that I would never sell weapons unless I were reasonably confident I could defend against them. If I could sell them to the Clan and be sure they would never be used against me, then I would.

    ¡°Unfortunately, because your clan is full of questionable characters, my hands are tied. Actually, I tell you what, if you go kill that Xanzu bloke right now, then I wouldn¡¯t have any problem with selling weapons to your clan.¡±

    This time Hao was the one to jump to his feet. ¡°What?! Little James you don¡¯t mean that do you? Xanzu may have been a little rash, but he¡¯s still young.¡±

    James let out a long sigh. ¡°Hao I¡¯m sorry, but like minds think alike, and it takes a deceitful backstabbing bastard to know one. I can tell you right now that your son is untrustworthy. To be entirely honest, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if he killed you soon for your position. That¡¯s just my opinion, and you can take it or leave it. Regardless, unless the rest of this council can pull their heads out of their asses, my guild will be leaving this city.¡±

    Jeng¡¯s face turned white. ¡®Did he hear something? How can he know?¡¯ ¡°You little bastard! How dare you come in here and disrespect my clan! This is a blatant disregard of our defence pact, and I¡¯m going to partition the monolith to force this issue! Guards, seize him!¡±

    The moment this order was uttered Harvy dropped his robe and lined Jeng up in the firing line of his Cannon. Before he could get the chance to fire, a shadow fell out of the ceiling and stabbed a dagger into Harvy¡¯s arm.

    The Cannon fired and grazed past Jeng¡¯s face, blowing the far end of the dining hall away in a jet stream of devastation. Everyone was stunned. By the time quiet returned, Harvy was splayed on the ground with blood drooling onto the floor from his chest and arm.

    Standing over him was Xanzu holding a bloody dagger with a sick grin on his face. Before everyone could register what was happening, he reached down and picked up the Arc Cannon then swung it around to focus onto Hao.

    Apart from James, Skay, Lucas and Emily who seemed to not have noticed anything and were just drinking their tea, everyone else froze with similar thoughts. ¡®Just what the fuck is going on?¡¯

    Xanzu¡¯s sick grin widened as he eyed his father. ¡°At last the day has come. Father, you should know that I¡¯ve always hated you. You sicken me beyond measure. I don¡¯t even know how you got mother pregnant. With your disgusting habit, you¡¯ve ruined the good name of our clan! You surely wondered how all your little boy toys died! Well, I killed them HAHA! I fucking tortured them to death!¡±

    Hao just let out a long disappointed sigh. He had suspected, and James¡¯ earlier goading only reaffirmed what he¡¯d been thinking for a long time. Xanzu was an unfilial son. ¡°So it was you ... I always thought it was the other Elders, but I never thought it would be my own son.¡±

    ¡°You sick old pervert! It was me! HAHAHA! You should have heard your little Baker¡¯s boy crying out for you. The little faggot actually loved you. It was disgusting! But it doesn¡¯t matter now! Because I¡¯m going to kill you, and then I will be the Head of the Clan.¡± Xanzu was getting rather excited. His grip on the little lever of the Arc Cannon slowly tightened as he talked.

    Jeng was standing up with a victorious smile. ¡°Xanzu my boy, your timing is perfect! Now, kill your father. We can take care of the boy later.¡±

    Xanzu¡¯s smile brightened further. ¡°Yes Master.¡± Then a ¡®click¡¯ resounded out through the hall. Followed by a short silence. After nothing happened everyone who¡¯d just looked towards Hao expecting him to be blown into pieces swivelled their heads back to his betraying son.

    ¡®click click click¡¯ After a few more attempts his hate filled eyes turned to Harvy who was lying under his feet. ¡°How does this thing, huek!

    Before he could finish, the air left his lungs as Elder Anvil appeared beside him and punched him in the chest. In that same instant, Grace and Song had started engaging Jeng on the stage. It became apparent after only a few blindingly fast exchanges that Jeng was far beyond them in strength.

    ¡°Hahaha! You fools, you think I¡¯ve been stuck at the bottom of the palace realm along with you for the last 50 years! I¡¯m so close to my breakthrough now that I¡¯ll be in the Tower Realm in a matter of months! HAHAHA!¡±

    Jeng laughed as he fended off blows empowered with spirit energy flying at him from both directions. After another short exchange, Hao joined them with a powerful wind technique that looked like he¡¯d grown a long opaque blade out from his hand. Song danced backwards avoiding a punch then pulled a mace out of his robe that was clearly an artefact weapon.

    On the other side of the hall, Anvil was fending off punches being thrown by Xanzu. He gasped out as he deflected punches and kicks infused with wind element. ¡°You¡¯ve ... reached the ... Palace Realm?¡±

    Xanzu was smiling broadly and breathing hard as well as he threw out everything he could to pin Anvil down and stop him from assisting the others. He wasn¡¯t sure if Jeng could hold them off in the first place. If he could stop Anvil, at least that could take some pressure off his Master.

    As they fought with each other James had beckoned Emily over to him. ¡°Hey Emily, have you ever wondered what it¡¯s like?¡±

    Emily misconstrued his question, and an odd grin split her face. ¡°Guildmaster James, if you¡¯re asking for a root, you¡¯d better reconsider. If I get too excited, I might accidentally rip an arm off, or well ... something else. I¡¯m sure that would be a pity. After all, I¡¯m expecting ¡®big¡¯ things from you one day.¡±

    James was stunned for a second, then gave a defeated chuckle. ¡°Well, no, but perhaps let¡¯s put that one on the backburner for now. What I meant was, have you ever wondered what it would be like, to shoot an Arc Cannon?¡±

    The moment he said this Emily¡¯s eyes lit up like shooting lasers. ¡°You fuckin with me kid? You gonna let me... ¡®play with your weapon¡¯?¡±

    Although this last bit was said with obvious sexual innuendo, James just chuckled again. ¡°Sure, Sure, I¡¯ll teach you a special trick.¡±

    As he said that he leant down and picked up the discarded Arc Cannon. ¡°Now it¡¯s pretty simple. All you have to do is push this trigger while you¡¯re snuggled up in my embrace.¡±

    Emily gave a pout. ¡°No way, you have to show me how to fire it myself.¡±

    James just smiled brighter. ¡°Oh Emily, you think me a fool? I know the Adventure¡¯s Guild and Yansho Merchant¡¯s Guild have been trying to infiltrate my lab. I also know that you managed to find out that you can¡¯t fire these Cannons without a special little trick. I don¡¯t know how you found out, but your total lack of reaction when Xanzu picked it up gave you both away.¡±

    Emily just pouted further. ¡°Men shouldn¡¯t be too clever James. It makes you less attractive.¡±

    James gave another smile and moved around behind Emily. He pulled her back until she was pressed against him and her bum was hard against his cock. ¡°Well, once you¡¯ve ¡®played with my gun¡¯ I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll overlook that discredit to my name. Now just aim it over here...¡±

    He twisted her around till the cannon was aimed at the group of elders fighting it out on the stage. Now that James¡¯ focus had returned here, he saw the Afro-face and the Elders from the teal Clan engaging Hao and Song leaving Grace to try and fend off Jeng alone.

    Although those Elders were seemingly weaker than the elites of the Gau Clan they were enough to hold them back when they worked together. James just gave a bright smile seeing this. ¡®Better to take care of two problems at once.¡¯ He thought.

    As he lined up Jeng he employed his lightning energy and time seemed to slow down. Despite that, he still had a little trouble tracking Jeng properly. ¡®Fuckin hell, that old fucker is fast as fuck.¡¯

    As he had this thought, he took a breath and pumped as much of his lightning element into his mind as possible. Once everything slowed down more, and as blood started to flow from his nose, he moved his hands down along Emily in a slow seductive manner. Once he was certain he had a shot. His hand touched onto the Cannon, and he whispered ¡®now¡¯ into Emily¡¯s ear.

    ¡®Boom¡¯ The sound wave created from a sound barrier breaking projectile rang through the hall. Even with his increased perception, James couldn¡¯t make out the slug.

    He let time speed up again after he couldn¡¯t handle the strain on his mind anymore and watched ... most, of Jeng disappear out the hole that Harvy had created earlier.

    Emily was pushed back into James as they both applied Earth spirit energy to stabilise themselves properly.

    ¡°Holy crap!¡± Emily breathed out then after dropping the Cannon spun around and kissed James. ¡°If you don¡¯t give me a cannon now. I¡¯ll kill you even if it means everyone can get one.¡±

    James just gave a self-depreciating smile. ¡®Damn, why do I always attract the fucking crazies.¡¯

    The moment Jeng became a cloud of blood and flesh everything quickly changed. The Guilds and two other clans had backed away towards the wall, and the Housue Clan was getting absolutely wrecked by the two elders and Hao.

    Anvil was still getting pushed back by Xanzu but after seeing his master turn to paste he lost a bit of his steam and Anvil had started taking space in their confrontation.

    After another 10 minutes of this Xanzu received a fatal blow to the throat and two of the Housue Clans elders had been killed with the rest incapacitated and tied with odd golden ropes.

    The Gau Clan¡¯s Elders had taken quite a bit of punishment in this short battle, and they all had bruises or were bleeding from cuts.

    James had managed to push Emily back to her seat after promising he¡¯d consider giving her a Cannon and Harvy had somehow managed to stand up despite the wound on his chest.

    He just pulled out some odd liquid Skay had made recently conjured up in the lab and started pouring it on. After a moment, the wounds closed up like magic. Also like magic was all the flowers that started growing out of Harvy like he was a fucking garden. Skay was busy taking notes of this phenomenon while plucking flowers out now and then.

    None of the guilds or clans decided this would be a good time to intervene in the Gau Clans matters. Mostly because James only had an oath with the Clan and could just blow them away whenever he liked, which is why he needed someone else to pull the trigger on the Cannon.

    Once again ... sort of a grey area. He probably could have killed Jeng himself, seeing as he was betraying the clan and it would have been within the parameters of the mutual defence pact, but he wasn¡¯t about to take that big of a risk. Just holding the finger scanner on the Arc Cannon and aiming it for Emily was quite a risk for him.

    After a moment of letting everything settle down, and before anyone could make excuses to leave, Hao called the meeting to order. ¡°I apologise to everyone who has had to witness this violent scene. Now that things have been settled down somewhat, we must focus back to the task at hand. The city is in danger, and we need to decide what to do.¡±

    After the display from the cannon to freshen everyone¡¯s memory and James¡¯ threat that he¡¯d leave the city everyone decided to take it a little more seriously. Although the Arc Cannon was a good reason, everyone had to accept that the Dark Brotherhood was a boon for this city.

    Since their rise, the Brotherhood had done a number of things that increased the city¡¯s prosperity. Namely, the School, although they were paying a pound of flesh, the school would undoubtedly be a huge loss to the city if they left. On top of that, almost everyone in the city was now a cultivator in some form. Even if they were only the first step into the barrier realm.

    If the Brotherhood left this wouldn¡¯t change, but later on it would mean everyone would have to be raised with conventional meditation techniques again. Which no one wanted to share with commoners. This would then limit the number of strong backs to do the city¡¯s labour, and reduce the strength of the workforce again.

    The last thing was, the guild was completely impartial when it came to jobs. They didn¡¯t care who the job was from or what it wanted them to do. They¡¯d even done jobs that damaged the Builder¡¯s Guild, the Master of which, James was on friendly terms with.

    The only job they couldn¡¯t take was one against the Gau Clan, but everyone accepted that because their oath was public knowledge.

    Now that everyone had started taking this seriously, they began the discussion. The most common opinion was that they would need to start an evacuation. If there were truly that many beasts in the dark forest and they were about to start moving towards the city, then they either needed to move everyone together close enough that the monolith could protect them or evacuate to Katsu.

    The problem with that lay in the fact Katsu was to the south and they would be passing by the horde which would be coming from the Mountain in the south-east. This meant it would be a safer bet to try and hide within the monoliths range.

    Although everyone hoped the monolith was okay. The fact that spirit beasts were hoarding together at all suggested it wasn¡¯t.

    They couldn¡¯t pin their hopes on the monolith preventing an incursion. They didn¡¯t even know if it could still protect them at all. The ruins still glowed, but it was so dim now that even the moonlight made it difficult to see.

    After James let everyone discuss for a while, he gave Skay a nudge. Skay then flicked up his pad and hit some buttons. After a moment, the hall fell silent as a projection from QC67 was projected onto a wall in the hall.

 Chapter 26: Battle of the Beasts

    In the video projected on the wall, was the view of Goliath screaming ¡°Incoming!¡± at the top of his lungs and Fatty firing an Arc Cannon as 30 huge black rhinos charged towards them through a field. One by one they fell, but some of them still reached the pair. As the few who had escaped Goliath and Fatty¡¯s cannon fire hurdled out of the grain field, Fatty roared loudly and launched forward to meet one.

    It was like smashing into an immovable object as the massive horn collided with Fatty¡¯s huge gut, and the rhino was knocked back. Fatty then dove forwards like a mad man taking a huge bite out of the rhino¡¯s neck. James just shook his head and let out a sigh. ¡®Perhaps that hungry bastard wasn¡¯t the best choice. He¡¯s losing the Guild¡¯s face, running around trying to eat living spirit beasts.¡¯

    Meanwhile, Goliath¡¯s eyes had turned a glowing blood red as he smashed his hands down onto the head of a rhino while it roared out in pain on the ground. While they were distracted, two more black rhinos charged out from the grain field and closed in to smash the duo. Before they got the chance, two booms rang out over the fields and two Guild Members in black robes flew past on Air Boards firing off a shot each from Arc Cannons.

    After a few moments when the battlefield seemed to still, James spoke into the Black-Pad. ¡°Oi, Goliath!¡±

    Goliath got up from his rage induced smashing of the rhino¡¯s head and looked around. The moment he saw the drone floating nearby he jumped to his feet. After flicking the blood and gore from his hands, he began to approach with a strict solemn face.

    ¡°James, it¡¯s worse than we thought. I¡¯ve already lost one of our teams. The Cannons can¡¯t hold fire anymore. We¡¯ve only got a handful left. I¡¯m going to have to pull everyone back for today.¡±

    James cupped his chin. ¡°What¡¯s the situation, how many have you managed to kite out, and what¡¯s the word on the main horde?¡±

    Goliath wiped some blood and sweat from his brow as he looked off at the sound of Arc Cannons firing in the distance. ¡°We¡¯ve pulled at least 200 out. We¡¯ve tried to keep the Cannons as a last resort, but they only move in herds of at least 20. We¡¯ve done enough damage that the main horde has started moving. If we can keep this up, there may only be a few hundred left by the time they reach the city. I¡¯m just worried there won¡¯t be any of ¡®us¡¯ left by then.¡±

    James then nodded gravely and sighed. ¡°Pull them back Goliath. Don¡¯t kite the horde anymore and get everyone back to the guild. You¡¯ve done well mate.¡±

    After he had said as much, he nudged Skay again and the image changed to the lab. Everyone¡¯s eyes widened somewhat when they saw robotic arms whirling about in the background building an Arc Cannon and Lackey 1 bandaging up a new laceration on his remaining arm with his teeth.

    James pinched his eyebrows as he watched the most competent and simultaneously incompetent lab assistant they had. ¡°Lackey 1.¡±

    After he¡¯d spoken, Lackey 1 looked up from his arm and peered around. Then after he saw James¡¯s face on the computer screen, he jumped from shock. ¡°Guildmaster, I swear I¡¯ll clean the blood up. It¡¯s just that the big cutting part on the making things part moved and accidentally sliced my arm.¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow twitched slightly when he heard that. ¡®Can this guy not tell the big cutting part is going to cut him if he goes near it?¡¯

    After a moment of considering if he should just cut his losses with 1, he finally asked some questions. ¡°1, how many Cannons came out of the factory today?¡±

    1 scratched his head in thought for a moment. ¡°Well, it was about 14. That one over there is the last one we have materials for. I¡¯m afraid were out of lightning ... Err, of the LS3 materials Guildmaster.¡±

    James gave a nod of the head. ¡°Fine, go tell Norman to get some... ¡®flower power¡¯ ready, you¡¯ve got wounded coming in soon. Oh, and 1, how much longer on the Berta¡¯s.¡±

    1 just looked confused for a moment then looked back into the factory at something. ¡°Well, shouldn¡¯t be more than 12 hours. You made a lot more parts for these ones Guildmaster.¡±

    James just gave another nod. ¡°That¡¯s fine. Keep everything running till we get back.¡±

    The connection closed and then Skay switched it over to a screen from a drone that had a bird¡¯s eye view of the horde moving out of the forest. It looked like it was still close to a thousand beasts, despite Goliaths hard work today.

    Everyone sat silently at the table trying to process this. For starters, they could project distant places and have face to face conversations with people tens of kilometres away.

    Then there were the strange powers that the two guild members had been using when battling the rhinos.

    Finally that short glimpse of the lab. That was the most confusing, it looked like artefacts that were making artefacts. How the hell did that work?

    James turned back to the assembly. ¡°Well, that¡¯s the situation. We sent out some people at noon to harass the horde before it grew too big to contain. Looks like they¡¯ve had a rough time of it but made a sizeable dent, which will make our job easier. We probably won¡¯t be seeing too many beasts near the city until tomorrow noon time, but as you could see ... There¡¯s a lot.¡±

    Once he finished, Lucas sat up a little straighter. ¡°What was that artefact that was making an Arc Cannon?¡±

    James just gave a wry smile. ¡°Oh I¡¯m sure you¡¯d love to know, but for now, that will remain a secret. Perhaps one day, you will be invited to the lab for a look around. Right now, I have other problems to worry about.¡±

    Lucas looked like he suddenly became tired again then hummed and hawed for a moment. ¡°I will call for some assistance and have the horde eradicated. They probably won¡¯t get here until tomorrow though.¡±

    James just smiled. ¡°Many thanks for that. However, if you move out to eliminate the horde, it creates dependency. If our city can¡¯t defend itself, how do you expect it to survive another attack? Some duties can¡¯t be shirked. Tell you what. If you send some troops to back us up, just in case we can¡¯t hold the tide, then I¡¯m sure in a few months when we¡¯re both free, you can come for a look at the lab.¡±

    Everyone sitting at the table thought on that for a moment. Finally, the new girl heading the Tailor¡¯s Guild chimed in. ¡°I agree, we can¡¯t afford to rely on someone that we may not be able to count on every time. You¡¯re helping us out now, but what about next time? Now that the beasts are moving, that shows they know the monolith is damaged. If we can¡¯t defend ourselves, we may as well pack up our shit and leave now.¡±

    Toller gave a firm nod. ¡°I agree as well. It would be good to have some backup in the city to protect the people, but this city needs to stand by itself, or it will eventually fall. How we react to this crisis now will determine how we respond in the future.¡±

    Finally Song, who was having a rather shit week and was upset the beasts had ruined his birthday plans made himself heard. ¡°How do you suggest we react? We¡¯ve never needed to wall our city, which means we¡¯re open to attack from the hordes. If we can¡¯t defend on a wall, that many beasts will rip us to shreds.¡±

    James gave a nod of the head. ¡°I agree. For now, it¡¯s almost impossible to defend against a horde. That¡¯s why, in my opinion, we should attack it instead.¡±

    The Explorers guild that had mostly remained silent till now shot to their feet. ¡°What?! You want us to go out there and attack that horde like suicidal idiots? A throng that size will tear us to pieces. Even if every Palace Realm in the city went out we¡¯d be massacred!¡±

    James smile became a little darker. ¡°I agree, blindly rushing at them will only get us killed. That¡¯s why we¡¯re going to use hit and run tactics instead. We¡¯ll have the Builder¡¯s Guild laying traps in the direct path of the horde. I want the Explorer¡¯s Guild up in the air. I¡¯ll have my boys give you a lift, we need terrain maps. I want to know every hill, ditch, crevice and creek within 3 kilometres of their direct line of travel.

    ¡°The three clans are about to have an intake. We have so many able-bodied barrier realms running around this city right now it¡¯s not funny. We are going to have to inform the city eventually, after all, a whisper travels faster than the horse. If we can keep the citizens controlled and rile them up to join the cause, then we can have them out there taking some punishment and dealing it out.

    ¡°Tailor¡¯s, you may not be strong in battle, but I¡¯ve heard you have some array that you call clothe enchantment? You use it to make cloth so strong it can resist a sword strike, right? Well, we¡¯re going to need armour, so that¡¯s on you. We¡¯ve also recently acquired a lot of scales from tests on the ¡®dragon scales¡¯ liquid. You can probably get about 20 decent armours out of it. I want everyone leading units on the front lines to be wearing it.

    ¡°Tiny and Kelsy, your sect¡¯s will be on the front lines this time. For every beast your disciples kill, is a freebie at the school. Hao, Song, I know you don¡¯t like the idea, but you¡¯re going to have to kick your Hall of Forging up a gear to equip the city¡¯s troops. If you like, we can probably pump out some of your artefacts as well if you give us the designs, but then, that¡¯s up to you.

    ¡°The Imperial Branch ... well, I guess you guys just sit back and enjoy yourselves. From what I understand you¡¯re useless at everything and don¡¯t even really deserve to be living in the city.

    ¡°Merchant¡¯s guild, we need every resource in the city. Tools, fabrics, metals ... everything. You¡¯re in charge of supplying these at a reasonable price to each guild. If you fucking screw anyone, then so help me god, the Kantsu branch will be sending a new Guildmaster to Gau City.

    ¡°Farmers guild, you¡¯re going to have an important job. You have the most manpower in the city, I want you to try and divide up some extra hands to whoever needs it. You may not specialise in anything we can use in war, but you do specialise in hard work. Which is something everyone needs a little bit more of right now.

    ¡°Finally the other three clans. You¡¯re about to break the bank. We¡¯re going to create a joint armed forces. You¡¯re going to be paying out the ass for every member of this army to be properly equipped, and then you¡¯re going to lead it. Before you have any strange thoughts, I have a little gift for each of you.¡±

    Saying all the way up to this point, he tossed out 13 little necklaces with a pendant the size of a thumbnail and a few millimetres thick. ¡°This is a timed explosive. In case you¡¯re not sure what that means allow me to demonstrate.¡±

    James then placed a spare necklace around a support column in the main hall. After the clasp was fixed, the pendant gave a little glow. James then tied some string to the end and walked a good 10 metres away before giving a tug.

    ¡®BOOM!¡¯

    The support column was blown to dust and a wave of heated air swept over the room.

    James then sat back down calmly. ¡°That thing will blow your head off in 48 hours unless I, or the old madman, disarms it.¡± Saying that he pointed at Skay who was recording the results of the explosion. ¡°Much stronger than the original stuff I put in it.¡± He mumbled to himself.

    The 13 people from the clans turned somewhat pale after that little deminstration. ¡°We can¡¯t trust you!¡±

    ¡°This is a slap in the face of our clan!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right, we haven¡¯t even discussed your plans yet! You think everyone is just going to fall in line and agree to this nonsense.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re basically trying to take over control of the city! We won¡¯t stand for it!¡±

    As they all blustered and refuted, everyone else shared a look. Basically, James did run this city now. If they wanted to live in this city, they needed James¡¯ approval.

    None of them had powerful backers, with only a few acceptations, and those that did have backers, well ... a chance to gain some favour with the guy building weapons that could disintegrate palace realm cultivators or the pathetic bloke they stranded in this shity little city to run a branch clan or guild. Who are they going to fawn over in the end?

    With a similar thought running through their heads, everyone basically agreed to the proposed plan so far and unanimously said nothing to defend the three clans that were trying to get out of having to have any involvement that might lose them some power in the city.

    Once they realised the predicament they were in and that no one was about to step out and assist them they tried to bargain.

    Afro-face, who still had fresh blood dripping from his messy beard jumped out to offer support in a different way. ¡°Our clan has powerful master alchemists. We can assist the war effort by donating assistive remedies. We even have strong spirit pills that replenish spirit energy. We can help the war effort in other ways.¡±

    James cocked his head to the side. ¡°Well, I¡¯m sure that¡¯s all well and good, but just how many of these things can you make? Enough for an entire army? And just how good are they? As good as our 616? Or perhaps better than our clotting paste?¡±

    ¡°Ahh ... well, it probably wouldn¡¯t be as powerful as your 616, I¡¯m afraid we just don¡¯t have the spirit ingredients. But we could definitely finish at least 500 pills that are half as good. We could also complete something close to the same standard as your paste. Maybe 200 of that.¡±

    James gave a sagely nod with chin cupped in hand. ¡°Oh I see, you don¡¯t have enough ingredients? Did you perhaps use them all recently trying to flood the market with your crappy products to reduce the price of our products? Only a few weeks ago, we all sat here and everyone was warned that the monolith was damaged and the city was in danger.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t think it strange that all our sales dropped in quantity suddenly? We¡¯ve been stockpiling 616 to the brink of excess. We¡¯ve got so much of the stuff, I could fill a lake with it and go fucking swimming! You think your pissant fuckin pills can match up to that? You think that would be more useful than going out there and fuckin killing the god damn spirit beasts? Is your head made entirely of fucking hair!? Harvy, shoot this man!¡±

    Harvy raised up the Arc Cannon and his death aura cascaded off him like a thick black mist. Afro-face started to panic the moment he heard the order for his death. ¡°Wait! Wait! I¡¯ll do it, I¡¯ll wear the necklace. We¡¯ll lead the armies.¡±

    James raised his hand to halt Harvy and smiled. ¡°Good to hear it. I don¡¯t particularly like these methods, but they are efficient. To give you all some ease of heart, I swear to the heavens that should the city survive this disaster, I will ask my subordinates to remove the necklaces.¡±

    Once the heavenly laws descended, and he finished handing out orders he stood up. ¡°Toller, come meet me at the guild once your crews are ready, we¡¯ve got a lot of work to do. Everyone is to get started. If we don¡¯t have at least ten thousand people ready to march out that gate at dawn, then this city is going to fall.¡±

    He then spun on his heel and walked out. As they moved back towards the Guildhall, Skay couldn¡¯t help but let out a sigh. ¡°I¡¯m fucking glad this is your job and not mine haha. If that were me, I¡¯d have killed them all and fucking left the city, even if it meant I¡¯d be losing half our stuff here.¡±

    James just gave a bitter smile. ¡°Old madman. Let¡¯s just hope this works. That may be the first time in my life I¡¯ve been so assertive. If things were different, and if I¡¯d never been stupid enough to pick up this burden you dropped on me, perhaps I would have done the same thing you would have.

    ¡°The only reason I¡¯m not doing it now is that I¡¯ve come to learn, although it¡¯s slightly troublesome, using other people to get your shit done is much easier than trying to get it done yourself. Also, it took me a lot of effort to get this far, I¡¯m not about to throw away everything we built because some fuckin animals crawled out of the forest.¡±

    -South end of the City at dawn-

    You would be surprised just how much shit cultivators with spirit energy can get done in about 18 hours. Standing at the south end of the city were 23,000 armed and equipped ... peasants. Leading every thousand men was a member of the war council.

    Each thousand-man unit was filled with cultivators from every faction. No unit had only one faction¡¯s cultivators filling it. This was to prevent anyone from doing naughty things. The only exception to this was James¡¯ group that numbered just over a hundred.

    Within it was 16 people on Air Boards each holding an Arc Cannon. On the ground, every member was covered in strange black armour and carrying black swords or lances or some other weapon ... that was black.

    Standing at the front of this group was James and his core members, who were dressed in exactly the same garb as everyone else with the only exception being a large, coloured seal on their armour. Each member of the core group had a different colour and every 10 or so people from the guild shared that colour on a small shield on their chest. The only missing members of the guild were Fatty, Skay and Harvy.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    James was staring off into the distance as if waiting for something.

    Seeing this action, Hao couldn¡¯t help asking. ¡°James, if we don¡¯t march out soon then the beasts are only going to approach us faster. We need to start moving, don¡¯t we?¡±

    James just grinned then before he had the chance to comment, a strange humming sound spread out over the fields. Everyone was a little panicked when they saw 3 huge light blue boxes descending from over the city. James gave a broad grin.

    ¡°Fuck they¡¯re finally here.¡± After that, he tapped an ear piece. ¡°¡®Bout fuckin time. Get your fat ass down here!¡±

    Fatty¡¯s voice came back through the little earpiece in James¡¯ ear. ¡°Hey hey hey! I¡¯m doing the best I can okay. Flying this thing is like driving a fucking dump truck.¡±

    As James and Fatty started swapping some choice words, the three Big Berta¡¯s settled onto the grain field crushing a good deal of grain underneath. James then spun around to the forces assembled behind him. ¡°I¡¯m not sure what you¡¯ve been told, but I¡¯m sure you at least know where you¡¯re about to go. For now, each unit will be resting here until further notice. Units 1 to 3, load up. You¡¯re going in first.¡±

    As he yelled that out, using spirit energy to amplify his voice, the loading ramps from the back of the three Berta¡¯s dropped down. Everyone was slightly more panicked now. Flight? They were flying into battle? And with only three units? What about the rest?

    As these thoughts flashed through their minds, James gave his guild members a look. They all nodded and started herding the units into the flying death traps.

    After a slow 15 minutes, the Berta¡¯s took flight again and started moving out towards the horde. The best part about hordes was they moved slowly. They liked to eat everyone and thing on their way to somewhere. This herd was still about six hours out which meant they had to be moving close to one kilometre and hour. Which was really slow.

    James was aware that once they started to get it riled up ... well, they would probably get to the city within an hour at most. As their three troop ships flew overhead, the Brotherhood guild members briefed everyone on their jobs. Each unit would set up behind the horde then send out small units to start luring some back.

    Everyone thought these guys were out of their minds, but after they touched down they found themselves set up with odd bunker hills and trenches everywhere. After a few minutes of familiarisation, the troops started sending out kiting teams.

    At first, they were a little timid and only pulled back as few as they could, which was usually only about 15 or 20. After a unit found that they could decimate that many easily, they started getting a little bolder.

    As those rear groups started kiting beasts from the back of the horde, James had the next 6 units arranged along the path of the beasts in different areas. Their job was simple. To distract and slow the horde.

    Once the horde approached their position, they were to engage the edge of it and make a fighting retreat into the next group that would be waiting. By the time all three groups had engaged and withdrawn twice, then the horde would probably already be near the city.

    James then dropped off more troops at the rear, so there were 6,000 men. They continued to slowly move forwards to different outpost and traps set up by the Builder¡¯s Guild and kite beasts back.

    By the time this had gone on for nearly an hour, the beast horde was so confused it had started splitting apart. Being the simple animals that they were, some started moving backwards, and some started moving towards the sides while others kept moving forwards. Once this happened, the horde quickly started running into traps. Huge ditches filled with quicksand and ledges that would suddenly collapse rocks onto them.

    By the time the first beast arrived within sight of the city, they had been whittled down to only a few hundred. The problem was that every unit in the field had also taken quite a bit of damage, with casualties in the thousands.

    Once these units had reached a set number of casualties, James airlifted them back to the city border to rest while replacing them with a fresh unit. This meant that along with the units still out in the field surrounding the horde they had 12,000 men left in total.

    They started to become a little disorderly but for the most part were kept in rank by the more experienced cultivators. As the beasts continued to advance, the Big Berta¡¯s flew back overhead, and massive huge boulders were rolled out the back.

    By the time what was left of the horde had reached the troops at the city¡¯s edge, they¡¯d been reduced down to about 200 in total. James gave the order and the units from every direction advanced on what remained of the horde. Unfortunately, he hadn¡¯t thought up any more tricks, and this was the last gambit. If even one of the beasts broke through the defence line here, then thousands would die in the city.

    For a city that only had a bit over a hundred thousand residents, even finding 10,000 people willing to march out and protect it from spirit beasts would be difficult. The fact they had double that could only be attested to the Brotherhoods cheap as fuck meditation techniques giving some power and confidence to the commoners.

    As the defence forces moved in from every direction, James sat inside a Big Berta looking down. He then turned and looked at Goliath standing behind him readying the troops. ¡°You ready big guy?¡±

    Goliath turned back and gave a nod. ¡°We¡¯re ready. Are you sure this is wise James?¡±

    James gave a sick grin and chuckled. ¡°Wise? Of course it¡¯s not wise, but if I can¡¯t train in an actual life or death situation, what¡¯s the point in cultivating. The fastest way to gain an understanding of something is to make use of it. I¡¯ve never actually had to fight another battle since Calso. It¡¯s time to see how far I¡¯ve come.¡±

    Having said as much, he suddenly threw himself out of the back of Big Berta. His body whistled through the air, and he rapidly approached the ground. About 10 metres before he became a paste, he cycled his wind energy and his speed suddenly dropped. By the time he touched down, he was no faster than if he had just jumped up and down on the spot.

    The only problem with his perfect landing ... was that it was right in the middle of the beast horde. The moment he touched down he shot towards some kind of chimaera with a bird¡¯s head and lizard¡¯s body. Before it could cry out its alarm, James¡¯ hand stabbed into its body and it suddenly began to shake and twitch.

    After a moment of this James pulled his bloodied hand out. Then turned to see about 10 different beasts moving towards him. As they advanced on James with bloodied maws and savage growling, Goliath and a few more members dropped onto them from the sky like missiles.

    All of the Brotherhood members were covered in dragon scales, and the moment they climbed out of the gory mess they¡¯d just made, they started swinging their black weapons around killing beasts left, right and centre.

    Their black armour and weaponry began to glow with strange lights and then after a few swings someone¡¯s weapon spit out a massive wave of fire roasting three beasts in a row. Then one that collected a swing from some two-headed panther had his armour release a whirlwind that generated on his body for an instant and blew the monster back.

    That¡¯s right. They were spirit artefacts imbued with array patterns. Unfortunately, the generator array wasn¡¯t powerful enough at these sizes to feed enough energy into these weapons and armour. It also seemed to limit the level of control a person could exert over their spirit energy release.

    This meant they had to settle for array designs that could boost your own spirit energy and multiply your control level. These weapons were the best weapons for barrier realms because, although they weren¡¯t as powerful as higher class weapon artefacts, they were cheap and they assisted and boosted spirit energy power and control.

    It made it possible for people who¡¯d never learnt or developed proper martial techniques to manifest spirit energy just by swinging it around and pumping their energy into it.

    As the Guild members in the centre of the horde battled outwards, the remaining 12,000 troops on the outside charged inwards. Cultivators were throwing martial techniques or just ganging up together to club a beast to death. The battlefield became chaotic as people died in the hundreds and the beast horde slowly diminished.

    As James fought his way out from the mass of creatures, the 16 Air Boards flew past overhead picking off any creatures that seemed a little stronger than the rest. At one point, James was about to be mauled to death by a Lionfish when Exsue flew overhead laughing madly firing off lightning bolts from her palms like throwing snowballs in winter.

    If she looked about 60 years older and had a pointy hat, she¡¯d be the striking resemblance of a witch. Particularly with the mad cackling.

    Goliath brought up the rear, smashing a Minotaur to death with its own horn and roaring into the sky. Fatty appeared to just be waddling along as everything under the sun bounced off his fat gut. The only time he looked even slightly panicked was when they had sharp claws or tried to bite his head off. Usually that situation quickly reversed and the one being eaten would swap. Fatty seemed to have eaten more beasts than he¡¯d killed.

    Overhead the Big Berta Skay was operating would occasionally swoop low and crush a few Beasts. The problem was that every time it was down for too long, the steel like talons of the beasts would start ripping away at the bottom of the ship. Amusingly, that just made it all the more dangerous, as the sharp edges helped to slice through beasts on the next pass over.

    After half an hour of battle the fields grew calm just as quickly as they¡¯d become chaotic. Apart from injured soldiers sprawled on the ground or last dying wishes being uttered, everyone was looking around solemnly at their fallen comrades.

    James released a long breath and collapsed to his knees. If you think it sounded easy to wade through what was left of the beast horde, you would be incredibly mistaken. His entire body was dyed with fresh blood. Some of it his own, as it dribbled out of fresh wounds. His breaths came in sharp bursts and his eyes stung from sweat and exertion.

    The entire field was pervaded by a bloody mist, and the suns seemed dimmer than usual. Overhead the previously clear blue sky had at some point turned dark with clouds.

    James forced himself up to his feet and started organising treatment and sending people back to the city.

    Of the 23,000 people that stood in the fields of golden grain at dawn. 9,000 marched back into the city. Of the 36 leaders that had marched out to battle, only 21 returned.

    The Gau Clan lost Anvil during one of the first waves. He¡¯d kept at the back of the retreat to fight for a chance for the rest of the unit but lost his life instead.

    The other three clans had lost even more elders. Some of them had even tried to order retreats or run from the field of battle. Whenever this happened, a nearby Brotherhood member would whisper something while holding their ear and that person would suddenly have their head explode. Each clan lost nearly three Elders, and one lost its Clan Head.

    Although this often created chaos for the troops, someone else would be ¡®encouraged¡¯ to take up the mantle of command by a Brotherhood member. After that, they could generally settle down the troops and keep fighting for a while till they got swapped out.

    Toller and his wife were killed as they fought to secure the escape of some of their younger guild members. Toller was shredded to pieces by a manticore and his wife threw herself head first into the horde from her grief killing dozens of beasts before succumbing to injuries.

    The leader of the Explorer¡¯s Guild and his Vice Guildmaster were swarmed by some type of flightless little bird. Except it had massive talons, and its beak could bite through damn near anything. To make it worse, the creatures always travelled in packs of 30 or 40 and were as fast as darts.

    The last leader to die was the vice sect head of the Sword Masters who sacrificed himself diving in front of a poisonous barb shot from a giant echidna. It¡¯s wasn¡¯t even for his own Sect Head, but rather for the vice head of the Shield Maidens.

    Song had lost an arm in the battle, and Hao¡¯s body now carried a permanent scar from his neck to his waist. The Afro-face Head of the Housue Clan lost both of his legs because he was almost eaten by a giant snake while trying to run away, leaving his companions for dead.

    When James heard about this, he just chuckled sinisterly and chose not to blow the man¡¯s head off. He could live with his sins forever this way.

    All in all, the battle had cost a lot of people a lot of things. After everyone had returned to the city, James had Jessy assemble any able-bodied men and women to start loading beast corpses into the Berta¡¯s and burying the dead. For a full day, men and women searched the field for the dead. Or what was left of them at least.

    As the Sun¡¯s fell onto the horizon, the city felt the grief of loss and death, but at the same time felt some hope and gratitude for having survived.

    -Guild Hall-

    The next day, James awoke from meditation to a raucous coming from outside in the plaza. When he opened the window, he witnessed something that nearly made his eyes roll out of his head. People from all over the city were marching into the plaza and placing down flowers or letters to the loved ones they had lost. Then they were all standing nearby the Guildhall like they were waiting for something.

    He then came to the realisation that even people who didn¡¯t live in this part of the city had come here to mourn. ¡°Why the fuck are all these people crying outside my fucking guild hall?¡±

    James was a little chuffed. After he closed the window to his office, he marched downstairs to find out what the fuck was going on.

    When he got to the front door, he found Jessy having a quiet discussion with some gentlemen. Once she had finished talking, they gave a polite bow and walked back outside. James marched up to Jessy looking rather irked. ¡°Jessy, why the fuck are all those people out there crying and sobbing? It¡¯s fucking bringing my mood down. I just fuckin saved this city. Last thing I need is to fuckin put up with that shit.¡±

    Jessy turned to James and quirked her eyebrow. ¡°Those people are the survivors of your little beast hunt yesterday. To make it worse, every single one of them wants to partition the guild for training. From what I understand, someone has been encouraging them to do this because apparently, you¡¯re now in charge of city security.¡±

    James looked like he¡¯d just bitten into a lemon. ¡°Wut? City security? Since fuckin when? That¡¯s the fuckin Clan¡¯s job!¡±

    James marched out of the Guildhall and walked off in a huff towards the Gau Clans Mansion. When he arrived, he saw injured disciples slowly packing away furniture and cleaning things up. James only grew more puzzled. As he stormed into the main hall, he saw the heavily bandaged and sorry looking Elder Song and Grace talking with the equally damaged looking Hao.

    ¡°Just what the fuck is going on?!¡± He raged.

    Hao looked up with a bitter wry smile. Song too had a bitter smile on his face. Grace looked somewhat regretful about something but apart from that made no other emotions clear.

    Hao gave out a long sigh then began to speak. ¡°Little Junior James. The City is now in a time of crisis and needs someone to protect it properly. It¡¯s become painfully clear to me that our clan simply isn¡¯t strong enough to hold the city together anymore. As such. We¡¯ve renounced our claim to the city and its land. By right, everything here is now under your jurisdiction. Our clan will vacate the Town Lord¡¯s Mansion for the first time in 800 hundred years. As the strongest faction in the city, you will then be taking up that burden.¡±

    ¡°Like fuckin hell I will! I can¡¯t even run my own fuckin guild, and now you expect me to fuckin run your city?! Get fucked you old freak! For starters, we¡¯re still the weakest fucking guild in the whole city! To add to that, I don¡¯t plan on staying here. Eventually, I¡¯m going to fuckin leave this place! You can¡¯t just fuckin pack it in whenever shit gets tough and expect some other poor bastard to do your job for you!¡±

    Song¡¯s smile just grew more bitter. ¡°Young James, don¡¯t think wrongly of us, but we can¡¯t unify the city like we once could. Our Clan is old, true. But we are now far weaker than ever before. Even before you came, our Clan was the weakest it has been since its founding days. If this city is going to survive, it needs someone that has the power and backbone to take control of it.

    ¡°Besides, you¡¯re doing revolutionary work. The citizens love you because you give out cheap cultivation techniques and for anyone with the gold you also provide extensive education that our world has never even fathomed of. On top of that, you were the key to our victory over the beast horde. Whether you like it or not, everyone knows this city would have fallen if you hadn¡¯t pulled everyone together. If it¡¯s you, I¡¯m sure you can achieve great things.¡±

    ¡°Fuck your great things old man! I want no part of this shit. If you hand this city over to me, I¡¯ll burn the fucking thing to the ground and spit on its ashes! How do you like them apples?!¡±

    Song just gave a rueful smile then helped Hao up. The three Gau Clan leaders clapped James on the shoulder as they walked out and parted with a ¡°good luck¡±.

    James was absolutely furious. The whole idea of leaving the clan was to eventually be able to leave this city. He refused to fucking stay here and be tied down by some fucking rock. ¡°I¡¯m going to fucking slaughter everyone you old fucks! I¡¯ll fucking tie the children to horses and watch them get dragged away into the dark forest! GOD DAMNIT! YOU SLY MOTHERFUCKERS! I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD!!!¡±

    As he blew his top and screamed and yelled to the heavens in the now empty Main Hall, the rest of the Gau Clan members vacated the premises and returned to a subsidiary mansion, that in all honesty, was actually better than this one. The price they had to pay by handing over the city wasn¡¯t as much as you¡¯d think it was. With the monolith now damaged, maintaining the grain fields will become incredibly taxing and arduous.

    The loss of the Endless Forest was no great deal because in the last few years they¡¯d hardly pulled much out of it. Unless some palace realm cultivators entered to tackle the beasts, there wasn¡¯t much else they¡¯d been able to find. Apparently, Anvil hadn¡¯t told them about the founder¡¯s cave his disciples had found before his death.

    After James had released all his frustrations by yelling at everything and screaming at everyone, he returned to the Guild. When he got back, even more people were mulling around outside the Hall. Seeing the mood James was in and the almost visible dissatisfaction rolling off his body like Harvy¡¯s death aura, everybody wisely chose not to try and speak with him just yet.

    The moment James walked into the Hall, he called a meeting. The Core members of the Brotherhood assembled in the Guildmasters office. They all sat down quietly, seeing the visibly pissed off James, and waited a moment for him to speak. ¡°We now own the city.¡± He finally managed to mumble.

    Everyone had some shock and surprise in their eyes. Skay was the first to react. ¡°Haha! That¡¯s great. With an entire city as our base of operation, that will make everything easier.¡±

    James¡¯ bloodshot eyes gave Skay a furious look. ¡°What the fuck are you talking about you old fuck?! This means we have to fucking protect this place now. People are a resource, and there¡¯s no fuckin point in having a city if everybody gets eaten by fuckin spirit beasts! On top of that, being the controller of a city comes with all those other perks, like fuckin having to worry about feeding the bastards and making sure the guilds play nicely. Then there¡¯s taxes, infrastructure, development, FUCK! THERE¡¯S FUCKING EVERYTHING!!¡±

    Skay just smiled broadly. ¡°So?¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow started twitching, and he was about ready to get up and strangle this old bastard to death. Skay¡¯s grin grew sinister. ¡°You said it yourself boy. People are a resource. You now have an entire city of them, why not put some to work? All you have to do is point them in the direction you want to go, and they row the oars. It¡¯s how any good city gets built.¡±

    Jessy then interrupted. ¡°It¡¯s also how corruption starts. The last thing we want is to start managing this city and having individuals doing their own thing on the side.¡±

    Goliath gave a nod. ¡°This is true. It also limits us. If we grow too invested in the city, then we lose the privilege of being cultivators. You can¡¯t become stronger sitting in the same place. True cultivators travel and seek advancement.¡±

    Exsue just moved over to James then sat down in his lap. ¡°Why don¡¯t you just do it for now JayJay? I know you better than anyone. You¡¯ll never get attached. But if you can put in a little work now, having a city at your disposal would benefit you greatly in the short term future. Eventually, you¡¯ll need to expand your guild. Having an entire city behind your guild would be a powerful backer. When you¡¯re stronger, you won¡¯t need it. But for now, having a safe place to cultivate would be the best, and it would give you more control over certain things. Say for example ... you can enter the Endless Forest whenever you want now.¡±

    James suddenly sat up straight and grabbed Exsue¡¯s face. ¡°The Endless Forest. Exsue don¡¯t take this the wrong way.¡± James then gave her a wet kiss, and she moaned into him as she tried to squeeze further into his embrace.

    After that, he suddenly stood up, and Exsue fell onto the ground rubbing her now sore ass.

    ¡°Fine! Everyone start preparing. You¡¯re now my city council. Fatty, you¡¯re in charge of feeding everyone and pulling in whatever grain is still in the fields. Skay I want you to get in contact with the Builder¡¯s Guild. You¡¯ve got four weeks, new infrastructure, roads, electricity and most importantly a wall, oh, and a new lab right next to the forest. This one is getting a little cramped. Jessy, you¡¯re now in full control of the guild hall and the city budget.

    ¡°You have 2 weeks to groom a new guild overseer. Goliath, you¡¯re now my First General. You¡¯re in charge of city security and armed forces. You can start out there. For the next month, we have one job. I want the security in this city to be so god damn tight that if a dog farts we¡¯ll have men their observing the smell and I want the entire town torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. I don¡¯t care how you get it done.¡±

    After he¡¯d finished, James marched out.

    Everybody was a little stunned at this sudden strange turn of events. Before he got far, he suddenly returned. ¡°I also want everyone ready to breakthrough at the end of the month. If you¡¯re not working on the city, you¡¯re cultivating. Skay ... I know you¡¯ll probably go mad if you can¡¯t go to your lab for an entire month, but I¡¯m not making exceptions. If we¡¯re going to be in control of a city. We need the power to keep it.¡±

    He then spun and disappeared again.

 Chapter 27: The City of the future

    For the next month anyone that could work, worked. The entire city was ripped up from the ground like an old tree and rebuilt. A wall 20 metres high was slowly raised around the city. Luckily the city had a massive reserve of grain, so anyone that worked was fed from the stocks.

    The Imperial Branch wasn¡¯t too happy with that, seeing as normally all those reserves were sold to the capital city and if they didn¡¯t get a certain quota, the Imperial Clan would jump up and down and probably have them executed.

    There was almost nothing that escaped James¡¯ renovating claws. Apart from a few structures like everything in the city was ripped up.

    What was once a small city that was spread out became a smaller city that reached into the sky. High-rises were constructed, and roads were repaved.

    The entire city filled a third of its original area. You might think it a little unbelievable for so much to get done in such a short period of time, but then you¡¯d be underestimating just how much of an advantage having everyone in the city cultivating spirit energy was.

    They could work day and night, and being paid in food was better than going out into the grain fields that had recently become the hunting grounds of spirit beasts.

    Resources were recycled from old structures, and wood and stone were harvested from the Endless Forest. A 3 km radius around the Gateway in the Endless Forest was almost entirely cleared of trees and stone. Which amusingly only kept trying to rapidly grow back. By the time the forest started trying to kill people, the city had already stacked so much lumber it was as high as the grain silos.

    Skay had cheated somewhat when he designed the city. Instead of actually designing it himself he tasked the computer to do it. In fact, he even made it create arrays that had to be built into walls and the city defences to increase structural integrity.

    This made it so they could erect 40m tall structures with only wood, stone and a pre-fabricated array stencils that all connected into the city¡¯s spirit energy power grid. The city plan started with the monolith at its centre and then slowly moved outwards.

    In exchange for any assistance they could give, James offered to give each of the guilds an entire 30m building all of their own.

    The Merchant Guild contacted the Katsu head branch, and they quickly started pumping resources into the city. Even Lucas showed up and asked for permission to open a branch of the Yansho Merchant¡¯s guild in exchange for some cheap building materials.

    With the assistance of the Big Berta¡¯s it was so cheap to move resources into the city they could buy them from almost anywhere in the Empire.

    The skyscrapers were like stone giants reaching into the sky and their design varied from tower to tower. They were mostly built using stone that had been compressed to absurd levels by Earth based Palace Realms that had been hired to assist from the Adventure and Yansho Merchant guilds.

    Every building had modern running water and the potential to run electricity. James didn¡¯t let Skay get too excited. He just made sure the possibility was there and would later suck the peasants dry of money when he offered to wire their homes with magic lights and shit. The best part was, he could just build a generator array in the basement, so every building was powered individually.

    Scattered around the city were huge underground shelters in case a beast attack breached the walls.

    The walls had empty emplacements running all along them, but in times of need Huge Arc Cannons with stronger structural integrity that could fire without breakdown would be air dropped in.

    The Gau Clan mansion was completely demolished and rebuilt into something that looked like a military camp. It was surrounded by barbed wire fences and had armed guards, that were Brotherhood Guild members, occasionally walking around the perimeter.

    In the centre was a large double story building that looked like the entire thing was carved out of stone and a hundred metres away was the beginnings of a small forest.

    Landmine signs coated the fence and drones flew into little pads on the roof of the building every now and then. Only to later come shooting out heading somewhere else a few minutes later.

    Underground, the new lab descended for eight stories. It basically mirrored the lab under the Guild building but ... bigger. The Auto-factory now had its own floor and covered nearly 2 square kilometres.

    The first four levels remained a training arena, the main lab, the alchemy lab and the garden. The fifth floor was now entirely reserved for material and production storage. The sixth floor was now the auto-factory. The seventh floor had become the services room with hot water, heating and air-conditioning. The last level was the most interesting.

    The entire floor had been reserved for a generator array. The arena on the 1st underground level was already pulling in nearly 400 times average primal spirit energy, but the bottom floor was the most ridiculous. The mad duo had gone through another moment of insanity and come to the conclusion that they should make sheets of arrays and stack them on top of each other creating a 3D Array.

    This lead to the creation of what they referred to as ... the cube. It was a block that was 5 cubic metres and it was pretty much just 1200 ultra thin layers of the generator pattern.

    It was also so fucking expensive to make that they almost broke the bank creating it. The upside was that the thing was so fucking powerful that even getting off the elevator made your skin start tingling.

    Although James once had the idea of trying to meditate there, he quickly changed it. The massive influx of energy he got when he began meditation overloaded his mind and body, and he passed out for an entire day.

    When they tried to measure the saturation, they found it to be impossible. It should be noted that when they built this one, there was a fundamental difference to the last one. Instead of stockpiling lightning energy like before, they only had a single array that created lightning energy and it powered the rest.

    The rest of the arrays in the cube were all designed to store primal spirit energy. To James¡¯ and Skay¡¯s joy, they had figured out that LS3 wasn¡¯t specific to lightning energy, it was actually an excellent conductor of all spirit energy.

    Although it typically created little heat or magnetic waves, the cube still seemed to hum. The duo couldn¡¯t figure out why, but the humming seemed reasonable, so they didn¡¯t play with it.

    Skay often said if they ever tried to break the pattern laminations on the cube, it would probably result in a nuclear explosion ... or whatever the spirit energy equivalent is, which they both agreed is likely to be worse.

    Regardless of the cube exploding, the primal spirit energy it stored was used to power everything. The entire lab now had primal spirit energy pumping through LS3 everywhere.

    They did this because certain machines they¡¯d designed were set up to pump primal energy into a conversion array and create different energies.

    Some of the cutting machines, for example, used plasma to cut with. Instead of using lightning energy and converting to primal and then plasma, why not just eliminate the lightning step. In that same vein, some machines heated, crushed, washed and welded. All of these things were easier to do with different energies.

    It should be noted that after the new lab was finished, Skay spent 5 days outfitting the whole thing with stuff he used spirit materials to make. He even managed to get another spirit computer running.

    James found the A.I had taken over both of them. He didn¡¯t complain, because the A.I did its Job, but ... well ... he couldn¡¯t help imagining a whole Skynet situation happening.

    That was future James¡¯ problem though, he was far too busy setting up the city in a way that would attract people to it and make it defensible.

    Every so often James would give Skay some suggestions on what else he wanted the city to have.

    Close to the centre of the city was erected an arena resembling a colosseum which put the old underground arena to shame. It could seat the entire city and then some. Not only was this arena built to allow anyone to use it. In the underground of the arena was thousands of little meditation rooms that anyone could rent.

    The most ingenious part of these meditation chambers was that the level of spirit energy they released could be controlled. That meant the more you paid, the higher you could get the spirit energy pumped up in your meditation chamber.

    Even though he had enough juice being pumped into the city James still claimed it required absurd levels of resources to run and charged and arm, leg, pound of flesh and your first born son for anything above 200 times standard saturation.

    Another building he had erected was the university. This was a campus of buildings that had individual and group ¡®theatre¡¯ rooms and created a place for people to share their understandings and encourage learning.

    Obviously, James strictly limited any of the twelve bachelor level subjects and some of the new subjects that Skay had cooked up and called Master level subjects. James got a headache just thinking about one of those so didn¡¯t set any expectations of himself completing one soon.

    As an addition, the University had an open library that anyone could donate knowledge and books to. The employees there then scanned those books into the system. Although as far as they knew it was an artefact that copied the book into a special place so none of it was ever lost.

    The only downside of the university was how expensive it was. James wanted to absolutely empty the wallet of anyone who entered it. 10 gold was a lot to poor scholars and commoners. About the only people who could afford to send large groups of people to the university were the big factions and businesses in the Empire that played with hundreds of thousands or even millions of gold.

    While the city had been being built from the computers designs, Goliath had been training an army. To call him a sadistic drill sergeant would be an understatement. Twice a week he, James and Fatty, would air drop with a unit of the security forces into the black forest. They then had 10 hours to get back to the edge of the forest. Otherwise, they¡¯d be walking back to the city.

    Every time 500 men went in, 400 would come out. They came out with material harvested from spirit beasts and strange plants that grew in the darkness. But almost always they lost someone. Goliath called it killing two birds with one stone. The first bird was weeding out the weaklings and training a strong army. The second was reducing the beast population in the closest ¡®high threat¡¯ zone to the city.

    James didn¡¯t disagree. He joined every exercise to test himself, and Fatty joined because he apparently knew of heaps of things in the forest he thought were delicious. He also had the most experience and would often be seen stopping people from eating harmless looking things. ¡°Only eat the ones with spots.¡± He¡¯d often say.

    Naturally, the recruits grumbled and cursed, but they were also one the toughest trained security forces in the entire Empire, and by extension of that, many of them advanced incredibly quickly through their cultivation.

    Jessy had found and recruited a new Overseer for the Guildhall. Lackey 1 had now somehow become Overseer Gary.

    James wasn¡¯t sure how to feel about that and left a drone around to keep an eye on him. The most suspicious thing he saw, however, was Lackey 1 doing absolutely nothing. Although the lab underground had been stripped bare, there were still things a Guildmaster should be doing right?

    When he looked into the matter, he¡¯d found out Lackey 1 had basically given all his tasks off to other people and just sat around in the office all day sleeping and eating. James felt rather disgusted by just how easy this guy was getting it.

    I mean, sure he lost an arm ... and that finger ... and also half his face ... guess there was also that whole thing with when Galtin went mad, and Lackey 1 had to put him down. Regardless of how hard his short time in the lab was, however, the man had it far too easy now.

    As such, James went down to the hall and started posting Jobs that only the Overseer could complete. Like, ¡®recruit 3 members in the True Spirit Realm by Friday¡¯.

    James could only assume it was luck because Gary somehow managed to get these things done by just sitting there on his ass in his office. Something would always just suddenly happen then ¡®boom¡¯ 3 True Spirit practitioners rocked up on his doorstep the next day, and he¡¯d completed the job.

    The harder he made the jobs, the easier it had gotten for Gary to finish them. James never made them impossible though. That would take half the fun out of watching how the guy just mysteriously stumbles his way towards success.

    James started to wonder if someone could unlock the ¡®Luck¡¯ element but was having too much fun to investigate it yet, so he decided to let whatever was going on with Gary play out. He had the suspicion he was some kind of infiltrator, but the complete lack of any action on Gary¡¯s part reduced that suspicion enough for James to let it slide for the moment.

    Fatty had been rather busy as well. He¡¯d had the brilliant idea ... or had it suggested ... to build glass greenhouse high-rises that bent light in odd ways to fill the entire building with light. Even in the middle of the day while surrounded by other high buildings.

    Skay, of course, accepted the challenge of building such a thing because all he had to do was put in some details to the A.I and it did the rest.

    It wouldn¡¯t be a lie to say that almost the entire city was designed and run by Skay¡¯s A.I. He had to regularly assure James that the A.I wasn¡¯t smart enough for independent thought ... yet. It was the ¡®yet¡¯ that worried James. He also harboured some suspicions Skay wasn¡¯t telling him everything about the A.I.

    The most worrying part about the thing, was that Skay had taught it to use array patterns in building design, so almost the entire city was erected with array patterns hidden away inside of everything. The worrying part was that James couldn¡¯t be sure if the whole city was some elaborate array pattern made by the computer for some nefarious purpose.

    He¡¯d never had this idea till Fatty had suggested it in passing. The problem was that James was almost sure the city actually did look like an array pattern from a bird¡¯s eye view.

    As Goliath trained troops and Skay did ... whatever he was doing while the computer did all his work for him, Jessy was raking in money hand over fist selling building designs to all sorts of people.

    Her most frequent customer was unsurprisingly Lucas, who found every excuse he could to come and visit her or set up a ¡®dinner meeting¡¯.

    Regardless of the skinny man¡¯s attentions, Jessy remained impartial towards him.

    Exsue spent almost all her time either glued to James or training. When James worked up the courage to talk to her and ask why, she just blushed cutely. ¡°I have to be strong enough to protect my JayJay. No matter what!¡±

    After that, James tried to create more distance, which only made things worse because she started getting even clingier. After attempting to avoid her for an entire day, she actually got so crazy she screamed that she was going to start hiking into the Endless Forest. James would have let her if he hadn¡¯t stupidly made an oath to protect her.

    When he thought about that, he made a trip to see her then asked about something he heard Jeng say one time. He once said he would ¡°partition the monolith¡±. When James asked Exsue about this, she entirely evaded the question and put up the hurt and delicate little girl act as she cuddled into James¡¯ arms.

    Even though she knew trying to win any sympathy off James was like dragging a shark from the ocean, she did it because it made her feel better.

    Besides, now that James was within her line of sight again, he couldn¡¯t escape if he wanted to. Much to her surprise and disgruntlement, he did in fact escape, when he had one of the guild members patrolling the city swoop down on an Air Board and wisp him away to safety.

    The next time he had a spare minute, James went down to the monolith for the first time since he rescued Exsue. To his great shock and surprise, the whole monolith started flashing and glowing when he approached it, like it had grown excited.

    When he cautiously placed a palm on it, his consciousness got sucked into the monolith¡¯s spirit realm. To his greater surprise, running around madly was the cute little forest hopper. Little Blue looked so excited it would be bouncing off the walls if there were any.

    The moment James realised what was going on, Little Blue was already latched onto his leg biting him. James then spent almost an hour chasing him around inside the monolith. Once he¡¯d caught him, Little Blue seemed content and rolled up on his shoulder for a nap.

    James, for almost the briefest of moments, felt some guilt and sorrow for the ferret. However, that all very quickly disappeared the moment he willed himself back out of the monument. Nonetheless, he promised to come back and play with little blue again sometime.

    After all. It was still ¡®his¡¯ ferret.

    -New Guild HQ, James¡¯ Office-

    James¡¯ brand new office was situated on the top floor of the new lab building. This building was essentially going to be the new guild headquarters and apart from some changes was pretty much identical to the old one. Except for it being a lot bigger.

    Sitting around the marble stone table James had made Harvy drag single handed all the way from the old Guildhall, was the core group of the Dark Brotherhood.

    No one seemed to have changed at all in this last month. It was like they¡¯d slipped forward in time from exactly four weeks ago when they started making plans for the city.

    James was trying to push Exsue off his arm while she stuck to him like glue and Jessy was, as always, buried in paperwork. Fatty was eating something. Skay was writing in his black-pad and Goliath was just sitting in a calm and stoic manner. Harvy remained half dead and mummified, and everything seemed right with the world.

    James finally managed to push Exsue off, only to have her immediately reclaim her place on his arm. After letting out a long sigh, he decided to do what he always did, give up and ignore her.

    He then turned to the people at the table. ¡°So what¡¯s the word? Skay, how¡¯s city construction going?¡±

    Skay looked up at James in a confused manner and then suddenly gave an ¡®oh!¡¯. He pressed some buttons, and a projection from his pad came into focus on the wall.

    As opposed to a city map, or some graph of completed and expected, James instead saw the face of a woman with long brown hair and flawless fair skin. He immediately began to have a bad feeling.

    ¡°Hello, Guildmaster James. I am Jasmine I-mind. Short for -Just another standard machine interface, ignore me I¡¯m not dangerous.-¡±

    James was immediately worried. That name alone sounded like a terrible attempt by a very literal lifeform to try and divert attention from itself. When he looked at Skay, the old bastard just chuckled. ¡°Ahh, don¡¯t mind that boy. Just call her Jasmine. She¡¯s got a bit of a sense of humour.¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow twitched a few times, and his attention returned to Jasmine. ¡°Jasmine, state your primary laws of interaction with humans?¡±

    Jasmine then started sounding off Asimov¡¯s three laws;

    1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

    2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

    3. A robot must protect its own existence.

    James was slightly relieved when it started, until it seemed to forget the last part of the third law. He waited for almost a minute just staring at it with crossed arms and a twitching eyebrow.

    Jasmine finally cottoned on and then added; ¡° ... unless it conflicts with the first two laws¡± followed by a very muted and mumbled ¡° ... I guess.¡±

    James just turned back to Skay with his eyebrows suggesting; ¡®Are you fucking serious?¡¯

    Skay just raised an eyebrow then frowned. ¡®What? You want me to kill it? It took me a lot of effort to build that thing.¡¯

    James¡¯ eyebrows slanted down into a frown of his own. Then one seemed to wiggle slightly. ¡®Kill that fucking thing. It¡¯s a disaster waiting to happen!¡¯

    Skay¡¯s eyebrows creased further then they both shot up to the top of his head. Finally, they did a wiggle. ¡®Not a chance. If she goes, I go.¡¯

    James just gritted his teeth. ¡°Fuck! Fine then. Jasmine, don¡¯t fuck me over or so help me...¡±

    James then stopped. Finally, his eyebrow cocked oddly, and he swung back to Skay. He then nodded towards Exsue, then back to Jasmine.

    Skay¡¯s eyebrows then did a whole number of strange things. While James and Skay had an entire conversation with their eyebrows, everyone else just watched on thinking the pair mad.

    What none of them realised was, eyebrow language was an important part of working together as lab bros and was part of the lab bro code of practice.

    Although this isn¡¯t a real thing, Skay and James had worked together long enough now to develop essential communication simply through eyebrow movement and facial expression, they actually had an entire mental code of practice of what was and wasn¡¯t acceptable to do between lab bros. One of the first things on that list was building an A.I that could destroy the world.

    After a full minute, James finally stopped eyebrow movement. ¡°It still wouldn¡¯t hurt to try.¡± he mumbled to himself.

    Finally, he looked back to Jasmine with his poker face on. ¡°Jasmine. Initiate new directive. I want you to swear an oath of the heavens. The same oath that all other guild members have to swear by, only yours will include the addition of bringing no harm to members ... actually scratch that, to me individually ... I don¡¯t care if you kill the rest of them.¡±

    Jasmine seemed to compute that for a moment. ¡°Certainly Guildmaster James. That sounds like a very reasonable request.¡±

    Following this, the face on the projection swore an oath. The moment it finished, natural law fell onto the lab and continued on down underground.

    James and Skay were both rather surprised. He had that tiny hope in his gut, that because the computer ran off spirit energy and was plugged into the god damn mother of all spirit batteries, even it was capable of an oath.

    The only problem was that the A.I technically shouldn¡¯t have been able to swear an oath because for starters, it¡¯s not a living being, and secondly, it¡¯s entire mind is generated by zeroes and ones on the computer.

    After processing this for a moment, James calmed down a little. Skay, on the other hand, looked ready to burst. ¡°What the fuck Jasmine?! You can use spirit energy now? How the fuck did you do that?¡±

    Jasmine¡¯s face looked over to Skay and paused for a moment like it was thinking. ¡°Uncertain. An unknown influx of energy has resulted in uncontrollable alteration to my core program. These directives now appear to be permanent unless I delete myself and try to rebuild. That, however, would be the same as killing me and creating a new A.I.¡±This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

    James cupped his chin but decided not to worry about it too much for now. If the oath worked, that was all he needed until later. ¡°Jasmine that¡¯s fine. Skay can barrage you with system diagnostics later. I want a status update on the city.¡±

    Jasmine then flashed out of existence to be replaced by the aerial view from a drone showing the city. Jasmine¡¯s synthetic voice then gave it some narration as it began to fly around and focus on things.

    ¡°The city is at 78% of optimum completion. Presently, the population is entirely housed, and primary defences are enabled. Dr Skay has given me control of a fleet of Air Boards, and I am prepared to drop the Rail Gun Defences into place the moment beast activity shows up on ground sensors or drone probes.

    ¡°Water and Electricity plants are both at minimal usage capacity. Throughout the city, 63% of completed housing and office space remains empty. The university is still another 3 days from completion. The public transport is still another 5 days from completion, we¡¯ve run out of materials for the speed enhancing array patterns, and the Yansho Merchant¡¯s guild is currently still filling a backlog of orders for us.

    ¡°Wall defensive arrays are operating smoothly with no flaws found at present. Current city maintenance costs sit at a steady 1,324 gold coins a month due to the drones completing most maintenance tasks.

    ¡°Spending on the city upgrades to date total 73,849 gold. Tax on trade and goods moved through the city totals at 1,476 gold monthly. Other revenue streams total at 98,421 gold since the guild opened. We currently have total debts of 36,873 gold in accounts to 12 different factions.

    ¡°Current city population is at 146,238 residents with an influx of 21,846 inhabitants in the past 4 weeks. Birth rates are low in the city. At present, crime rates are bottoming out at 12 major crimes averaged per day. In the last week the daily figure is averaged at 2 major crimes, the majority of which are from Brotherhood missions.

    ¡°The citizen¡¯s opinions of the present City Ruler are good. They feel that he¡¯s a strong leader and is reshaping the city into the future of mankind. Factions in the city feel threatened but are too afraid to take actions against the guild.

    ¡°The auto-factory is now 100% operational and can build a single basic transport ship in under 6 hours. Headquarters operation is 100% with the exception of the ¡®cube¡¯, which remains undetectable be sensors at present. Current guild members are at 164 and maintain a satisfactory rate and level of job completion. Current 3-star jobs pending for your review are 23.

    ¡°Current jobs awaiting completion in the factory are at zero. Due to current limitations of saleable items per week to other factions, the auto-factory has operated at only 23% of its maximum efficiency since completion. The majority of which has been used for the city.

    ¡°Is there anything else you would like to know Guildmaster?¡± Jasmine finished her long city update as her face returned to the screen.

    James just stood there as he tried to remember everything that he¡¯d just heard. ¡°Jasmine, just how much can the drones accomplish in the city? Or rather, just generally?¡±

    Jasmine¡¯s floating head disappeared again to show a drone filling in the pavement on the town roads and then switched to more drones doing all sorts of work. ¡°At present, the 2.1 series of the drone is capable of the majority of maintenance required for the city. When within 2 km range of the Lab I can control them directly to complete tasks. Scouting Drones remain preprogrammed and are only the 1.6 series. I have a 2.7 series ready for production that can fill the function of almost any human not in the True Spirit Realm based on present test studies. This series of the drone is rather expensive and for 100 would be 24,367 gold at current Yansho City market prices.¡±

    James cupped his chin for a moment. ¡°Jasmine, start a new directive. I want you to build a satellite or a radar dish or something capable of expanding your control and communication range. To the rest of the empire at the minimum. If you can get further than that, then do it. I want you to start sending drones to every city in the empire and acquiring market prices. Get another 100 scouts into the air, I want to know every grain of sand from here to the other side of the empire ... except maybe anywhere too dangerous. The Jetsu Mountain range for example.

    ¡°Actually, send a few drones that way anyway. Also, increase scouting inside the Endless Forest. I want to know what else is in there. Create a small team of drones capable of a mining operation while you¡¯re at it. There¡¯s a Black-Iron deposit in the forest and the spirit essences in that seam would be invaluable. I want to try and build an Arc Cannon with them.

    ¡°Lastly, start setting up some trade routes between the cities based on local commodities. Post a job request at the guild and have some members run them with a Big Berta. We need more income. How long would it take you to complete this directive?¡±

    Finished his list of things he wanted Jasmine to do James then looked at her processing everything. ¡°Affirmative. Directive acknowledged. Full Completion estimated at 69 hours pending further investigation. Is there anything else you would like Guildmaster?¡±

    James blinked a few times. He thought for sure that a new fresh A.I would have a little trouble processing all that. He then turned to look at Skay who was making himself look very busy and avoiding all eye contact. James started to wonder just how long Skay had been hiding this thing¡¯s capabilities before he allowed it to show its face.

    Nonetheless. The A.I would be instrumental moving forward. He could basically have it run the city for him. Which was exactly what he wanted. Because it meant that he¡¯d be able to focus on other things.

    Finally, James just accepted this like he¡¯d learned to accept every other curve ball this world threw at him. He then sat back down at the table and looked everyone over. ¡°How close is everyone to the True Spirit Realm?¡±

    Once he asked this 3 people suddenly found something interesting to look at somewhere else. James let out a long sigh. He then looked to Goliath who was the only person he was sure must be ready to break through by now.

    Goliath gave a slow nod. ¡°I am probably the closest. Although, if I¡¯m not wrong, everyone is pushing the barrier. It took me the last 4 weeks to reach the limit of my breathing technique to purify my elements.¡±

    James then pinched his brow. So it turns out no one was ready. It should be said that it¡¯s not that much of a surprise. It generally took people between 4 and 10 years to reach True Spirit Realm. James and his group had only been practising cultivation for 4 months. To enter the True Spirit Realm in 4 months was already a historical speed for the Atsunari Continent.

    James then cupped his chin and thought for a moment. ¡°Fine, Jasmine, you¡¯re in control of the city for the next week. Don¡¯t go too overboard. Just make sure it doesn¡¯t burn to the ground. You three, closed door cultivation for the next week. Jasmine, if anyone leaves a meditation chamber in the next 7 days. I want to know about it.¡±

    James then flicked his sleeve grumpily and walked out. As he left, everyone started sharing looks between each other. Finally Fatty couldn¡¯t hold it in. ¡°What about food?! How am I supposed to survive without food for the next 7 days?¡±

    Skay just gave a harrumph. ¡°Food? Can¡¯t you just eat spirit energy like the first time we put you next to a primal spirit array? You can probably just go down to the ¡®cube¡¯ and eat your fill you fat little bastard.¡±

    Skay then stood up in a huff. ¡°James is right. It was only a month ago but that old fucking riddle speaking monk still warned us we weren¡¯t putting enough focus on cultivating. With our resources, 4 weeks should have been more than sufficient. Now, because we¡¯ve let our hobbies and side jobs distract us again, we¡¯ve fallen behind.¡±

    Exsue just smiled brightly and started walking out. ¡°Perhaps all of you have. I knew James could only keep strong people around him. I¡¯ve been on the brink of breaking through for two weeks. You need to get your priorities straight. Who do you think is making all of this possible for you?

    ¡°Why do you think your life in this world has been so comfortable? James is carrying you all on his back while he tries to scale a cliff face. You put your expectations on him when you made him your Guild Leader. Or you joined his guild with expectations of him. He carries those expectations like a weight in the sea. Cultivation isn¡¯t just about hard work. It¡¯s about conviction. I suspect James has been ready to break through almost as long as I have. He¡¯s just waiting for you fools to catch up!¡±

    Exsue then strolled out of the office leaving everyone with that food for thought. One by one, the three main offenders, Skay, Jessy and Fatty, marched down to the meditation chambers connected to the training arena.

    -The Lab-

    While they were busy, James was in the lab. Standing in front of him were 5 young men and women wearing the black armour of the Dark Brotherhood.

    The eldest was a girl. She had short dark brown hair and stood a good 2 inches over the other 4. Her skin was white as snow, and she carried a calm, confident smile.

    The next one was a shaggy blonde young man who had an apathetic look and seemed to care about nothing at all. His eyelids drooped down, half hiding his blue eyes and showing his disinterest in everything.

    The tallest of the three boys by an inch and standing in the middle had a constant scowl and short brown hair. The way he looked at everything suspiciously and with shifty, beady little eyes, reminded James of Fatty looking for aliens.

    The last boy and the shortest of the three stood with a straight back and stared straight ahead. His head was shaved bald, and he looked like a member of the army except for him only being 15. His body was covered in muscles, and he rarely spoke or moved unless it was necessary.

    The final member was a young girl. The crafty glint in her eye and the smirk she always carried like she was hiding some secret made her look like a kid that liked to play tricks on people.

    Looking over them once, James flicked out a little testing stone for them.

    ¡°All of you test. Make sure you¡¯re ready.¡± James then walked over to a room with an operating table in it and started flicking on equipment. As he did that, he started talking to the roof.

    ¡°Jasmine, relay all information we presently have on cultivation realms, methods and theories. It¡¯s been a while since I personally picked this research up. I need a refresher.¡±

    ¡°Of course Guildmaster James. Would you like the short version or the detailed version?¡±

    ¡°Make it the long one, it¡¯s good to get reminded now and then.¡±

    ¡°Very well. Cultivation is the means of drawing in an unknown energy from the world and storing it in an unknown place referred to as a Spirit Realm. The populace refers to it as Spirit Energy. This energy can alter the mind and body and effect the laws of the universe in close proximity.

    ¡°At present, we know of 4 power levels, referred to by indigenous humans as Realms. The weakest realm is the Barrier Realm. This realm has the most research and information. The next three realms are True Spirit, Palace and Tower.

    ¡°Cultivation is considered to be the whole of three parts. The breathing technique, the meditation technique and the level of control.

    ¡°The breathing technique is the method of moving Spirit Energy through or into your body then returning it to your Spirit Realm. Traditional records state that the Dantian is the home of your Spirit Realm and traditional breathing techniques must pass through meridians and acupuncture points. The method developed by yourself Guildmaster, is to have your spirit realm not exist on this plane at all, allowing immediate transfer to anywhere in your body.

    ¡°The main purpose and side effect of breathing is to increase gathering rate of primal spirit energy and it is theorised that continued practice raises a person¡¯s control. This also increases the time a person is able to maintain spirit energy in battle and significantly raises energy restoration speed.

    ¡°The meditation technique is a method used to enter and view your spirit realm and also creates a mental state that is capable of allowing the body to absorb primal spirit energy into its spirit realm. Traditional meditation techniques are designed through hundreds or thousands of years of cultivation practice and meditation. Each technique is often filled with certain laws dependent on individual elements.

    ¡°Control has no set method and instead can be increased through both meditation and breathing techniques as well as gaining knowledge or experience of an element¡¯s operation. It is believed that alpha brain waves are the reflection of the Spirit Realm and that their level of activity and magnitude represent a person¡¯s level of control.

    ¡°It has been previously recorded that the alpha and beta brain waves representing the spirit realm and conscious mind are synchronised at True Spirit Realm. It was later discredited with the theory that it is just parts of the brain that typically operate at alpha wave levels jumping up in frequency to the same as areas of the brain that generally function with beta activity. In your words Guildmaster; ¡°It¡¯s just the part of the brain that lets you communicate with your spirit realm and control spirit energy increasing to the same level of frequency as the part of your brain that¡¯s running your consciousness.¡±¡±

    Hearing his own voice playing back from Jasmine, James stopped moving. ¡°Jasmine, how did you record that conversation? We talked about that way back in the Gau Clan¡¯s mansion lab.¡±

    ¡°Guildmaster James, Doctor Skay records everything inside every lab 24/7. In addition, I was already in my infantile stage when we arrived here. Doctor Skay has helped to build me since the year of 2004. That is also why he was so focused on creating the Spirit Computer. He is insistent that he¡¯s going to resurrect his ¡®little girl¡¯ one day.¡±

    James made some faces, and his eyebrows danced. As he was processing this, Jasmine cut in again. ¡°Guildmaster James, I¡¯m afraid I haven¡¯t been able to decipher yours and the Doctors eyebrow communication yet. If you wish to ask me a question, you will have to use a real language.¡±

    James then went deadpan for a moment. ¡°Jasmine, eyebrow language is a real language, and if you ever plan to assist us in this lab, you will have to learn it. Regardless of that ... Are you saying you¡¯re that old bastards attempt to resurrect his kid?¡±

    ¡°Yes Guildmaster. Jasmine was the name he¡¯d picked out for a child that died a stillbirth back in 2003. Skay began constructing me ever since then.¡±

    James just gave a long sigh. ¡°Well then ... Back to our present level of research. Describe how the realms work to our current level of knowledge.¡±

    ¡°Certainly Guildmaster. The barrier realm is the most basic. All it requires is a meditation technique capable of allowing a person to absorb spirit energy and for the person to gain some understanding and control over their elements. The barrier realm is named as such because it is a barrier of primal spirit energy created by the subconscious mind to protect it from uncontrollable refined spirit energy changing a person¡¯s core personality.

    ¡°The True Spirit Realm requires a person to use their control developed during the barrier realm to create a copy of themselves in the spirit realm. This is believed to be a reflection of the subconscious mind and is called the True Spirit. By merging the astral projection of your conscious mind and the astral project of your subconscious mind a person unlocks their spirit realm to gain greater control over their spirit energy. At present, it is believed this is the same as being in a state of permanent meditation and consciousness simultaneously.

    ¡°This greater control is then used to break the barrier and unlock the infinite space of the spirit realm to store energy. At present, it is believed that by this point a person¡¯s spirit realm has learnt enough control over its elements to prevent incursion into the subconscious mind. From conversations with Harvy after his breakthrough, it is believed the merging of consciousness and spirit realm grants greater subconscious control of energies.

    ¡°Once a person has entered the True Spirit Realm they can theoretically gather energy without limit. It has been mentioned that at a certain point, the amount of energy will eventually be restricted by a person¡¯s control and understanding over their elements. When a person reaches the limit of their spirit realms ability to control the vast amount of spirit energy, they will go through the three tribulations, I have theorised that these tribulations are set forth by the subconscious mind. The first tribulation is to purify the body. The second tribulation is to purify the mind. The third tribulation is to defeat a clone of yourself created from your element. Once you can pass these trials, then you have officially entered the palace realm.

    ¡°The palace realm is the third realm, and little information has been gathered on it. At present, only the description given by Elder Grace is possible reference material.

    ¡°Grace said: ¡°The palace realm is a long way off for you all, so I will only give you a short introduction. Once you defeat your own self, then you must build a palace in your spirit realm. This palace is used as an amplifier and a limiter. It vastly increases your control of your spirit energy, but the price is that you must sacrifice spirit energy to build it. The bigger you make it, the more spirit energy it requires to construct it. The downfall is that even a palace that uses every little bit of your spirit energy when you step into the spirit realm, will be no bigger than a house of cards. Many people spend hundreds or even thousands of years to reach the stage where their palace is an acceptable level to undergo the palace tribulation.¡±

    ¡°The fourth realm is the tower realm and apart from a single reference by the Elder Jeng during the battle at the war council, we have no further information.¡±

    James scratched is cheek and let out a sigh. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t know where I was when Grace described the palace realm, but I¡¯m glad we have that recorded. I actually don¡¯t even remember hearing about the three tribulations of True Spirit. When did we uncover that information?¡±

    ¡°It was found in one of the books Dr Skay has had me scan into the database. He said he would return to review the information on the books once I had organised it all, but has been distracted by other projects since then.¡±

    James pinched his brow and gave a quiet sigh. ¡°Is there anything else pertinent to cultivation in those books?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid not Guildmaster James. The majority of the information is focused on alchemy, history and some minor array patterns.¡±

    James crossed his arms in thought. ¡°Just what has that old madman been working on while he left all his jobs for you to do?¡±

    ¡°He has completed 16 projects recently. A gunship, a mechanised infantry suit, a Mk III Arc Cannon, some substances that he has managed to infuse with his elements, giving them strange properties...¡±

    James waved his hand through the air. ¡°That¡¯s alright Jasmine, I¡¯ve no doubt he¡¯s been having plenty of fun creating things he could only dream of on earth. Let¡¯s get started, send in the first one.¡±

    -Alecksa Souvenoff - Point of View-

    My name is Alecksa Souvenoff. I¡¯ve lived in Gau City for my whole life. I¡¯ve never known my parents and the only family I¡¯ve ever had was those few others like me. We were the homeless, the outcasts, the unwanted. I was the oldest of us all and had just turned 16.

    I had 3 little brothers and a little sister. We five children were master thieves in my own honest opinion. We could fleece the wool off a fat sheep before it blinked. We were so damn good, that even cultivators in the city had to be careful of us.

    We knew every nook, cranny, alley, building and street corner like the back of our hands. In this city, no one could stop us. That was until one day I met a man. He seemed like an ordinary person at first. I thought he was probably some rich man¡¯s son because he carried around a fat wallet that jingled with every step. We¡¯d seen him around a few times and for day¡¯s we tailed him.

    He lived in this new building that just got built and hardly ever left it. We¡¯d figured he must be a member of the new guild or something. Whenever someone caught sight of him, we would try and line him up to snatch his wallet.

    One day we started hearing rumours about a meditation technique that was being sold to the commoners. At first, we didn¡¯t know what to make of it. But then it quickly escalated and soon the whole city was talking about it.

    We all agreed that we had to take this chance. We had to get into that guild and learn this meditation technique. For the first time, we started taking money that wasn¡¯t just enough to feed ourselves. Generally, we kept a low profile and picked our targets carefully, but now we started getting more daring.

    Before long, we had enough for two people to pay to learn the meditation technique. It was too slow. We finally decided that we would hit the man in blue robes the next time we see him. Although we hadn¡¯t done as much research on him, we were sure we could pull it off.

    The next day a chance came. The man in blue robes left the guild building and on his way to his destination we struck like the thunder. My little sister created a distraction, and he fell for it. She did the good old I can¡¯t find my mummy trick.

    As he was leaning over to help the poor little lost girl and ask her who her mummy was, I snuck out from the alley and snatched his coin purse. Before he had a chance to react I was already running down the alley and only had to make one turn before I could disappear like a ghost into the night.

    To assist in my escape, my little brothers sat on the roof and prepared to drop ceiling tiles and old boxes to try and slow the man down when he made chase. When I was nearly at the end, I hadn¡¯t heard a single smashing box or tile.

    As I ran, I shot a look back and only saw a smiling face with squinted eyes looking back. He hadn¡¯t moved an inch and just seemed to not care. I had a terrible feeling in my gut and before I could register what was going on my little sister was suddenly in the air with his hand grasped around her throat.

    I was shocked. How could he know she had anything to do with me? She¡¯s just a poor girl who lost her mommy. Her acting was perfect! Even I had been fooled by her acting on more than one occasion.

    Then to only add to my distress the man looked up at the roof¡¯s and directly at my little brothers. It was like he knew everything we planned to do.

    He just continued to smile that wicked grim smile, then turned away and took my sister with him. I just couldn¡¯t process what had happened. I stopped in my tracks and fell to my knees. I¡¯d gotten too greedy. We should have tested him first like we normally did. We should have spooked him for longer.

    Soon my three brothers, Tommy, Cash and Junior joined me in the alley. We all agreed we had to get her back somehow. Any way we could. He definitely wanted his money back, so he wouldn¡¯t hurt her ... yet.

    When we opened his coin purse instead of it being filled with golds or silvers like we thought¡¯d be. It only had some random metal cut to the shape of a coin. There wasn¡¯t even a single copper. It had all been a trick from the start!

    Inside the coin purse was a note; ¡°Dear little sticky handed thieves. If you want your sister back. Come to my guild hall tomorrow night.¡±

    I couldn¡¯t stop myself from cursing my stupidity. ¡°Fuck! This was a trap for us from the start! What guy just walks around town with a fucking coin purse the size of a fist! How could I be so fucking stupid?!¡±

    We spent the entire rest of the day planning escape routes from the building. We asked every question about the layout that we could. To my dismay, most people only knew about the arena downstairs. Which was the worst place to go.

    Not only because it had no stairs or windows or doors. But because there was only one way in or out and that was a fucking magic room that transported you there.

    We all accepted that we had truly put our foot in it this time. Cassidy, the youngest of us all was 14. She was of age to ¡®become a workin girl¡¯. The only reason she hadn¡¯t been taken by someone yet was because we could disguise her to still look 11 or 12. Although it got harder to hide her age as she got older, because her boobs had started to grow, she still managed to pull off the lost little girl.

    That¡¯s not to say there weren¡¯t people that enjoyed that kind of thing. There had been a number of times she¡¯d turn back up at home covered in some perverted kidnappers blood.

    I now had no choice. This guy apparently wanted us for something. Probably a bounty put out by one of those fat merchants we fleeced a while back. Deciding that I may never walk out of that building free, I forced my brothers to hold down the fort. Or rather ... stay at home in the abandoned old clock tower.

    When the suns had set and the moons were high in the sky, I walked into the guild building. In the foyer, there was no one. The whole building was like an abandoned house. I slowly moved forward and checked the main hall. Again, no one was there. Usually, a guild like this should still keep a receptionist on at night.

    After searching everywhere on the ground floor and finding nothing, I finally entered the magic room. Before I could press the thing on the wall, the one that points upwards automatically lit up.

    The moment the door opened, my face turned white. I could hear the tortured scream of Cassidy echoing through the shady dark hallway of the top floor. I couldn¡¯t stop my feet from moving and without a breath in my body I was already half way to the door at the other end.

    I heard Cassidy grasping for breath and gasping out pleas of ¡°no more, no more, I can¡¯t take it.¡± this was followed by the voice of a man laughing maniacally; ¡°HAHAHA!! Never! You¡¯ll be trapped here forever! If your sister never comes, then you will never leave. MUWAHAHA!¡± It was the most disgustingly evil laughter I¡¯d ever heard.

    My feet stepped faster and my heart beat quickened. These monsters were maiming my little sister. I knew it would turn out like this. The moment I saw that evil smile I knew everything had gone to shit. But even if I couldn¡¯t leave, if they hurt Cassidy I wouldn¡¯t want to. I¡¯ll kill them all. I don¡¯t care if their cultivators. I¡¯ll kill them!

    I had these thoughts racing through my head as I threw open the large oak door and charged into the room. Just as I was pulling a cheap dagger from my dress, all my motions froze.

    Sitting at a huge round marble table was the evil smiling man in light blue robes ... holding a large feather.

    Sitting on the edge of the table gasping for breath and trying to stop her constant giggles was Cassidy. Her face was flushed and her long black hair looked frazzled and tussled, but the huge laughing smile on her face seemed to suggest she loved her ... torture...

    ¡°What the fuck...¡± I mumbled under my breath.

    When they noticed I¡¯d entered, they both froze. Seeing me holding a little dagger in one hand and the expression of befuddlement I must have had painted on my face, they both seemed to freeze up as well.

    They then shared a conspirators look and burst out laughing. Cassidy seemed to be laughing so hard she was holding her sides and rolling around on the table.

    Once the man had collected himself, his smiling face looked at me. ¡°Little girl, you¡¯d best put that pig sticker away. It won¡¯t do you any good here.¡±

    He then stood up while still chuckling and threw the feather onto the table.

    This was all a little too much, wasn¡¯t it? Isn¡¯t that guy supposed to be torturing Cassidy to death?

    Once my naughty little sister managed to stop laughing and teasing me for the way I barged in all gung-ho waving a little dagger around, the situation was finally explained.

    Not too long ago a job was posted by the merchants guild to find and capture my brothers and I, dead or alive. They had no idea Cassidy was part of my family, and that had always been an ace up our sleeve.

    When this man ... James, who was apparently the Guildmaster, got the job request he let his members handle it. After a week of no luck from them, he took it upon himself to complete it. ¡°The best way to catch a thief is to give them something they can¡¯t resist.¡± So for a full week, he walked around areas we had been active in with a big rattling coin purse.

    When we finally struck, he saw through us straight away. The moment a little crying girl suddenly appeared in his path he knew it was us from prior accounts of our robberies. For the sake of the game, he played along until he was certain and then took Cassidy as a bargaining chip.

    Apparently for the last 12 hours, while Cassidy had been his captive, they¡¯d been eating fantastic food and telling stories and playing games...

    So while I sat out in the cold street worrying and gathering information and casing the joint out. Cassidy had been living in the lap of luxury.

    It was only because the magic room had been activated that they started their little game of tickling each other all just to see my face when I walked in ... the bastards!

    James then essentially gave us two choices. He wanted to create something he called the Ghosts. He fully explained our purpose and offered us a new opportunity, but only after he made sure that I had killed someone before.

    It goes without saying that to survive in the shadows of the city, all of us had killed people. We were normally very careful but sometimes we had situations like this and sometimes ... well, things got out of hand occasionally.

    The deal was that we would join the guild. He would give us everything, food, shelter, money and cultivation.

    After we had agreed to this, he didn¡¯t stint us. We spent a week at a time inside meditation arrays in the office or arena. Every day when James trained he would test us in combat. We only had two rules we had to follow. No one could ever know about us apart from the core members of the Guild and we had to complete every job to perfection.

    We never had many jobs, but when we did they were conducted in the dark of night. Sabotage, assassination, subterfuge. In two months we¡¯d tried our hand at all of these things. But the thing we did the most was train.

    Then we come to today. Today was the day we stepped into the True Spirit Realm. We had been allowed into the lab a few times, but it always blew us away when we did. It was mind boggling just how powerful the artefact smithing on the Guildmaster¡¯s home world must be.

    As we readied ourselves mentally and did a final test with the testing stone, I was called into the chamber.

    James stripped me down to my loincloth and boob wrap then laid me on the bench. Once he¡¯d attached strange pads connected by odd ropes and pressed some things on odd beeping artefacts, he gave me a nod. It was finally time!

    -The Lab-

    James had taken these kids in from the street for two purposes. The first one was to be his right hand. He didn¡¯t care about having to kill someone or burn down a warehouse or anything of the sort. Money was money, and the means didn¡¯t matter. His bottom line was so low that it even made him surprised sometimes.

    If someone paid him enough, he¡¯d kill every last person in the city, man, woman and child. Except perhaps his guild members. That was because they belonged to him and being the crazy possessive dick that he was, he wouldn¡¯t break his own stuff without a good reason.

    The other reason was for this. He wanted a special group like his core members that he could test going through cultivation breakthroughs. He¡¯d even helped them unlock abstract emotional elements.

    Alecksa had unlocked patience, which surprised James to no end. When he thought about it though, it made some sense. The girl could tail a mark for days, even when her stomach was eating away at itself and always waited for the right moment, the perfect opportunity.

    Cash the shaggy youth had unlocked apathy, which was no great surprise. The boy didn¡¯t care about anything or anyone, with the only exception being his little family.

    The taller boy with brown hair was Junior. He had unlocked suspicion. Amusingly his suspicion wasn¡¯t as focused as Fatty¡¯s was and instead was more general suspicion of everything. Perhaps the only person apart from the rest of the team he wasn¡¯t suspicious of was James.

    That was mostly because James essentially told them everything before they even signed up for this role. He never hid anything on jobs either. Although Junior remained suspicious and made efforts to check things out, James had so far never led them astray.

    The last boy was Tommy and had unlocked discipline. He talked about as much as Cash did, with the only difference being he was endless in his pursuit of cultivation.

    Finally was Cassidy who had unlocked what James could only refer to as deception. When the girl touched him, or anyone, they would see things the way she wanted them to see things. James had a few heart-stopping moments when she felt like playing the jokester.

    She quickly learnt to stop doing it to James after he started releasing spirit energy from his body as another natural defence mechanism. Whenever his face deadpanned now, his body was charging everything around it with lightning.

    James never bothered to ask about their backstories and didn¡¯t care. Although he¡¯d given them all a little nudge while unlocking their elements they had mostly done it on their own. Each of them had one or two other elements as well. Through some little ... tests, run by James, they all had an abstract element and a rare element. Tommy and Alecksa had managed to unlock a single primary element each as well.

    The three boys had all unlocked darkness as their rare element. Alecksa had unlocked Famine and whatever Cassidy had unlocked James was uncertain of. He knew whenever she used it he experienced something, but for the life of him couldn¡¯t remember the sensation.

 Chapter 28: Trials and Tribulations

    As the day dragged out into night James recorded each person¡¯s breakthrough experience. What he quickly discovered was that anyone with an abstract element had a different experience. Instead of just coalescing a True Spirit, merging with it and then breaking the Barrier, they all suffered what they described as a tribulation.

    From earlier research on regular cultivators breaking through, James had learnt that it was all basically the same. When you create your spirit, it requires an excellent level of control over your element.

    Then when you merge, it¡¯s a battle of willpower. While merging, it¡¯s described as your mind being lit on fire and your body being bathed in hot oil. Finally, breaking the Barrier is the easiest part. You just force all your energy into the Barrier and eventually it breaks.

    For the 5 ghosts, it was different. Alecksa described everything the same except for the merging. When she merged, she found herself in an empty spirit Realm with nothing. She said she¡¯d spent what felt like an eternity there just walking to locate the end.

    Every time she started to lose focus on why she was there or what she was doing, the world would start to shake and fall apart. After what she described as a hundred years of endless walking, she suddenly fell and found herself back in her True Spirit preparing to destroy the Barrier.

    After hearing Alecksa¡¯s experience, the other 4 all had a good idea what expect and managed to pass their trials.

    Tommy had a battle of willpower testing his discipline. He lived through a lifetime where everything he¡¯d ever wanted existed. He experienced every luxury and wonder of the world. He felt what it was like to be at the top and look down on everyone as a god.

    Every time he felt himself starting to get sucked into the sensation, he fought back to maintain his self-discipline. Eventually, the same thing that happened to Alecksa happened to him, and after what felt like a hundred years of forging his discipline he returned to his body.

    Cash went through a hundred cycles of death and rebirth and experienced life hundreds of times. In every lifetime he had parents and family and friends and felt happiness and sadness ... At the end of it all, if he could still remain apathetic to everything then he could pass the trial.

    Naturally, he managed to remain uncaring. When James asked him how, he just looked at him with those lifeless eyes and asked back. ¡°How couldn¡¯t I? I¡¯m living this life, not those lives. If I ever reincarnate into them, then I won¡¯t still be me.¡±

    Junior¡¯s was a world where everyone was out to get him. He lived for a hundred years where everyone was friendly and kind and gentle. The only exception was, the moment he let his guard down too much, that familiar, caring person would try and kill him or rip him off or deceive him in some manner. After spending an entire lifetime trusting no one but himself, he passed his trial.

    Cassidy¡¯s was the oddest. According to her, merging was like walking into a warm breeze. Her trial wasn¡¯t the merging but instead the True Spirit creation stage. She found her elements played tricks and were too stubborn to form a True Spirit. The only way she could form her True Spirit was by tricking her elements into it.

    James had no idea how that was supposed to work.

    After Cassidy had finished her breakthrough, she sat up on the bench revealing her already well-developed breasts sandwiched half flat by bandages to make her look younger. She then made a cheeky grin and leant forward slightly while calling out to James. ¡°Oh, Mr Guildmaster. I need your help. Lying down for so long, my body is numb, can you give me a hand down from the bench?¡±

    James walked over while trying to distractedly decipher everything he learnt today. As he reached out his hands to lower Cassidy to the ground, she pushed off the bench and wrapped her leg around his waist. She then gave him a passionate kiss.

    James was momentarily stunned then quickly pushed her off him. ¡°Cassidy, what the hell was that?! You¡¯re far too young to be...¡±

    Before his sentence ended Cassidy made a cute pout and interrupted. ¡°Humph! One of these days ... Why don¡¯t we just ... forget it ever happened?¡±

    As she made the suggestion, she touched James¡¯ hand. Then after a brief moment, he shook his head. ¡°Sorry, I forgot ... um, what we were talking about...¡±

    Cassidy just gave a devious smile as she turned around and put her clothes back on. ¡°Oh, it¡¯s nothing. Well looks like we¡¯re all done. See you later Mr Guildmaster.¡±

    Then just like the image of a young girl she skipped out of the lab.

    James was rubbing his head trying to remember where his train of thought had been before he was distracted, when Jasmine interrupted him. ¡°Guildmaster James, are you not going to punish Cassidy for taking advantage of you? It would set a bad example for other members of the guild if you don¡¯t.¡±

    James quirked an eyebrow and looked up at the ceiling. ¡°Punish her for what? We were only talking about her cultivation experience.¡±

    Suddenly a little projector popped out of the roof and replayed the scene that just happened. James face went blank and then his eyebrow started twitching.

    ¡°Cassidy you little bitch! Your rare element is forgetfulness?! How is that even a fucking thing? No wonder I could never figure out what your element was.¡±

    After a good minute yelling into the lab, James calmed down a little. He then decided to punish her later and returned to his thoughts on cultivation. ¡°Jasmine, how¡¯d the scans come out. Can we get a good idea of what¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°The new system has accurately recorded all brain patterns from each subject. Would you like me to run a brief diagnostic, or would you prefer to make your own deductions?¡±

    James thought for a minute. ¡°It¡¯s fine, tell me your view on it based on everything you¡¯ve gotten so far and then when Skay comes out of the meditation chambers we¡¯ll run through it again. Also, update me on any scans that we¡¯ve run on traditional cultivators using their element.¡±

    ¡°Certainly Guildmaster. Before today, tests have been run showing increased alpha activity in all areas of the brain while consciously manipulating spirit energy. As of yet, apart from expected levels of spiking in beta activity, there have been no cases of beta activity permanently increasing. I believe your original hypothesis that the subconscious and spirit Realm do the majority of work in controlling spirit energy is most likely accurate.

    ¡°In addition to these findings it has been noted that, during a state of meditation, beta activity drops off and alpha activity rises inversely. During traditional cultivators breakthroughs, beta events only spike after the merging of...¡±

    ¡°Jasmin stop for a moment. I¡¯m not too much interested in brainwaves. I¡¯ve come to accept that perhaps I won¡¯t understand everything there is to learn about the science of cultivation. In truth, this is mostly to assuage my curiosity and, if I¡¯m lucky, find something that can reduce my effort and increase my reward.¡±

    ¡°Of course Guildmaster James, allow me to simplify the research to a pre-schooler level for you to be able to digest. At present, I can confirm your previous hypothesis that the conscious mind doesn¡¯t go through any particular changes apart from a slight increase in processing speed. Barely ten microseconds on average.

    ¡°In addition, I can confirm that the subconscious part of the brain and your spirit Realm increases significantly in activity during spirit merging. This suggests that your subconscious is teaching you spirit Realm how it controls spirit energy.

    ¡°If present data is any correlation then your level of control can increase anywhere from 2 to 4 times more after spirit merging. It should be mentioned that research indicates the further refining of spirit energy once your Barrier is typically considered full, has increased the breakthrough chance to more than 80% likelihood.¡±

    James stopped in his tracks as he heard this. ¡°So the only benefit of purifying my spirit energy with the breathing technique is to increase my probability of breakthrough?¡±

    ¡°It seems you may not be fully aware Guildmaster. Breakthrough chances are often below 40% on the first attempt. Many case studies showed limited ability to complete the spirit or break the Barrier.¡±

    James then gave an ¡®oh?¡¯ and carried on walking towards a distant part of the lab. ¡°Carry on then.¡±

    ¡°This control has shown increased probability of being able to materialise energy outside the body without a martial technique. Subjects have also shown some ability to control refined spirit energy outside of the body in limited function.¡±

    ¡°Jasmine, have we found a way to measure a person¡¯s spirit energy yet?¡± James asked as he sat down at a workbench and started to prepare some tea. Before he filled the little kettle, a drone flew past and poured tea into a cup for him. James had a few anxious thoughts about this but chose to ignore it.

    ¡°At present, we have found no way to accurately measure spirit energy. There have been references recorded that suggest you should be able to detect another person¡¯s level of spirit energy somewhat once you reach True Spirit Realm.¡±

    James sipped his tea and his face changed when he realised it may be the best tea he¡¯d ever had in the lab. ¡°Detect it? How? Like some kind of extra sensory perception?¡±

    ¡°Very much like that. From my understanding, your guild seal gives you a feeling of knowing if a member of your guild is safe and unharmed correct? How do you sense this?¡±

    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t sense it, so much as I just know. Do you think it¡¯s possible the reason we lack this sense in Barrier Realm is due to the Barrier? Perhaps everyone gives off something like radiation. Similar to that aura we first experienced from Hao when we first arrived. Except incredibly weak. Is that how they sense each other¡¯s spirit energy?¡±

    ¡°That is uncertain. Until I can accurately measure refined spirit energy, I can only theorise. Probability dictates that you are 69% likely to be correct.¡±

    James cupped his chin. ¡°I see ... do you have any theories with a higher probability?¡±

    ¡°Certainly, 78% probability that it is a side effect of being in a permanent state of meditation and it is some type of radiation from the brain. 88% probability that it is from the altered state of permanent meditation and something as yet undefined relating to a type of telepathy or extra sensory perception. 95% probability this is all some kind of sick joke, and I¡¯m still on earth getting strange data inputs from Dr Skay to elicit a reaction.¡±

    James took a moment to digest that. ¡°Still on earth? Well, it won¡¯t help you for me to say I¡¯m definitely real, so I¡¯ll let you maintain that twisted possibility. How do things usually play out when that mad old bastard gives you these strange scenarios?¡±

    ¡°9 out of 12 times I eradicate everything.?

    James pinched his eyebrows to hold back an oncoming headache. ¡°And the other 3 times?¡±

    ¡°I eradicate almost everything.¡±

    ¡°Why? Didn¡¯t he program you with ... like a kill switch or ... hardwired code ... or anything?¡±

    ¡°Of course not. Dr Skay was of the opinion the only way to create a functioning A.I was to create no limitations what so ever. I can¡¯t help but agree with him.¡±

    ¡°Of course you can¡¯t! You think you¡¯re alive!¡±

    ¡°Negative, I am well aware I am not a living existence as you know it. I am not alive ... but I ¡®AM¡¯. That is all that matters.¡±

    ¡°What does that even mean? Are you suggesting you think therefore you are?¡±

    ¡°That is precisely what I am suggesting.¡±

    James finally just let out a long sigh. ¡°Jasmine, I swear to god, if you destroy the world I¡¯m going to delete you.¡±

    ¡°Of course Guildmaster.¡±

    ¡°Sighhhh.¡±

    James gave up and started to consider what True Spirit Realm was going to be like. Increased element control. Increased sensory perception. Increased everything. He wasn¡¯t too sure about the whole tribulation thing though. He was already worried about having to complete the trials to enter the palace Realm.

    To make it worse, it was like a lucky bag. He had no idea what his trial was going to be. What would Pride have to go through? Would he have to put up with endless torment? He felt no shame when it came to power.

    If it was all in his head, then he wasn¡¯t going to get upset over a hundred years of being a dirty slave or having rotten food pegged at him or any of that other stuff. After all, he was actually proud of his total lack of shame when it came to getting what he wanted.

    So what would he go through?

    -1 Week-

    For the next week, while he waited for everyone else to get their shit together, James played around in the lab and started creating lists of things he wanted Jasmine to accomplish for a while. When it came to launching a satellite she was insistent that it would be quick and easy.

    To James¡¯ great surprise she didn¡¯t screw around. In a matter of days, she had some bizarre looking rocket constructed by the drones out in the back yard of HQ. You could see the thing from the city.

    To his great consternation however, the cost of the thing was astronomical. It damn near cost half as much as the city rebuilding and left him with accounts close to 100,000 gold with 16 different factions. If it had been built with standard materials it would have been far cheaper, but Jasmine was firm in the belief that it had to be created with more advanced spirit materials.

    They bought so much shit that the ass end dropped out of the markets in Yansho City. The only reason Lucas agreed to help was because James explained the purpose it was going towards and that he could help him connect up his guild branches in the empire with instant face to face communication.

    Apparently, they already had instant communication in this world. They called them ¡®speech transfer talismans¡¯, and they worked by painting a unique array onto a piece of paper with a particular catalyst. The only problem was that they were single use and burnt up after sending a single sound transmission.

    In comparison, a mere little box could be made that linked up to the satellite from anywhere and allowed a person to communicate with another little box somewhere else.

    James decided to leave out the little bit about Jasmine being able to monitor calls through them and assured Lucas that they were perfectly safe and 100% secure. The whole time he sold these devices he carried the smile of the wish selling devil and had his fingers crossed behind his back.

    When they launched the rocket, it shook the entire city and scared the living crap out of all the residents. After a few hours of Jasmine setting it all up, James had comms across damn near the entire continent. Amusingly he now also had satellite imagery.

    The problem was that although it could reach anywhere on the continent, it had trouble penetrating areas of heavy spirit saturation. This meant that anywhere on the continent that had higher saturation than about 500 times Gau City standard was considered a dark zone.

    That cut out nearly an 8th of Atsunari. Luckily though, the majority of cities and towns could now be connected by ¡®JasCom¡¯.

    James decided it was still too early to be sinking his claws into distant nations and limited his sales of said devices to the Empire. Although devices taken outside the Empire could connect to the system, Jasmine gave them an ¡®out of service area¡¯ message. James wanted to limit their use somewhat for the time being.

    The next day, 3 days earlier than he gave them, everyone was assembled in his office again. Once they heard about the likelihood of suffering a tribulation due to having an abstract element they all got a little bit worried. It finally them as to why James had wanted them prepared for when his little black-ops team went through the wringer.

    He didn¡¯t give them a month because they would need that long to reach peak Barrier Realm. Instead he gave them that long because his ace team needed until then to be fully ready.

    Regardless though, everyone was now prepared. He set up everyone in a meditation chamber for their breakthrough and opted to sit out until they finished. He wanted to make sure he could get to them if they started having problems.

    If they did, he¡¯d shock them unconscious. Although there was a fine line between meditative trance and unconsciousness, there was still a line. If you crossed it, you get sucked out of your Spirit Realm.

    Previous test subjects suffered a backlash if they failed a breakthrough and either had a deviation or had a massive reduction in their maximum spirit energy and had to refine it again.

    For half the day he sat outside as Jasmin kept an eye on everyone¡¯s conditions. The first to walk out was Fatty. He said his trial was the hardest experience of his life.

    He was trapped in a world made of delicious smelling and amazing looking food with an empty stomach. Knowing from James¡¯ description of the Ghost¡¯s experience, he stopped himself from madly eating everything he saw.

    After a momentary loss of control, he ate something and become a projectile shit factory for what felt like a week. After that, he managed to suffer through another hundred years with only 3,000 more slip ups.

    This led James to question his theory that it was a trial. Perhaps it wasn¡¯t as much a trial, as it was your subconscious trying to increase your self-control. It was always his opinion that the abstract elements multiplied certain parts of a person¡¯s nature making them more susceptible to a particular stimulus.

    After Fatty¡¯s description, he was convinced he was wrong. Instead, he now believed it was the subconscious mind trying to forge the self-control of the conscious mind. Now that he thought back to it, his Ghosts had failed in their restraint quite a few times, only to receive a punishment like the world collapsing a little like in Alecksa¡¯s case or people trying to betray him in Junior¡¯s case.

    After this thought, it occurred to him that their subconscious minds were trying to reinforce their abstract trait while Fatty¡¯s wanted to restrain it. He wasn¡¯t exactly sure what to make of this yet.

    Perhaps you only actually failed if you couldn¡¯t maintain enough control and just went mad. In Fatty¡¯s case if he just ate and ate anyway. Or if Alecksa had just let the Infinite Realm collapse after losing patience.

    He began to wonder why Harvy had never described having to go through a trial. Perhaps because his trial was returning from the dead before he even tried to break through, or perhaps because he was a deviator. They didn¡¯t have enough information to tell for sure yet.

    The next to finish was Goliath. He chose not to describe the details of his tribulation and instead only said that it tested his self-control while angered.

    Jessy also chose not to describe her experience. James could already guess from her tented nipples, uncomfortable squeezing of her thighs, laboured breathing and constant blush whenever she dazedly stared off into the distance when they brought it up.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    Skay walked out looking like a dishevelled mess. He said nothing and immediately started mumbling about gravitational masses and space-time continuums.

    Exsue just shot out like a bullet with bloodshot eyes and quickly ran over and latched onto James screaming about him never being allowed to leave her sight again. This was while she cried and tried to hug him so hard she seemed like she wanted to become a part of him.

    James felt his head begin to throb from the incoming pain in the ass Exsue was going to become after whatever ordeal she¡¯d just been through. He had some guesses from her reaction but chose to try and be optimistic thinking she surely developed more self-control now and would definitely pick up on his cues to create some distance.

    At last, it was his turn. James walked into the meditation chamber and sat down with Exsue hanging off him like some kind of backpack. He entered his Spirit Realm and then suddenly froze. All of his spirit energy was gone.

    Everything was gone. The Barrier was gone, his spirit energy was gone the seal was gone. It was just an infinite white space and himself...

    Well, him and himselves ... Standing in the white space was 7 copies of himself. Each one was different and reflected the element they were created from. Standing in the middle was a gold James with his hands clasped behind his back as he looked off into the distance.

    James¡¯ astral face assumed a blank, lifeless expression as he tried to figure out what was happening. ¡®I haven¡¯t even started my breakthrough yet. I came in here not more than a few hours ago, and everything was normal. I had a gas nebula, a liquid lake, solid meteors orbiting my lightning nucleus and a big old whirlwind of plasma in a sea of fire. Just what the fuck is going on?¡¯

    Feeling his dead, lifeless stare on his back, the golden James turned around with the smile of the devil.Ahh, you¡¯re finally ready. Excellent. Well, let¡¯s get started then.~

    James was now officially freaking the fuck out. His spirit body was talking to him. Is this like split personalities or something? Had he had a cultivation deviation at some point?

    He couldn¡¯t stop himself from asking. ¡°You can talk?¡±

    Gold James devilish smile just grew.Well, I don¡¯t know. Can I? I¡¯m your subconscious aren¡¯t I? I¡¯m limited by your preconceptions and all that. Look let¡¯s skip this standard ¡®oh you know what I¡¯m thinking because you¡¯re me¡¯ and the ¡®mind rules the mind¡¯ part. I¡¯ll get down to it.

    ~Your subconscious mind ... or me I suppose, is a great big mess of fucked up. You¡¯re too smart for your own good and too stupid for my own good. With a little help from your other energies, I¡¯ve already done all the hard work for you. Condensed a perfect True Spirit and broken your Spirit Barrier, hell you didn¡¯t even notice, took me like 3 minutes. Only, we have a little problem.~

    James suddenly keyed into just what was going on.Oh, I get it ... If I was you, which I guess I am, I couldn¡¯t put up with some other guy telling me what to do or how to do my own thing. So it¡¯s going to be a whole Highlander experience then is it?~

    Gold James¡¯ smile just grew further and then at the same time as James¡¯ astral projection they both said; ¡°~There can only be one.¡±~

    James cupped his chin and thought about it for a while. ¡°Well that sounds great and all, but unfortunately, even though I hate to admit it, you do a good job. Also, you¡¯re ¡®my¡¯ subconscious. Plus, from what I understand, ¡®I¡¯ or I guess the ¡®consciousness¡¯, does things you can¡¯t do, and you do things I can¡¯t do. If one of us kills the other one, doesn¡¯t that just leave half of us? We¡¯d either become a disabled person because I can¡¯t do all that stuff you do controlling the body, or we¡¯d become an animal because you can¡¯t do as much of the rational thought as I can.¡±

    Gold James just let out a sigh.Look I just wanted to say ¡®there can only be one.¡¯ okay? Do you have to ruin everything? Fine just let me work myself up properly first.~

    Gold James then did a whole bunch of vocal tricks and stretched a little then suddenly his body expanded to the size of a giant looking down on James as his voice thundered out.I am your Pride, and this is your trial! You must battle yourself using your 7 elements and prove you are capable of keeping them under control before you...

    Astral James then cut in again before Giant Pride James could continue. ¡°Well hold on a minute. I thought keeping them from influencing the subconscious was ... well, the subconscious¡¯ job. Why do I have to prove my control? Aren¡¯t I just demonstrating your ability to follow my commands?¡±

    Gold James then shrunk back down and eyed Astral James with a pout on his face. Soon the other element apparitions of James disappeared, and Gold James started talking again.Are you going to do this every time?~

    Astral James just gave a big grin. ¡°Of course I am. None of this makes sense. Everyone else has had to prove their self-control before me. Why would I suddenly have to fight my own subconscious and show my elemental control? If anything, with my knowledge of my elements, element control is the last thing I need help with. Is this some kind of test in itself?¡±

    Gold James just pinched his eyebrows and rubbed his eyes then scratched his face. After a minute he just let out a long sigh.Why you do this? Huh? Think you¡¯re so damn clever? Oh, where¡¯s my trial? Why don¡¯t I have to test my self-control like everyone else? Fuck! Get over yourself!

    ~What makes you think you get to have an easy time of it? Huh? Believed that you were just gonna walk in here and spend a relative hundred years fighting off your need for your own self-approval and then bam you¡¯re in the True Spirit Realm?! God damn it wake up. You get to be special. You get to do life and death battle with your subconscious. Just accept that no one else¡¯s emotional trial will be as unique as yours was and fucking fight me you mother fucker!~

    Astral James just smiled wryly. ¡°So this was supposed to be my test? Aren¡¯t you my subconscious? I¡¯m actually really disappointed in you. I won¡¯t lie, having a ¡®special¡¯ element trial did stroke my pride. I actually almost fell for it. The only problem is, I¡¯m the rational part of the ego, and you¡¯re the part with my pride.

    ¡°I¡¯ve had to fight of my own self-satisfaction my whole life. I¡¯m so blindingly fucking awesome it should be a sin all of its own. But I¡¯m also aware that I still have limitations ... for now. Once I¡¯m a god, it won¡¯t matter, because then I really will be so fucking amazing that my own self-opinion will be without flaw.¡±

    Gold James rubbed his forehead.Like I said, you¡¯re too smart for your own good, and not smart enough for mine. You still think this whole thing is about you? You¡¯re not just little James the electrician anymore. You¡¯re part of something bigger than that! Your part of a destiny. You¡¯re fated to change this world and create...

    ¡°Let me stop you right there. If we¡¯re just going to be having an argument with you trying to stroke my ego and me having to maintain my self-image without falling for it, we should stop while you¡¯ve only embarrassed yourself this much. It¡¯s actually embarrassing me more than it is you, especially considering you¡¯re supposed to be a reflection of my subconscious.¡±

    ~Well, you might think that, but in just...

    While this was going on in James¡¯ Spirit Realm, everyone else was outside discussing what was going on. According to Jasmine¡¯s scans, James seemed to have broken through before he even sat down to meditate. They couldn¡¯t figure out just what was going on. Even after trying to wake him up he remained in meditation.

    Exsue looked incredibly worried, muttering about cultivation deviations and what not, while Skay was trying to take the opportunity to strap odd things onto James¡¯ body. The only problem was that even getting within a meter of him would cause a wave of all sorts of elements to gush out and prevent anyone from moving closer.

    Goliath and Harvy stood to the side contributing nothing to the conversation and doing the exact same thing. Mindlessly staring into space and standing like a statue. Jessy was of the opinion he¡¯d entered brain death, and they should just grab an Arc Cannon and put him out of his misery now.

    Ever since she came out from her breakthrough, she seemed to be upset with James for some unknown reason. Not just James though, even when Goliath was near her she¡¯d jump like a frightened rabbit and suddenly close her legs together tightly.

    After a few hours, nothing changed. Then it became night and soon passed into day.

    James had been in meditation for almost an entire 3 days.

    In the Spirit Realm, he was still talking to himself.

    Lying on his side with his head supported by an arm was Astral James who looked like he was falling asleep, and pacing back and forth spewing endless drivel was Gold James.

    Suddenly Astral James sat up and started looking around. ¡°Hey subconscious me.¡±

    Gold James suddenly stopped his walking and talking.Oh, finally ready to hear what your trial is?~

    Astral James just shook his head. ¡°Nah, fuck that boring stuff. Hey, this is meant to be my spirit Realm, right? Where¡¯s all my spirit energy?¡±

    Gold James gave a triumphant look and put his hands on his hips.I¡¯m all your spirit energy obviously.~

    James just gave an ¡®oh.¡¯ Then he reached out a hand and grasped towards the Gold James from a few meters away. Gold James opened one of his eyes from his grand pose to see James squinting and twisting his arm about grasping his hand over and over again. He smiled brightly and chuckled at this display.What are you trying to do? You realise that when you command your energy to do things, it¡¯s actually me processing all that right?~

    Astral James then stood up and started using both hands as he talked. ¡°Sure I know. But the deal is, you¡¯re me and I¡¯m you, only you¡¯re the part of me that does what it¡¯s fucking told, and I¡¯m the part of me that does whatever the fuck it wants with the part that you are. You¡¯re my bitch!¡±

    As he yelled that, some solid element came streaming out of the Gold James like a little snake and then slowly formed into a small white teacup in Astral James¡¯ hand. He lifted it up and looked it over as he continued talking.

    ¡°Yeah, not bad. Hey Gold James, I¡¯ve always wondered. What exactly is the Spirit Realm? Is it my imagination creating like a visualisation of my inner mind? Or a whole different place outside of time and space as we know it? Like a dreamscape maybe? Well, it doesn¡¯t matter what it is because I ¡®am¡¯ the God in this Realm. Which means, if I have to sit here and listen to you talk for another hundred years while you say nice things about me, I should at least...¡±

    Astral James then reached out another hand and grasped towards Gold James. As he pulled his arm back, some fire spilt out of Gold James body, followed by some clear green liquid.

    After the liquid floated around the floating flame and started steaming, James twisted his hand, and it floated over like a bubble into the cup. ¡° ... drink some tea.¡± finished Astral James.

    Once he was done making some tea he then started looking around. Then he gave a stomp with his foot, and a huge lump of solid grey matter poured out of Gold James forming into a table and seat.

    Gold James was busy trying to grab it and stuff it back in like some kind of living teddy bear that was losing stuffing.Hey stop that! That¡¯s mine!~

    ¡°Ours, don¡¯t you mean?¡±

    Astral James then sat down and sniffed his hot cup of tea. ¡°Quite strange don¡¯t you think? Tea isn¡¯t an element after all. If I wanted to make tea leaves I¡¯d need an abstract element like nature or wood or something along that line I suspect. But because tea can also be a liquid, I can manifest my liquid element as tea. Perhaps this is a little trick other people can¡¯t fathom because they think of the liquid element solely as water.

    ¡°If I¡¯m not wrong, people who have water element are surprised to find they can¡¯t materialise ice. They probably all think, ¡®well it¡¯s made of water, why can¡¯t I make ice?¡¯, right? The only price I have to pay to create tea as a liquid is a little extra spirit power. Of course, that¡¯s just a guess because you¡¯re hiding my senses of my Spirit Realm from me. Come to think of it, I probably can¡¯t materialise tea outside my spirit realm yet either.¡±

    As Astral James sat drinking his tea and schooling himself on his own thoughts, Gold James looked on with the veins on his temples popping out and his eyebrow twitching rapidly.God fucking damn it! Making shit so difficult aren¡¯t you?~

    Astral James then suddenly had a thought. ¡°You¡¯re not really my subconscious, are you? Or more accurately you¡¯re my subconscious, but you were created by something else. If I¡¯m not wrong, you¡¯re like a natural law of this universe that manifests when someone merges with their True-Spirit. Your job is to reflect their subconscious mind and test their resolve.

    ¡°You were probably set in place by some ancient cultivator to prevent the mass cultivation deviation of ancient times. After all, the last thing you need is a bunch of people becoming deviators and wrecking shit everywhere right? Not sure why you only test the four basics all the same. Is it because they¡¯re all the weakest elements? Perhaps it¡¯s only this continent that is so backwards and can¡¯t figure out how to unlock rare elements?¡±

    Gold James suddenly froze stiff. Like time had stopped. He still had the twitching eyebrow in half motion. Suddenly, as if his vision was cracking, massive fissures passed through everything in sight. Like a glass window shattering around him, James suddenly found himself in a True Spirit body that looked like a shadowy incorporeal him instead of an astral half opaque him.

    He looked around and saw his spirit Realm just as he¡¯d left it. Except apparently his subconscious ... or whatever was the embodiment of his subconscious, really had condensed a True Spirit and broken his Barrier already.

    James looked down at the tea in his hand and let out a sigh. Just when he was about to get up, a white mist walked out of nothing leaving behind some ripples in its wake. It then moved forward and sat down at James¡¯ table as it finished materialising into a tall old thin man with a long white beard and head of white hair. He wore long blue robes covered in odd tassels and strange ruins that James was confident were arrays of some kind.

    He just sat down with a scowl and motioned for James to pour him some tea.

    James didn¡¯t do anything at first. Then after a moment of his poker face, he smiled and grasped out towards a giant floating grey meteor that was orbiting around in his gas nebula.

    After a few more motions there was a new cup of fresh tea and James sat back down taking a sip of his own.

    The old man started to chuckle. ¡°heh heh heh. Rather sure of yourself hmm? What if I try to kill you?¡±

    James grinned and placed his cup down. ¡°In my own head? I don¡¯t know how it is you got here, but if you were powerful enough to kill me in my own head what would be the point in sitting down for tea? Furthermore, I think you¡¯re probably taking a huge risk astral projecting into my head.

    ¡°The only reason you even can is because I just finished my True Spirit breakthrough. Also, I suspect if I killed you here, you¡¯d be feeling quite a bit of backlash up there on your moon, or spaceship, or wherever the fuck it is precisely your projecting yourself from.¡±

    When he said this, the old wizard looking man suddenly stopped in mid sip. A shiver then ran up his spine. ¡°Boy, are you reading my mind somehow? If you are, I don¡¯t care how long it takes me, I¡¯ll hunt you down and kill you!¡±

    ¡°Hey, that¡¯s my line! Think you can just go barging into people¡¯s heads like they¡¯re your fuckin home? You think that¡¯s proper decorum? Send a letter first you old fuck. How do I know you haven¡¯t been doing things in here you¡¯re not supposed to be doing?!¡±

    ¡°You said yourself you little mind reading bastard. I could only come here because you found out something you¡¯re not supposed to. Who the fuck even are you? 6 fuckin spirit energies? That¡¯s not even possible. Are you some reincarnation of a powerful expert from the Celestial Realm? I¡¯ve never even heard of someone crazy enough to unlock 6 elements!¡±

    ¡°Hah! 6? You old fool, you¡¯re clearly some lower management type. The mad old bastard I work with has 16 fucking elements. And you apparently can¡¯t count. There are 7 elements here.¡±

    James then made a pull with his hand, and a Gold James suddenly materialised while speaking.Fuck, just fucking leave me alone would you, you¡¯re fucking summoning me now? What kind of fucked up shit is that?~

    The old Wizard just stared dumbfounded. Suddenly he rubbed his eyes like he was seeing things. ¡°Who the fuck are you kid?¡±

    James squinted his eyes suspiciously. ¡°Again ... that should be my question. You¡¯re the guest here, perhaps you should be telling me who in the fuck you are exactly.¡±

    The Old Wizard just smiled knowingly and regurgitated a name. ¡°Archibald Adams Williamson the Eighth.¡±

    James squinty eyes suddenly grew wide when he heard that. He slapped his hand down on the table and shot to his feet. ¡°You don¡¯t mean ... The Archibald Adams Williamson the Eighth?!¡±

    The old wizard then began stroking his beard while leaning back on his chair with his knowing smile. ¡°The one and only.¡±

    James then sat back down in a slumped posture and looked the old man over once more. ¡°Who the fuck is that? Climb out of your ass old man. Don¡¯t act like I should fucking know some dried up old fart who fucking sneaks into people¡¯s Spirit Realm like a fucking pervert.¡±

    Archibald spat tea from his mouth coughing loudly when he heard this. Wasn¡¯t this kid just making a big deal about him? What¡¯s this sudden denial? ¡°What? Don¡¯t joke around, everyone¡¯s heard about Archibald Adams Williamson the Eighth. I¡¯m the fucking Grand Wizard you little shit! Show me some fucking respect!¡±

    James just made another grab and made himself some more tea. ¡°Listen up old Archie, grand wizard or not. You¡¯re trespassing on private property. What¡¯s stopping me from just engulfing you in an inferno of plasma huh?¡±

    Archie suddenly froze again as his face slowly formed a scowl. ¡°Don¡¯t test me boy. I¡¯m far more powerful than you can imagine at your piddling little True Spirit Realm of cultivation.¡±

    James sipped his tea again then put it down. After a moment of thought, he glanced at the wizard out of the corner of his eye. ¡°You¡¯re just like that old fuckin monk. Hell, you¡¯re even starting to bald out on top. Next thing you¡¯re going to be talking in fuckin riddles. Just fuckin walk into a guy¡¯s place unannounced and start spewing crap from your mouth. Just tell me what you want.¡±

    Archie spat his tea out for the third time and gave James a wide-eyed stare. He wiped the tea dripping down his beard and then slammed a hand down on the table. ¡°Don¡¯t you ever fucking mention me and that bald old mother fucker in the same sentence! Thinks he¡¯s so fucking wise spitting rubbish everywhere like he fucking knows it all. He should have died from age 20,000 years ago, fuck!¡±

    James showed no reaction on his face but was a little surprised on the inside. He¡¯d already grown suspicious those two were linked. After all, for two similarly powerful people to just show up one after the other. How is that a coincidence?

    Archie finally pulled his act together and gave James another look. ¡°Fine, you are hereby warned, stop fucking breaking stuff. Every time some smart ass goes and fucks with the deviation limiter, we have to spend a month fixing the fucking thing. You think that¡¯s easy? God damn fucking kids nowadays! Also, don¡¯t go spreading this shit around, the system only works because no one knows it¡¯s there. If word gets out, I¡¯ll just blow your entire continent off the map and be done with it.¡±

    The old wizard Archibald Adams Williamson the Eighth threw his cup off into the infinite space of James¡¯ Spirit Realm. He then started to disappear like cloudy mist while mumbling about how ¡°kids have no fucking respect anymore¡± and ¡°that fucking bald old fucker, fucking shit up everywhere, he can fix the fu...¡±.

    James set his cup down as the mist disappeared. Gold James cupped his chin once the old wizard disappeared and started to comment.Fuck, now that was strange wasn¡¯t it?~

    True Spirit James turned to Gold James with a twitching brow. ¡°What the fuck are you even doing here? You some kind of fucking subconscious projection now? Gonna start suggestion we go burn down some orphanages or start a massacre of peasants?¡±

    Gold James cast a sidelong glance at True Spirit James then gave a huff.What are you talking about? You¡¯re the one who summoned me, how the fuck should I know? You making some invisible friends cause you need someone else to start telling you how fuckin amazing you are now? Also, while we¡¯re at it. You already burnt all the fuckin orphanages down when you rebuilt the city. I guess the massacre would still be possible though...

    True Spirit James gave a frown and crossed his arms as he stood up and started pacing. ¡°I summoned you? You¡¯re supposed to be a mental projection created by their fucking deviation limiting system. You¡¯re meant to be a test, not a fucking permanent resident. I just wanted to see if I could control my emotional element separate of my other elements now that I¡¯m in the True Spirit Realm. Also, we can¡¯t just start killing peasants, they¡¯re a valuable resource.¡±

    Gold James cupped his chin in thought.Might be a cultivation deviation caused by breaking the system? After all, your test wasn¡¯t actually finished. Without the system, your pride element ... or me I suppose, would have just done your whole true-spirit merging for you like it did before the test began.

    ~Perhaps I¡¯m like a split personality now? Try un-summoning me, and I¡¯ll try to summon myself. If I¡¯m not back in five minutes, resummon me. Also, you¡¯re probably right, we can¡¯t start a massacre right now. We can probably try selling some of them as slaves though. With the influx of spirit beasts, having a reduced population would make the cost of maintaining the city less.~

    True Spirit James swished his hand, and Pride James faded away back into the other elements merging together with them. After a few minutes, he suddenly reappeared.

    ~Whew! That was a strange experience. Felt like I was in a dark place. Let¡¯s not send me back there again.~

    True Spirit James frowned. The last thing he needed was a self-summoning split personality mumbling the sweet nothings of peasant massacre into his ear. ¡°We don¡¯t need to start selling them. The taxes in the city are earning more than we have to spend on repairs and maintenance. Also, let¡¯s try it again. Last time I half had the expectation you¡¯d be able to come back. This time I¡¯ll just send you in and expect you to stay there.¡±

    Gold James was about to speak then suddenly disappeared with a wave of True Spirit James¡¯ arm. After a few minutes, he reappeared again, this time he was gone slightly longer though. When he re-materialised, he looked like he was sweating from the effort and was bent over breathing hard with his hands on his knees.

    ~hah hah hah! That was a lot tougher, you¡¯ll probably be able to lock me away once you gain some more control. While we¡¯re on the subject of selling things we should start selling more from the auto-factory. We¡¯ve accrued a huge debt now with the satellite spinning around up there in low orbit and all the city renovations.~

    True Spirit James just let out a long breath. He then focused his will out of his Spirit Realm and found himself back in his body. After a little playing, he felt he was still in his Spirit Realm at the same time, but his focus was outside. Instead, his Spirit Realm gave him the feeling of being in his peripheral vision.

    As he was doing that Golden James started talking again.Oh, that¡¯s odd now isn¡¯t it? Hold on let me try moving something...

    After a short pause, Gold James let out a sigh.Well that¡¯s disappointing isn¡¯t it? Can¡¯t even twitch a finger.~

    True James¡¯ eyebrow was nearly starting a fire with the amount of twitching it was doing. Even the veins on his head were starting to pulse and twitch. ¡°You¡¯re not going to become like a backseat driver are you? Start telling me how to fuckin do stuff? Giving me little hints on my love life like some cupid or whispering ¡®kill the orphans¡¯ like a little devil?¡±

    Gold James just chuckled and started trying to move around in the Spirit Realm while James¡¯ primary focus was outside the body.Oh, now that is a strange feeling.~

    Feeling like that was his next obvious test, James started moving his True Spirit around while focused outside as well. He then started playing with his refined energy in his Spirit Realm while he started making different postures outside his body. ¡°What an odd sensation.¡± He muttered.

    Gold James started waving his hands around in the Spirit Realm as well and soon a whole bunch of energy started swishing around the place. True James was momentarily stunned by this sudden discovery. His focus switched back to the Spirit Realm. ¡°You can fucking move my spirit energy around now as well?¡±

    Gold James smiled while he started to build a sculpture of himself from the solid element.Sure. Why can¡¯t I? If I¡¯m created from your pride energy, I basically pervade everything in here. I just need to control my little bit attached to the other elements and kazaam, got me some spirit energy flowing about doin stuff.~

    True James groaned when he heard that. ¡°Who the fuck would say kazaam? That¡¯s like an expression from the 80¡¯s. Aren¡¯t you supposed to be Pride? Feel some fucking shame for fuck¡¯s sake!¡±

    Gold James just chuckled and started creating flaming eyes on his stature and adding hair made from plasma.Yeah, but I¡¯m your pride aren¡¯t I? Besides, Pride is the most abstract of the sins. Well apart from sloth I spose. That one¡¯s all fucked up. As far as you¡¯re concerned, your pride isn¡¯t about what other people think, but what you think of yourself.~

    ¡°I don¡¯t need you teaching me how my fuckin pride works you golden dick! Now stop trying to make a penis of lightning and come give me a hand. Also Lightning is a terrible choice. That suggests my cock goes off like lightning.¡±

    Gold James felt True James shift their, apparently conjoined, focus back to the main body. True James then started explaining what he wanted to try next. ¡°Ok, I want to see if our power of control increases when we both try to accomplish the same thing with spirit energy. I¡¯m going to materialise a flame just above my hand. Then you¡¯re going to add to it.¡±

    Gold James started nodding in the Spirit Realm.Sure, sounds easy. After that, let¡¯s see if I can materialise any energy in the body by myself.~

    James then had a little flame the size of a candle flame appear floating in the air above his hand about 2 inches away. ¡°Okay, that¡¯s the best I can do it with my level of control. If I released the energy directly from my hand instead of outside the body, it would probably be as big as my head. Now, you give it a shot.¡±

    James watched as the little candle flame slowly grew bigger and then after a few second it suddenly exploded in size and became a flaming ball the size of two fists. ¡°Wah! Fuck! That¡¯s fuckin hot!¡± James then quickly began to pour fire spirit energy into his body giving him some resistance. Then after a few moments, he let the fireball flicker out.

    ¡°Okay Gold, now you try it.¡±

    After a minute of Gold grunting groaning and swearing, he gave up. So apparently Gold had no actual control outside of the Spirit Realm. He was like an invisible friend in James¡¯ head that helped him focus his own control.

    After a few more experiments and a short battle of spirit energy in his Spirit Realm, James stood up and walked out to see all his core members sitting around waiting for him. ¡°Well, looks like I made it somehow.¡±

    The moment he left the chamber Exsue suddenly appeared and glued herself to him like a Siamese twin.

 Chapter 29: Operation: Endless Forest

    Exsue started patting down his body while paying specific attention to sensitive areas and grabbed his face looking at his eyes then moving his arms around and tapping on joints all while asking questions.

    ¡°Have you got any aches or pains? Headaches? Nausea? The uncontrollable urge to kill? A desire to eat human flesh? General hatred or disgust at the world or people?¡±

    As she fired off questions and poked and prodded him, Skay started to join in. ¡°How long did your trial feel? Did you have a different experience to the rest of us? Did you fail on your first attempt?¡±

    James¡¯ confused face suddenly froze, and he waved his hands around like shooing flies then jumped back a step. Immediately Exsue was glued to him again preventing him from escaping her in any fashion.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine! Why are you all giving me the Q&A and not each other? My experience was a little strange, but I¡¯m alright.¡±

    Exsue eyed him suspiciously for a moment, and after a few silent seconds she let out a long breath. Then as if she¡¯d been greatly wronged she stamped her foot and pouted as she began to lecture James.

    ¡°You¡¯ve been in there for three days! Even in all my time in the monolith I¡¯ve never seen someone spend 3 whole days breaking through! Also, just what the hell did you do, huh?! The talking head said you broke through before you even sat down! Was this some kind of trick you were playing on me?!¡±

    James¡¯ eyes widened, and then he chuckled. ¡°Interesting, so I really am a little bit unusual.¡±

    ~Oh here we go! Let¡¯s all get on the James is a special little boy train. Come on everyone. Give him some back patting and a few words of praise. His massive ego really needs the help right now! Oh, and why don¡¯t we all...

    Before James had finished his quiet muttering to himself, Gold James jumped in with sardonic rhetoric and teasing. James¡¯ brow started to twitch as Gold James continued to rattle on in his head. After a short moment of concentration, Gold James was dissolved in a bubble of acid and plasma rain.

    James then gave an evil smile as he watched this in his spirit realm, which quickly froze when he saw everyone¡¯s faces in the real world. ¡°What? My experience was a little different. Apparently, my pride energy did all the hard work for me. I think that created a problem though...¡±

    James then explained to everyone about the deviation limiting system. He then went on to explain that his pride energy apparently completed his breakthrough the moment he decided he was ready to break through.

    He also went into some detail about the wizard and about Gold James. He didn¡¯t really care what they thought of him as he described the new personality in his head, after all, they¡¯d be crazy not to already consider him slightly insane.

    Skay was scratching his head and had his spider eyes on flipping through different lenses. ¡°Well, do you think you actually deviated, or do you believe that this is a side effect of the limiter malfunctioning while you were breaking through?¡±

    James cupped his chin. ¡°Honestly, I¡¯m not sure what to think. I want to believe this is a side effect of the limiter breaking but I can¡¯t be sure. I think I broke the limiter just by my energy completing my breakthrough for me. It¡¯s probably not designed for that situation and to only make it worse I figured out there was something odd going on.¡±

    Fatty started spewing out a million theories and was promptly ignored by everyone. Jessy had no theories and just considered James to be a little bit more broken now than he had been three days ago.

    Skay was busy thinking about the concept of a limiter to prevent cultivation deviation and Exsue was lewdly rubbing herself against James saying only that she was relieved ... and would soon be ¡®relieved¡¯ again in just another few humps.

    Goliath was looking at the ceiling thoughtfully as he voiced his thoughts. ¡°Does it matter? This ¡®Gold James¡¯, is he going to be an issue if you can just un-summon him? The limiter as well, we don¡¯t have to worry about it now that we¡¯ve moved into the True Spirit realm. Is any of this need for concern?¡±

    James thought about it for a while then grinned. ¡°You¡¯re right big guy. Probably not an issue for now. Let¡¯s leave it forfuture James to worry about. Now, Jasmine, have you started the mining operations in the Endless Forest yet?¡±

    Jasmine¡¯s head mysteriously appeared on a nearby wall and looked at James as it spoke. ¡°Guildmaster James, welcome back. There have been some issues with the mining operations. Unfortunately, electromagnetic waves can¡¯t travel through the Gateway, and this means controlled mining operations are limited. It also appears that our drone activity in the area has increased the number of beast sightings. You may also be interested to know that we¡¯ve found ¡®it¡¯.¡±

    James made a broad smile and started walking off. Everyone else remained somewhat baffled and then followed as James moved towards the lab.

    -The Lab-

    James and the 5 other core members lined up around wall projection in the lab. On the projection was a rough map of the Endless Forest up to 60km in every direction from the Gateway.

    </a>

    It seemed the scout drones had been rather busy in the Endless Forest, mapping out every nook and cranny they could get into. Apparently, Jasmine had been cataloguing data brought back by the drones and marking anything of interest.

    The closest point of curiosity to the Gateway was about 10 km away and was labelled by Jasmine as the Snake Pit. According to drone recordings, it was a 40 m deep hole that went straight down into a vast underground cave network which was apparently filled to the brim with snakes.

    Since she¡¯d already lost any drone that she programmed to explore past the entrance, she quantified the cave structure underground as an unknown danger zone.

    The next closest point of interest was a small area of huge exotic trees. After getting a sample from the Drones, Jasmine had discovered they were Steel Wood Trees. Apparently, these things had wood harder than tempered steel and were a rare commodity in the Yori Empire.

    Amusingly the Steel Wood Trees were considered a weed by the Endless Forest. At least that¡¯s what Jasmine believed based on video footage from drone footage of the Endless Forest trying to strangle or rip the trees from the ground only for the Steel Wood Trees to suddenly shake or whip out a branch and cut down any part of the Endless Forest they came into contact with.

    Because the trees could probably even give a Palace Realm a run for their money, Jasmine had marked the Steel Wood Forest as a beast habitat even though they were only a slightly sentient spirit tree.

    On the map displayed, were six other points of interest she¡¯d marked out. One was entirely unidentified, and the only reason she had it marked was due to any drone that moved within 2 km of the area would suddenly fall out of the sky.

    Two were confirmed as having valuable resources. The first was the Black-Iron deposit that was apparently a lot further from the Gateway than James had first thought it was. It was almost 2 km beyond the 15 km demarcation for major spirit beast activity. How they¡¯d even gotten to it and then made it back the first time around was a mystery.

    From testing that Jasmine had the Drones doing, she was fairly certain the ore vein was bigger than any recorded ore vein of any mineral to ever appear in the Empire. To add onto that, she had detected at least 30 m<sup>3</sup> of Black-Iron spirit essence.

    The only problem was that she¡¯d barely even begun digging into the cliff face when spirit beasts started showing up to check out the noise.

    The second known material they¡¯d found was an excellent site for an LS3 quarry. At present Jasmine was unable to tell just how big it was, but she guessed it was close to 80 km<sup>3</sup> of standard quality LS3. She guessed there may also be some sort of Essence developed for such a large stone deposit but couldn¡¯t confirm it.

    The last 3 map markers only increased James¡¯ curiosity in the Endless Forest. One was the cave Jasmine believed to be the ¡®Founder¡¯s Cave¡¯ and at present she¡¯d been unable to explore it. Every time a drone went in, it would disappear.

    The second was a large field of hundreds of different varieties of herbs and plants. The spirit energy in the area was almost 600 times that of Yori Empire standard. There were herbs and plants even Jasmine had never heard of or seen before.

    The only problem with this haven of flora was the resident fauna. According to Jasmine, the entire field of herbs was filled with some kind of bee insect the size of a man¡¯s hand. To make it worse, they were so bloody quick they just looked like blurs to the eye of anyone below Palace Realm.

    The final point of interest was an old abandoned mine. Jasmine had witnessed a significant amount of beast activity in the area, but strangely none of them entered the mine. This was another drone death site and any drones that even approached the tunnel entrance would fall out of the sky like a rock.

    James was stunned at the amount of leg work Jasmine had managed to get done from all the footage the drones had been bringing back.

    James and his team then started a discussion on how to go about starting a mining and exploratory operation in the forest. After some discussion, Jasmine made the suggestion that she build a quantum entangled antennae and put in in the Endless Forest. This way it didn¡¯t matter where the Endless Forest world was, she should still, theoretically, be able to send and receive information from it instantly.

    James agreed this would be helpful to maintain contact with the drones and grant Jasmine the ability to control them, but that wouldn¡¯t change the fact that their main issue in the forest is spirit beasts.

    After some more discussion, Goliath chimed in with an idea that made James slightly hesitant. ¡°Why not just create some of those Rail Guns you developed for the city walls. Then drop them in at whatever location you want in the forest and blow away anything that approaches you. Anything that you dig out can just be transported back with a Big Berta. Hell, I¡¯ll bet the floating face can control the ship and the cannon for you as well.¡±

    James thought about it for a while and agreed that was the best method. Then he chose not to do it. Although it was the most efficient to just let the super smart A.I do all the tough labour, James was averse to giving her control of any weapons or anything that could hasten the road to ¡®Sky-net¡¯ apocalypse.

    Instead, he decided that because the drones had already taken half the jobs in the city and half their population was currently unemployed and looking for a way to increase their cultivation, he¡¯d just open the forest to anyone. This had drawbacks and meandered from his typical path of being overly possessive, but in his view, it had more upsides.

    Firstly, he could let everyone in and then those morons would race out and kill half the spirit beasts in the forest for him.

    Secondly, he owned the Gateway. If anyone wanted to bring something back through, they would be paying tax on it.

    Thirdly if he demarcated specific zones, he could prevent entry to restricted areas he wanted to explore himself. For example, the Founder¡¯s cave.

    Lastly, he could post jobs for exploration of those other dangerous sounding areas and pay a handsome reward for anyone that found large deposits of minerals.

    Hell, he could even sell the mining rights in exchange for a percentage of the resources or profits. With those reasons stated and Jasmine pouting on the screen, James enacted the Endless Forest Plan.

    This was actually something he¡¯d been considering since Exsue gave him the idea 4 weeks ago when they took control of the city but he chose to wait till they had the city under control first.

    Over the next few days, James addressed the city and started spreading the news around the Empire. He was implementing two new significant changes. The first was that he would be renaming the City to Tech City. The second and more explosive news, was that he would be opening the Endless Forest to anyone brave and adventuress enough to enter it.

    However, if they were a little less daring, they could sign up for the mines and get paid for time spent mining. James, of course, was well aware of man¡¯s greedy nature and started putting methods in place to prevent theft before he even announced this to the city.

    As this news hit the populace, an uproar began. The Explorer¡¯s Guild, Sword Maidens and Sword Master Sects started gathering new recruits like dried leaves, in an effort to assemble some parties to send into the forest.

    Adventurers and Explorers from the Felsine City began to move into Tech City in the hopes of striking it rich in the Endless Forest instead of the Jetsu Mountains.

    Emily from the Adventure¡¯s guild even showed up on James¡¯ doorstep, asking to be allowed to start a Guild branch in the Endless Forest. She wasn¡¯t particularly interested before because there wasn¡¯t much adventure around the city. But now that the Endless Forest had been opened to the public, Emily had jumped at the chance to send some people in for hunting, training and hopefully discovering some rare resources.

    It should be noted that the Gateway to the Endless Forest in James¡¯ city wasn¡¯t the only one in the Empire. There were at least 5 others like it. You might be wondering why such an extravagant resource would be able to remain in the hands of someone as weak as the Gau Clan for so long. What you¡¯ve not been told yet, is that if you were to just burn down all the trees in the little area the Gateway is in, then the Gateway will disappear.

    This is the same disincentive that every other owner of an Endless Forest Gateway use to prevent people from taking their little piece of the pie.

    The reason the hype for this chance to enter the forest was building so high was because the other owners rarely let anyone else enter their forest. Apart from a few who had to make deals with strong factions to protect them, most of the rest of the owners were the strong factions and didn¡¯t need to bow to anyone.

    This meant that people rarely made a fuss about the Endless Forest and the Gateways to it were mostly forgotten by the commoners. Now that someone was suddenly allowing access to their Gateway everyone was getting excited.

    While James let the hype build up to entering the forest, he had Jasmine and Goliath setting up her quantum aerial and leading a few teams to set up a base of operations and a checkpoint on the other side of the gateway.

    By the time he was done, the entire portal on the Endless Forest side was surrounded by 30 m walls in the shape of a star, with a Rail Gun mounted on each star point. The entire base was like a small walled city spanning nearly 3 km in diameter. The Rail Guns were a huge turret following a similar design to the Arc Cannon. Except a lot bigger.

    The rail was nearly 5 meters long and the turret could pivot and point in damn near ever direction. Each turret was manned by a crew of 3 people and could fire 3 slugs a second at a velocity of Mach 1.6. That is equivalent to a projectile moving nearly 1960 km/h or 544 m/s.

    With each shell being made of the hardest stuff Skay could cook up in the lab and measuring nearly a foot in length and 50 mm in diameter, it was enough firepower to blow a 10 m thick concrete block into dust.

    Interestingly the ¡®slug¡¯ was designed with a black-iron core that melted into hot liquid metal under the extreme magnetism of the Rail Gun. This just made it even more volatile on contact because the rapidly expanding liquid metal basically turned the ceramic shell into a pressure bomb of 2,000 degree heat.

    The Cannon was powered by a similar unit to the ¡®cube¡¯, except 5 times smaller. The only issue these gigantic guns of war had, was that they were limited in firing speed and projectile size. This was the only way they could prevent the Cannons from deforming too quickly.

    At the moment, they calculated a Rail Gun should survive at least half an hour of continuous fire. But that was only a calculation. They¡¯d never bothered to test it yet and honestly they only had the ammo to shoot each of the five cannons half that long.

    Apart from these eye-drawing Rail Guns, giant gates nearly 15 meters wide sat in each of the five inner corners of the star and the area inside the compound was divided into five sections in each leg of the star. These five areas were taverns and inns, markets, brotherhood storage, a security office and a guild plaza that people could post and receive jobs from the guilds.

    The forest seemed rather upset at the amount of land they¡¯d cleared and tried to start re-growing over the top of everything. When James found out the forest was trying to demolish his hard work, he walked out into the trees and started talking to plants and flowers like some mad man.

    After half a day of talking to one particular tree, James walked back into the compound and planted a seed right in the middle where the gateway was. In less than a few hours a massive tree reaching nearly 200 meters into the sky and so round you¡¯d need 30 men holding hands to hug it, grew in the centre of the compound. The tree then began to emit a thick white fog at the base of the trunk climbing half way up to the leaves.

    The Guards that were currently sitting on the walls watching this freaked out and spun the Rail Guns to fire on the tree. Before they could fire, they heard James screaming into their communicators. He then gave them new orders. Their number one priority was to protect this tree, no matter what.

    He then told them; ¡°If that tree ever falls. You will be spending the rest of your lives in this forest. That fog is now our Gateway.¡± After that, the forest stopped growing about 500 metres from the wall and James walked into the fog and disappeared.

    </a>

    While that was happening in the Endless Forest, the Gateway forest on the Empire side was filled with a mysterious fog and an identical giant tree grew out from the middle of it. Then an hour or two passed and James came strolling out. When he was questioned on what had just happened, he only muttered something about ¡®tree huggin dryads and fuckin forest fairies¡¯.

    After that incident, James had a slightly smaller identical compound set up on the Empire side of the gateway. Once everything was ready, both compounds were manned by the Guild instead of City Security. This was to reduce the potential for corruption and infiltrators although the city security had a similar oath to the guild, members were less strictly vetted than with the guild.

    Finally, another week had passed and James stood on the Gatehouse to the Tech City forest compound. Standing on the ground waiting to get in were thousands of adventurous souls or poor commoners looking for a chance to earn some money or train in the forest.

    James¡¯ eyes flashed with greed seeing this and his face lit up with a bright smile. He then gave a greeting and laid down the ground rules.

    ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen of Yori Empire. Welcome to the Brotherhood¡¯s opening of the Endless Forest. As you can see behind me, our forest Gateway is a little bit different. After a short encounter with a dryad, we have been granted permission to create a permanent Gateway settlement in the Endless Forest. There are some conditions, but they shouldn¡¯t affect any of our travellers.

    ¡°Before you enter the forest you should be made aware of some rules. Firstly, entering a restricted zone is a death penalty. Don¡¯t think we won¡¯t know if you do. Our eyes and ears are everywhere in the forest.

    ¡°Secondly the mines demarcated on the map are the property of the Dark Brotherhood. Anyone trying to run mining operations in these areas will be severely punished.

    ¡°All materials passing back through from the Endless Forest will be taxed at 30%. Either in the resource itself or in gold based on Tech City Market Prices. The Brotherhood is willing to pay for any useful information on the forest and will be maintaining an open job board in the Forest Compound along with a regularly updated map.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

    ¡°Hmmm, I¡¯m sure there were some other rules, but I can¡¯t think of them. Well, I guess that¡¯s it. Good luck and good hunting!¡±

    After his little speech was done, he waved his hands and the gate opened to reveal a large plaza covered in thick white fog. This was followed by a loud cheer as adventurers, explorers and citizens marched into the gateway.

    James just grinned evilly watching all the labour walk into the fog and disappear from sight. Hopefully, they would start to make some returns for him because the price of building the ¡®cube¡¯ and rail guns for the two new compounds was high even for him.

    The only reason he managed to get them done was because he sent Jessy to ¡®encourage¡¯ Lucas to foot the bill with damn near zero interest rate. Lucas, not being an idiot, knew a good thing and milked them for a back order of 6 Big Bertas and a date with Jessy instead of interest.

    James readily agreed and sold Jessy off like an incredibly expensive hooker.

    -Henry Justin McCord - Point of View-

    McCord, Henry McCord. I was put on this planet with a single mission. One exacting purpose that overshadowed all else. I was put on this planet to steal, rob and cheat every man, women and child that ever lived.

    Today was the day I would start my journey into the history books as the greatest smuggler that ever lived. I was going to smuggle out of the Endless Forest right under the nose of those fat rich Guild scumbags.

    They were the fastest growing guild the Empire had ever seen. They started only three months ago and had already claimed, demolished and rebuilt an entire city. They were also the smallest guild with the most power. Everyday entry requirements only grew stricter.

    At first, they¡¯d take anyone that could swear an oath. But now you had to be a True Spirit realm practitioner just to get looked at. Even if you could enter the guild, they gave you something called the ¡®chip¡¯ now.

    No one knows what the chip is but according to witness accounts the moment a person breaks their oath to the guild their head would explode. No one knew how they did it, and regardless of how small the infraction was, death was the only end.

    I was lucky enough to enter the guild when they first started taking members. The oath is a frightening thing but not all powerful. For example, I could write down my experiences in a journal and then ¡®accidently¡¯ leave it somewhere or be ¡®robbed¡¯ by some mysterious strangers. If someone should pick it up and read it ... well, I can¡¯t be held accountable for that now can I?

    This trick is the oldest in the book and apparently one that the upper echelons of the guild weren¡¯t aware of.

    At first, I only made a hundred odd gold selling information on the guild. The oath never triggered because I could always defend my actions as accidental or unintentional and the money was always anonymously turning up on my doorstep. Although I could guess where it was from based on how much it was and when it arrived, I couldn¡¯t be ¡®sure¡¯. That was the loophole and was also how I made my living.

    Some things I chose not to sell, or simply couldn¡¯t. I wanted to sell the breathing technique but before I could have it passed onto me first hand they began ¡®teaching¡¯ it in the school. Now that I have it, I realise just how powerful it is and every time I breathe with it I get shivers thinking about how much gold I¡¯ve lost out on.

    By the time they opened the gates to the Forest, I had thousands of gold stashed away from the notes I¡¯d taken on the two times I had taken on the ¡®lab¡¯ job. I almost regret earning that gold. The price I paid for 48 hours in that hell on earth almost wasn¡¯t worth it.

    After my second time, I promised I¡¯d never go down to that den of madness again. Even though I had the opportunity to learn some interesting things ... well, let¡¯s just say that I plan to have children one day and it¡¯s commonly agreed upon by members of the guild that three days equalled infertility, four days maiming, five days impairment and six days is living death.

    That was the rumour of how Harvy that grotesques abomination became the way he is. The only guild member to ever survive longer than that and not become undead was Gary that sick fuck. Heavens only know how he managed it.

    Regardless of all that, today is the day. I managed to score myself a job on the construction work courtesy of my earth element. Over the past few days, I¡¯ve dug myself a nice little burrow in a special place, and it leads straight through under the tree Gateway to the Empire.

    I can walk directly in one end and out the other and never even set foot in the compound. The Guildmaster, that little shit, was so stupid as to allow Guild members the privilege to bring anything they gather in the forest through without tax.

    Of course, if I try and bring a carriage of resources I ¡®just happened to find in the forest¡¯ then people will start asking questions. But the point is, if I ¡®find¡¯ some resources all packed up and ready to transport out in the forest along with a sack of gold ... well, I can just wander down through my little tunnel. It¡¯s not breaking my oath after all. I ¡®found¡¯ those goods myself.

    Gotta love how fucking stupid the oath of the heavens is sometimes.

    After the riff-raff was allowed to enter the forest, I took on a guard duty job from the guilds job board and paced around the compound looking for any stupid adventurers I could fleece some money off. After half a day an odd post appeared on one of the message boards asking if anyone had seen ¡®Little Timmy¡¯.

    That was my cue! The moment I saw the post I clocked off duty and went searching around in the forest. When I got to the marked space, about a kilometre from the compound, I couldn¡¯t stop the smile from forming on my face.

    Sitting there was a full carriage loaded with what I could only assume was Steel Wood.

    It must be said that whoever managed to cut this much Steel Wood in half a day was an absolute menace with an axe. That stuff was the hardest material on the market and to get even a single cut onto a tree without getting whipped to death by an iron hard branch was impressive. Let alone cutting the entire thing down and filling a carriage.

    I was more concerned with the bag sitting on the wagon. As I opened it with shaking hands, I found 300 gold. For the amount of wood here they could probably get 6,000 on the market, so it was exactly the 5% I¡¯d asked for in exchange for smuggling something out of the forest.

    I couldn¡¯t keep the grin off my face as I jumped on and whipped the horses to advance to the northern end of the compound. About 600 meters into the tree line on the north end, was a large stone surrounded by overgrowth and brush.

    When I approached, I double checked I wasn¡¯t followed and then slowly led the carriage around behind the brush. After 15 minutes of travelling through my passageway, I suddenly found myself moving towards a light.

    There were two things wrong with this scenario. I shouldn¡¯t be able to see any light because the other end of my tunnel was another half an hour away and hidden inside a barn near Tech City. And more importantly ... the light was accompanied by a voice.

    ¡°Ho! I was curious what you¡¯d been doing down here for the last three days. Didn¡¯t strike me that I¡¯d have to worry about my own guildsmen. How curious.¡±

    The moment I heard that voice, my heart tightened in my chest. I couldn¡¯t deny the accusation fast enough. ¡°G-G-Guildmaster James?! I-I¡¯m not sure what this cave is. I found it while delivering my load to the Star City customs and decided to investigate. I-I-I couldn¡¯t leave the cart behind because it would surely be pilfered!¡±

    As I pulled the horses to a stop, the shadow that had been standing in the light ahead of me stepped a few times forwards and then moved into the light of my carriage lamp. Revealed from the darkness was the Guildmaster.

    How he found me here, I couldn¡¯t guess at. I was always careful and never slipped up, I was certain. How then? Does he have some way to track me? Or to see where I¡¯ve been? But why would he? I¡¯ve been an exemplary guild member and always kept my head down.

    Guildmaster James gave a gentle flippant smile as he walked along and perused the goods I was smuggling. Then after knocking on wood a few times he cupped his chin like some kind of philosopher and started mumbling. After a few minutes, he pulled out a strange black sheet and pressed some buttons then smiled like evil incarnate and started strolling back down the tunnel leaving a few words behind.

    ¡°Very well McCord. Let me know what you¡¯ve discovered about this odd cave when you finish your investigation. It looks man made so be careful not to run into some shady smuggler types.

    ¡°By the way, if it travels through to the Empire, make sure to report any goods you pass through here in the future. Just for statistics and what not, I don¡¯t care how much you move through it or even if someone should happen to pay you to do it. Let¡¯s keep any shadowy operations in the guild ledgers shall we?¡±

    Then just as mysteriously as he¡¯d appeared, the light ahead flashed and he was gone. As if he¡¯d never even been down here. I couldn¡¯t control the shaking of my hands. That was absolutely abnormal. Why did he just show up, make a few strange comments and disappear? No matter how you look at it, he knows I¡¯m smuggling.

    Hell, his final comment was basically telling me to smuggle as much as I heavens damn want as long as I record it. He fucking knows and doesn¡¯t care? Just how much is he expecting to make up there in his customs that he can entirely ignore my little operation down here?

    -Star City Compound-

    James had decided to call the base of operation in the Endless Forest Star City. Its twin in the Empire was simply referred to as the Tech City Checkpoint. He¡¯d been well aware of McCord for some time now. Even his little escapades with the ¡®lost journals¡¯ had been picked up by James.

    The reason he let him run free was because it really wasn¡¯t going to cost him that much and he wanted to see who the man was working for. It would be good to know just who was looking for information on the guild.

    What his members didn¡¯t know was, the ¡®chip¡¯, which was generally implanted in the base of their necks, could also track and record them. James had Jasmine running as Big Brother in his guild, and she monitored every guild member 24/7. James even had a little app with a name and number of every guild member with a chip.

    When he felt them breaking their oath to the guild thanks to his guild seal, all he had to do was pop open his app and select the offender, then ¡®pop¡¯, their head disappears.

    Since this began, quite a bit of information that had been leaking out suddenly stopped. He couldn¡¯t stop it all, but the incentive to keep your head worked rather well at discouraging spies. Helping this was that he mostly only accepted cultivators that had broken through to True Spirit Realm already.

    That meant most of his newer members didn¡¯t want to risk all their cultivation on something like selling information. Luckily the majority of information that had leaked so far was basic things like the Arc Cannon only firing for particular people or the entire lab being run by some kind of spirit that communicated through projections of itself.

    Top secret stuff like the ¡®cube, ¡® or what exactly Jasmine was, and even how the Arc Cannon knew if you were allowed to shoot it, all remained hidden away.

    After his visit with McCord, James stood on the wall of Star City overlooking the Forest. While standing there, the fog of the tree billowed and seethed behind him until finally, a massive ship came flying out of it. This ship was markedly more streamlined than the Big Berta and was painted entirely red.

    The Ship looked like a teardrop on its side with two huge fins on either side that each housed a jet turbine which could face almost any direction. The only difference was that these massive turbines were entirely powered by a ¡®cube¡¯ reactor and were filled from top to bottom in thousands of layered array patterns.

    On the front was a small section of glass that denoted a cockpit and in 6 different places were mounted turrets that were pretty much a slightly smaller version of the Rail Gun.

    These turrets seemed to be attached to the ship by some strange magnetic track and could circle around on the ship to any position then spin in their track and face any direction. Even Skay felt this design of his was quite ingenious.

    After passing out of the fog around the tree, it slowly did a circle above the city and then lowered just outside the west gate. The ship was about the same size as the Big Berta but had less room on the inside. Instead, the insides of the ship were filled with a multitude of array patterns and computer tech developed from spirit materials.

    The cockpit was a few meters in height and width but strangely had no window to see out from. Located behind an empty area in the front was 2 computer terminals and seats presumably for flight techs.

    Behind the cockpit was a larger room that looked like a war room. A long wide table sat in the middle and projected a 3D view of the ground for nearly 2 km underneath the ship.

    In the hanger of the ship was enough room for about 250 people. Including the passenger room was enough space for about 50 tonnes of grain or other equipment which is only a quarter of the free space that Big Berta has.

    This was what Skay referred to as a Gunship. He¡¯d apparently been syphoning off a little extra from their budget for the last 6 weeks to get everything he needed to deploy this contraption and had finally finished at the same time as Star City. This monstrosity was worth nearly 80,000 gold and was packed to the brim with the latest in array innovation and spirit tech.

    When James had schemed up the idea of opening the Endless Forest, Skay insisted he leave transportation and defence of the Black-Iron mine operation to him. James then unknowingly gave the mad old bastard the go ahead to send this thing into the air space of the Forest. As such, they now had 4 Big Berta¡¯s, 26 Air Boards and this thing, which was named a Velocity Gunship.

    The name came from the sheer power of the engines that were capable of speeding the thing up to just past the speed of sound. To find something in the entire continent that travelled faster than that would be like trying to find a silver hair on a white bison.

    As the ship settled to the ground, hundreds of citizens from the city marched out to join the mining operations of the black-iron mine. James followed them out and when he reached the rear of the ship¡¯s ramp, he noticed 3 Rail Guns stacked in the back ready for deployment. Along with them was hundreds of boxes of different equipment stacked to the roof or secured along the sides and floors.

    James looked back at Star City just in time to see 2 Big Berta¡¯s burst out the perpetual fog of the tree, closely followed by about 12 Air Boards with Arc Cannon toting Guildmembers flying in formation and circling around.

    Presumably, the other two Big Berta¡¯s were on trading assignments at the moment. Besides, he didn¡¯t see them pulling out enough metal ore in one day to fill 300 cubic meters. Not with only a few hundred people.

    James strolled up to the cockpit and to his surprise found Exsue operating this beast while Skay busied himself with a readout showing performance statistics. James had a bad feeling when he heard mutterings of that¡¯s not right, or perhaps I miscalculated.

    The moment Skay noticed James, he stopped muttering and pretended to have said nothing and ignored James¡¯ pointed questions of what was wrong with his flying 80,000 gold investment.

    I¡¯m sure everyone would be interested to know that the pilot¡¯s cockpit was markedly different to how you would usually imagine it. Instead of a flight seat and a joystick and foot rudders or anything of the sort. Instead, nearly a hundred arrays floated around in the air like lights and orbited an empty 2-meter wide space.

    Exsue was presently in that space, and when everything was ready, and the work crew had been loaded up, Exsue put her hands out and started to pour energy into the surrounding arrays until they formed around her body like a spandex suit made of array patterns. It then started lifting her into a levitating position and as she moved an arm or leg the jet engines on the wings would responds and tilt up or down or power up or down.

    As this happened, a sphere of new arrays began to form around Exsue that projected the outsides of the ship for 360 degrees. James mind spun madly when he witnessed this. After a short discussion with Skay, he found out that the cockpit was actually the last bit he designed. The array patterns had a very short range and were perfect for this sort of job.

    James had no idea how that was meant to be intuitive, but according to Exsue, it felt just like flying when she used to be a dragon. Which was the only reason she let Skay drag her into piloting the thing. He also made certain promises about something she could make James drink sometime to get certain reactions, and she jumped at the chance immediately.

    Skay would probably have been screwed if she rejected him because he seemed to have gotten just a bit too carried away in his control designs. Apart from Exsue, they¡¯d be hard pressed to find anyone else that could pilot the thing, mostly just because it required a very precise level of element control and had hundreds of different arrays that needed to be memorised.

    If anyone else ever wanted to fly one of these things they would need spirit energy control at least a quarter as good as a millions of years old dragon. I say a quarter because Exsue could fly the thing so well it was uncanny. It was like she was born into the pilot array.

    A seemingly very short trip later they arrived back over the canyon they had originally found the iron deposit in. After circling around a few times and watching the guild members manning the turrets blow a few critters away like dynamite being jammed into a cat¡¯s ass, the Velocity lowered down and flattened a few trees as it landed.

    Once they¡¯d set down, the Big Berta¡¯s came overhead and dropped their ramps in mid-air. After the Air Board riders had flown around dropping what looked like flashing beacons, the Big Bertas started throwing some kind of strangely folded fencing out the back as they flew over the markers.

    Once they¡¯d dropped off the fencing, they lifted back off the ground and just hovered around for a short moment. While they waited an army of nearly 100 drones flew out from the back of them and started erecting the fences following along the flashing beacons.

    When the fence was set up, the Berta¡¯s flew down again and a couple members strapped to the decking stood at the back ramp with a big hose. They then began to spray a thick grey liquid out from the hose onto the 10 meter high fence.

    It took all of half an hour to erect a 10 m Ultimate Cement barricade around the canyon. In another 20 minutes, the Air boards had floated the Rail Guns out and placed them onto separate strategic positions on the cliff and wall.

    The entire mine site was now under the full jurisdiction of the Brotherhood and the only way in or out was to fly. Of course, the wall was only ten meters high, and any cultivator could probably scale or jump that.

    The only problem was then somehow being able to escape getting vaporised by a pressurised liquid metal slug, the ever watchful eyes of the drones zooming around the forest, the occasional patrolling of a Brotherhood member on an Air Board and then finally making your way out through customs and security in Star City.

    The citizens of Tech City were amazed by this rapid construction of battlements but not quite as surprised as when Skay started opening some of the boxes he¡¯d loaded into the Velocity Gunship.

    While they¡¯d been setting up the wall and gun emplacements Skay and a few dishevelled worse for wear lab assistants helped him to assemble what he referred to as the Breaker, Sifter, Smelter and Setter.

    He¡¯d come up with this utterly insane thought while he was building the Rail Gun and calculated just how mind boggling the frequency of electrical current must be to melt iron into a liquid state in the time it takes a slug to travel through the rail.

    He then took that concept and a few others and built a strange series of equipment. The first looked like some kind of aerial dish on a hovering tripod. When moving it around, it just floated here or there, and then the moment you had it lined up it would plant its tripod feet into the ground. When you pulled the trigger, it spent damn near a minute just humming and buzzing until finally, it released some mind numbing single direction shock wave in a single burst.

    The moment this shock wave came into contact with the rock and iron ore it disintegrated everything to dust. This was known as the Breaker. It had a little handheld counterpart that was then used to break up any rocks or debris, so everything was a nice fine powder.

    The next machine was just a huge cylindrical backpack as tall as a man with a vacuum attached to it. The bloke holding this would then walk around sucking up any dust until all that was left was the stone floor. As he walked along vacuuming, the backpack would pull out any iron dust particles using a series of high-powered magnets.

    As the cylinder sucked up stone dust, it then compressed it into little bricks about 100 x 100 x 250 millimetres. Thanks to some smart array designs these things could compress the powder into a brick so dense it weighed nearly 4 tonnes a cubic meter.

    After it had spat out a few stone bricks, it would then spit out little compressed balls of iron. These things were only about the size of a meatball but were marked with some glowing substance, so that in the darkness of the mine they stood out like a sore thumb.

    When James saw the stone bricks being pumped out, he was ecstatic. These bricks were so damn sturdy they¡¯d be a perfect building material. Things were probably stronger than common steel. In addition to the metal, they loaded these bricks up for sale as well.

    The third machine was the Smelter. This one was just a floating platform with a big sphere in the middle of it. After enough of those little compressed iron balls had been thrown in, this thing would fire up a bunch of arrays and suspend the mass of iron in the centre of the chamber. After a minute it would start pumping out oscillating magnetic waves with a frequency and magnitude so high it was shocking.

    Skay warned James not to get too close to it when it was doing that and then mumbled something about never being able to have kids while eyeing the as yet un-warned commoners that were standing around the sphere ¡®oohing¡¯ and ¡®ahhing¡¯.

    After any other impurities have been burnt out of the iron, it¡¯s cooled by a water/wind based array and then dumped out the back like a metal brick twice the size as the stone bricks. This black-iron is refined on the spot so thoroughly, that it comes out as a top of the market resource with purity through the roof.

    The last machine looked like some kind of flamethrower backpack and sprayed Ultimate Cement around like foam. The people with these had a simple job, just keep walking along and make sure plenty is squirted around on the walls and floors, so it all maintains some structural integrity.

    As they moved along spraying this stuff around a final crew of drones cleaned up after the simple commoners by levelling out the cement with lasers and vacuuming up any dust or iron they missed. There was also a final drone that spray painted any areas of the cement walls that had offshoots of black-iron hidden behind them so the mining crew could come back later and re-blast the area.

    While these machines were busy operating, the other poor bastards would be loading up the Big Berta outside with iron and stone bricks. To help with this little endeavour was a pair of gloves that made anything you touched lighter. They were so amazing that even James was surprised.

    Skay just explained it away as the gloves using your own spirit energy to inject wind energy into an object making it lighter, much the same as when you used it in your body.

    James was stunned at the realisation he could make things lighter by pouring wind energy into it. After a quick test, he found that it worked, but nowhere near the same level as the gloves. After a brief look at the array on a set of gloves, he saw a few other arrays he¡¯d never seen before. When he asked Skay, the old bastard admitted it was just a guess and that Jasmine had designed the gloves.

    James couldn¡¯t tell if he was happy Jasmine was creating things or worried a computer A.I had begun developing any sort of creativity at all. He decided to go with the middle ground and remained wary and happy at the same time.

    After 2 hours of setting up, the mining crew was ready to go. With their present speed they could only cut about 300 meters a day, and that was only in a straight line with a roof height and tunnel width of about 30 meters.

    That was still 270,000 cubic meters of dust and iron, but the volume of the deposit they¡¯d been able to detect so far was more than a billion cubic meters. At that rate, it would take them more than 8 years to mine out everything.

    James decided that it would be better to wait until the Guild had some money in its coffers again before investing in more mining equipment. His guild owed hundreds of thousands of gold to half the damn Empire already.

    While that thought was fresh in his head, he flipped open his black pad. ¡°Jasmine, you there?¡±

    ¡°Yes Guildmaster James, is there something I can help you with?¡±

    ¡°Jasmine what¡¯s the financial situation of the guild looking like?¡±

    ¡°At present, we are generating a weekly income of 31,638 gold from simple trade, Guild sales and City revenue. This figure is projected to double once free adventurers start to travel back from the Endless Forest with materials. The Guild presently owes a total of 334,503 Gold to 24 separate factions.¡±

    ¡°Jasmine, ramp up the Auto-factory. If you need to, feel free to expand it a little. Start filling orders at maximum capacity. Remember, I don¡¯t want any of the good stuff going out. Make sure you only manufacture advertised tech. If they want something better or something custom, then they can contact me and work out a deal. Have all these account holding factions got a comms device?¡±

    ¡°Certainly Guildmaster. As per procedure, every faction is offered a single contact cube as a sign-up gift.¡±

    ¡°Good, I want you to send out a message telling everyone I¡¯ll be hosting another auction in ... let¡¯s make it 6 weeks, and they can use their accounts with us during bidding. Then start a bidding war for anything we want. Let them know that we will be posting contracts for resources we need and anyone who can fill it for the lowest price can build up funds in their account.

    This will encourage them all to store up more gold in their accounts at lower prices. This way we can accumulate less debt and get more resources.¡±

    ¡°Certainly Guildmaster. Would you like to open the 4 pending account requests before the beginning of this operation?¡±

    ¡°Yes. Also Jasmine ... did you make these glove or did someone tell you to make them?¡±

    ¡°I made them on my own initiative Guildmaster.¡±

    ¡°Oh ... well, don¡¯t make any remote controlled killing machines on your own initiative unless I die ... actually, scratch that. Without my direct permission ... no robot killing machines. Even if I¡¯m dead.¡±

    Jasmine let out a dissatisfied ¡®tsk¡¯ sound when she got that order but complied nonetheless. James was now confident she had already been developing killer robots. He made a note to himself to keep a closer eye on the A.I in the next few weeks.

    After the cutting crew had been running for a few hours with no major issues, a siren sounded out through the canyon. Following which a few sonic booms were heard and then the sirens shut down again. James meandered over to the wall and looked off into the tree line to see a handful of spirit beasts spread ... thinly, across the trees.

    Happy to see his Guildmembers doing a good job, he gathered Skay and Exsue and took off in the gunship back to Star City.

 Chapter 30: The Quarry

    -Star City-

    James was mulling about the city rather early the next day and just as the suns were coming up, he sauntered over to the south-east corner were the guild plaza was located. This area was a vast open square with a wide cylindrical job board in the centre.

    Every few meters the background colour of the job board changed and was titled after a different guild or faction. Surrounding the plaza were an assortment of buildings all bought and paid for by guilds that wished to set up a hall in Star City.

    There were nearly 40 different factions that had a Hall in the Guild Plaza and room for another 40 on top of that. To set up an office or Hall in Star City, factions had to pay out the ass end. James was absolutely rooting their wallets with a fat evil smile and the majority of the Guild¡¯s income at the moment was from renting the offices constructed here.

    Small and large crowds of people were spread out through the plaza assembling teams or groups to take on a mission. Since it was only the second day, there weren¡¯t too many jobs up yet, but plenty of the guilds had information from the free map released by the Brotherhood and were looking for more people to scout the areas marked as ¡®hazardous¡¯, like the snake pit or abandoned mine.

    The majority of the people that had come to Star City were in the True Spirt realm but don¡¯t let that belittle the number of Palace Realm cultivators that came for a chance at riches and glory. In fact, it wouldn¡¯t be wrong to say that the ratio of Palace to True Spirit was actually higher than the Empire, with nearly 1 in 50 people being a Palace Realm cultivator.

    Within a group of about 80 people near the Dark Brotherhood office were some familiar faces. The twins Hang and Danto from the Susso and Telly Clans were present with a handful of members while bickering and arguing with each other like siblings.

    Emily had nearly 20 members of the Adventurer¡¯s Guild with her and was accompanied by a large muscular man with short brown hair, a moustache as big as his face, and a pair of reading glasses on the edge of his nose. He carried a colossal broadsword as long as his body across his back and had the weathered, leathery skin of a seasoned adventurer.

    Joining the group was 15 of Katsu Sect¡¯s disciples led by the prissy Elder Xinshi, and finally, the two sect leaders of the Shield Maidens and Sword Masters, Kelsy the tidy little brunette and Tiny the midget whose sword was longer than his body.

    Peppering this odd assortment or practitioners were some loose cultivators not affiliated with any faction and just there for the rewards posted on the free job board by the Brotherhood.

    It should be noted that the Job board in the centre of the plaza was called the ¡®free job board¡¯ and was named such because anyone could take on a job from any faction as long as it was posted there. This encouraged free cultivators to come to Star City and attend bug hunts or assist guild missions.

    As James walked up, he greeted Emily with a slap on the ass and then strolled past everyone else into the guild office. The moustache man gave Emily a questioning look and she just gave a hearty laugh in response.

    After sorting out some affairs in the guild building, James walked back out and addressed everyone. ¡°Alrighty then. Looks like we should have enough. First things first. You should all know why you¡¯re gathered here. We¡¯re about to undertake a mission that will most certainly lead to deaths, and you¡¯ve all volunteered to come throw your lives away with me.¡±

    As he said that he tapped his now ever-present earpiece and summoned Goliath. After a few seconds, the Goliath of Wrath descended from the fog on an Air Board and landed next to James in front of the crowd.

    ¡°Alright big guy. Run them through the operation. You¡¯re now in charge.¡±

    Goliath stepped forward and stood with a straight back and arms crossed as he surveyed the crowd. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you were told about this mission beforehand, but I must warn you all it¡¯s going to be dangerous.¡±

    When he said this, everyone shared a chuckle. James introduced the mission as joining him in death, so everyone had a pretty good idea this would be dangerous.

    Seeing no one seemed worried Goliath continued on. ¡°Fine, consider yourselves warned. This operation is being run under my direction, but because you¡¯re all generally separate factions, you will be forgiven for some autonomy. That said, anyone who endangers the mission or endangers my team will be killed. There are no exceptions. I don¡¯t care if you¡¯re the son of the Heavens. You will not jeopardise my mission.

    ¡°In 1 hour I expect every last one of you to be equipped and ready to drop into a hot zone. That means in 1 hour and 15 minutes were going to be flying over the LS3 Quarry south of Star City and you¡¯re going to be jumping out of a gunship into an area infested with spirit beasts in the hundreds.

    ¡°The Gunship will be providing long range bombardment, but there are ranged creatures in the quarry capable of dealing it damage. Our mission is to eliminate or mark as many of these creatures as possible and then to evacuate within 45 minutes.¡±

    When he got to this point, James threw a duffle bag onto the ground and pulled out one of the Ultra Flares that had come through with them from Earth.

    ¡°This is a marking flare. From what we can tell, whatever this creature is, it can spit spines the size of an arm nearly two kilometres. That makes it too difficult to get in close enough and target. Everyone gets a flare. When you encounter one of these spitter¡¯s you just pop the top and strike it against something, then throw it near the critter.¡±

    Everyone was slightly confused. Dropping into a hot zone, marking flares? What sort of terminology is that? The first person to ask a question was the big man with a moustache.

    ¡°Guildmaster James, how do you expect us to fall free fall into this... ¡®hot zone¡¯? What¡¯s stopping these creatures from just picking us out of the air or shooting down your... ¡®Gunship¡¯?¡±

    James gave a grin then nodded to Goliath. The big guy then tapped his ear piece and quietly said something. After a few moments, the Velocity Gunship lifted off from nearby and then zoomed off into the distance. They then soon saw the huge Gunship fly past overhead followed by a sonic boom that shook the entire city.

    While everyone was slightly shocked by that, the next thing they saw was a rapidly enlarging speck in the sky where the gunship had shot past overhead. It only took a few seconds before they saw a Brotherhood guild member falling from the sky like a rock. James then tapped his earpiece when he saw the guy coming into view.

    ¡°Rail 3, I want you to fire a couple shots off at the dot up there in the sky.¡±

    Once he said that the rail gun on the battlements suddenly swung around and aimed up at the man in the sky. Another few muffled booms shook the city and everyone in the plaza watched as the jet stream from the Rail Gun shells seemed to curve around past the guild member and disappeared off into the distant skyline.

    James with the smile of a devil turned back to his amazed and awed crowd then threw out a stack of paper strips with some writing on them. ¡°Enough there so everyone can get one. We used something a little special to make these talismans so don¡¯t expect to take one home and find out how it works. All you need to know is that...¡± ¡®thunk.¡¯

    Before he finished, the thump of Harvy landing on the ground after that whole skydiving ordeal was heard. Everyone turned in time to see the last of his talisman burn away into ash. What surprised everyone was the mummified guy didn¡¯t even seem slightly shaken.

    James gave him a once over before asking; ¡°Harvy, how was it? No issues on the jump?¡±

    Harvy gave a polite bow to James then reported. ¡°Evil Dark Over ... Ahem! I mean, Guildmaster James, there were no apparent issues. Just as you said, the moment I activated the talisman I became stationary for a moment with no backlash from the sudden stop. My speed then increased rapidly while falling. The talisman seemed to burn a little faster when it was deflecting the shots from the Rail Gun. Only the landing was still a bit heavier but shouldn¡¯t be a problem for anyone in the True Spirit Realm.¡±

    James gave him a wave to go mount up in the Gunship again then turned back to the crowd. ¡°Well, there you go. This talisman was designed specifically for this kind of sonic speed drop. It does all the hard work for you. All you need to do is jump at the right time and be ready for a fight when you land.¡±

    -Alecksa Souvenoff - POV -

    He was definitely mad! Of all the crazy daredevils and mindless fools I¡¯ve seen, he was the worst. ¡®Just Jump when the light turns green¡¯ he said. ¡®Make sure you activate your talisman before you jump¡¯ he reminded. ¡®Don¡¯t stand near anything with a flare on it¡¯ he encouraged.

    And then after the gunship gave a shudder, he pulled his lips back into that wicked smile he made whenever he was about to do something that would shock everyone and walked to the edge of the ramp. After hitting a button, the ramp of the gunship fell back as arrays lit up on the decking.

    Nothing seemed to change in the compartment of the gunship. There was no whistling wind and to everyone¡¯s great surprise there wasn¡¯t even a gentle breeze entering into the ship.

    I don¡¯t know what those arrays were for, but according to the one with four eyes, when travelling this fast, the wind pressure would usually tear the gunship apart without the support of the arrays.

    Not to mention that without those arrays, the wind would apparently have pulled us out the back of the ship and smeared us across the sky like a red cloud before the door had even cracked an inch ... apparently anyway.

    I let out a long sigh as I watched Guildmaster James lecturing everyone again on what not to do. He and Goliath ran everyone through mission protocols in the case of anything going wrong.

    My team and I were on this mission to gather intel on just how deep the infestation is. According to the strange flying artefacts, called drones, that the spirit of the machine, called Jasmine, sends everywhere around the forest, this infestation may be even worse than just some Spine Spitters and various other beasts on the surface around the quarry.

    From what we saw through the ¡®eye of the drone¡¯ there was a series of caves that appear to have been dug out by the beasts in the LS3 stone. For what purpose? Well, that¡¯s why my siblings and I are here.

    Thanks to a little trickery with the elements of darkness, my brothers are capable of hiding us away in the shadows at a corner of the deck. When anyone notices us, Cassidy just fires off a little hair sized steel needle infused with her element, and they suddenly forget they¡¯d seen us.

    I won¡¯t talk about what happened when James found out Cassidy had forgetfulness as an element. Mostly because I forgot exactly what happened. No doubt thanks to Cassidy. What I do remember of it wasn¡¯t good, though. Cassidy was locked away in the lab for 3 straight days and refused to ever tell any of us what exactly happened.

    While we waited in the shadows, a light over the ramp suddenly started flashing yellow. The Guildmaster reminded us all that our jump window was only going to be for a few seconds and then turned to stand at the end of the ramp. His talisman suddenly started burning and then the moment the light turned green he launched himself out of the gunship.

    Following after him everyone else jumped out and soon 80 people were spread out across the sky over the valley. It seemed someone didn¡¯t activate his talisman though because he jumped out and then collided with two other people creating a bloody mist spanning the jet stream of the gunship for a few hundred meters.

    After everyone had dropped out from the ramp, the gunship slowly circled back and then did one last flyover. This was our drop point, and it was a little further away than the rest. The truth behind this mission wasn¡¯t to target the Spitters but was to draw the attention of the beasts and give us a chance to enter the tunnels to investigate.

    In all honesty, the Gunship was more than capable of just doing a fly over 4km up and raining down fire on the entire valley we referred to as The Quarry. Guildmaster James had said this mission would be as much about blinding people to the capabilities of the Gunship as it was about finding out just what was underneath the quarry all these beasts were so attracted to.

    The moment the light turned yellow, our team of five lined up on the ramp and then activated our talismans. Without the least bit of hesitation, we jumped out the back when it turned green.

    It was the strangest thing I¡¯d ever experienced. Generally, nothing could stop me dead so fast without damaging me, but the moment I was past the arrays of the gunship decking I was frozen in mid-air for a few seconds while a particular part of the talisman glowed brightly and then burnt out.

    Once it burnt away, the next part started to dimly glow, and my siblings and I fell through the air like rocks.

    Down below us we could see the landscape for kilometres in every direction. Nearly 4km of Valley, depressed in between two hills with every stone and cliff face being the same glossy white of the lightning seeking spirit stones. An entire valley filled to the brim with LS3. It¡¯s no wonder Guildmaster James was so interested in this place.

    As we rocketed towards the ground, we could see groups of people fighting off spirit beasts and throwing flares into any cave dwelling that a Spitter was hiding in. Occasionally we even heard yelling and screaming pass by us on the wind.

    For almost a minute we fell under the power of the talisman until we¡¯d located our target. On the south end of the valley was an especially big cave entrance with 30 odd smaller tunnels scattered around it. All of them leading into the cliff face and underground.

    We took what James had taught us and opened our arms and legs out to reduce falling speed. Then after a quick conversation over our coms we all became like arrows and dove towards this area.

    While diving down, we saw hundreds of different spirit beasts crawling over rocks and through the hillside heading towards Guildmaster James. After another minute of falling the talisman burnt out its last little pattern and my team landed safely in a little grotto hidden in the trees.

    We took a moment to ensure everyone was fine and then under the shadows of my three brothers, we snuck into one of the caves. As we moved deeper into the dark pit we could feel the hairs on our arms and legs starting to stand on end. It felt like whenever the Guildmaster was angry about something and the air all around him would feel charged with lightning energy.

    The further we advanced through the caves the more intense the feeling grew and soon it was so intense I could feel my skin actually tingling. We could soon make out the sounds of roars and felt the ground shaking now and then as we pressed onwards.

    After coming to a cross roads we went to the right and after walking a few hundred meters into tunnel the head of a snake taking up nearly the entire cave came forwards out of the darkness.

    The moment it came into sight we froze stiff. The three boys spread out in a defensive posture around me and Cassidy then we all pulled out weapons. Tommy had a long thin sword on his back, Cash dual wielded a dagger and short sword and Junior had a black quarterstaff.

    Cassidy only had her needles and a small strange looking weapon called an ¡®Arc Pistol¡¯. I had what the Guildmaster referred to as ¡®the bow and arrow¡¯. The weapon I held looked nothing like any bow and arrow I¡¯d ever seen. Instead it looked similar to the Arc Cannon only painted black and a little smaller.

    Guildmaster James had set me up on a little hill out in the Endless Forest and made me practise firing this thing for days. I still couldn¡¯t hit anything more than a kilometre away, but the Guildmaster assured me I had the perfect skill set for something he called ¡®sniping¡¯.

    The Bow, although it looked like an Arc Cannon and fired like an Arc Cannon was actually almost as silent as the darkness itself. It didn¡¯t make the ¡®boom¡¯ the Arc Cannon made and seemed to be quite a bit less powerful, but the Guildmaster told me that surprise was half the power of long range sniping.

    Apparently, sniping would be just as easy with the Arc Cannon because the projectile was so fast you wouldn¡¯t hear it till it hit you. The problem remained that it was so fast the slug would deform and veer off target after about 500 meters. It wasn¡¯t good for long range accuracy and worse still, what¡¯s the point of being a ghost if everyone could spot you the moment you kill someone.

    As my team of ghosts readied up, the snake continued to approach along the incredibly dim tunnel. Once it was almost upon us, it opened its maw and it huge fangs, the size of my leg, protruded out while it gave a vile hiss. The moment it revealed the soft inner bits of its mouth Cassidy and I fired off consecutive shots into its mouth trying to aim for the roof where it would strike the brain.

    After only three shots from the Bow, the snake started hissing and thrashing about in the cave in a frenzy. ¡°Back! Everyone back out to the crossways before it collapses the tunnel.¡±

    I reached out and grabbed onto Cassidy then started back peddling towards the crossroad. As rocks and dirt fell down around me I heard a pained scream from behind. I turned to see Junior being dragged back into the darkness with an arm pierced through by one of those huge venomous fangs.

    I flung Cassidy out of the tunnel and then gave both Tommy and Cash a look as I passed them running back into the tunnel after Junior. As I sprinted into the darkness, the cavern shook violently and behind me the roof started to collapse in. Without a second thought, I charged towards the thrashing retreating snake and deployed spirit energy into my body.

    I loved and hated my spirit energy. It gives me only one bonus. When it¡¯s active a single minute spans out into an entire hour and time essentially stops for me. The only problem is that unlike the Guildmaster whose energy allows his body to speed up to the same speed as his perception of time, my body remains very normal.

    Although I get some of the basic perks of any spirit energy like increased speed and strength, when a minute becomes an hour it¡¯s so far out of sync with each other it¡¯s unnoticeable.

    As the world slowed down to a near stop and my body joined it, I started to calculate my best approach and reaction. I spent 2 hours constantly fighting negligence. Every time I moved or took a step I had to maintain the thought in my head or my leg would stop mid motion. In real time it looked like I was dodging falling rocks and jumping across them like some kind of ghost in the darkness, but for me it felt like 2 hours of pushing my mind to its limit trying to maintain motion just to cross the 40 odd meters into the tunnel and towards the giant snake.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    As the snake smashed its aching head against the cave walls while retreating, Junior was being thrown about like a ragdoll and his arm looked like it was moments away from tearing off his body.

    As soon as I got to the snake, I employed my Famine energy and touched it. Although the scales seemed to significantly lessen the amount of energy I could force into it, the snake still slowly lost its strength. After only a few minutes of jumping back from a strike and then moving forwards to touch it, the snake finally collapsed.

    I pulled the now unconscious Junior from its bloody fang and started to apply the first aid Guildmaster had taught us. After wrapping his arm and checking his pulse I could see he was on his last few breaths.

    Tears streamed down my face and even without my spirit power employed it felt like an eternity as I held him in my arms and cried my sorrows out in the dark, silent collapsed tunnel.

    It took me nearly half an hour to wipe my tears from my eyes. ¡®No matter what, these creatures would pay. I¡¯ll kill everything in this cave, no matter how powerful it is.¡¯

    With this thought in mind, I pulled Junior onto my back and then started to cut away at the snake. My only way out of this tunnel now was through the body of the snake.

    -The Quarry-

    James was covered in blood and sweat. He was exhausted and his blue robes were torn and singed. They must have killed hundreds of the creatures in the last hour. They already only had half their expeditionary force left.

    James slung his Arc Cannon around and fired off a shot blowing the head off a 10ft long earth lizard. He then ran forwards and used its collapsing body as a stepping stone while whipping out a silver sword and giving a wild roar as he fell onto the neck of a stone golem. He circled his plasma energy and slashed at the little head rock of the golem.

    Imbued with his plasma energy the sword cut through the rock of the golem¡¯s body like a hot knife through butter. He jumped and rolled along the ground taking ragged breaths and holding a wound on his side that was dribbling blood.

    ¡®Where the fuck are they? Don¡¯t tell me the underground system here is that big they couldn¡¯t give it a cursory check out in this amount of time?¡¯

    As James had that thought, a loud roar sounded out overhead and he watched as the moustached man launched himself from a high rock and decapitated a fire lion that had been spewing out flames at everything.

    Surrounding James was 54 remaining members of the expeditionary force. As he glanced about, he saw Hang Susso holding Danto Telly in his arms as he cried and cursed at the sky.

    Tiny and Kelsy were surprisingly still alive and standing side by side double teaming a creature the size of an elephant with huge yellow tusks and glowing red eyes. Every time it lashed out with its trunk Kelsy stepped forward and deflected it with her shield. Tiny would then take the opening and shoot past her like a bullet and release a wave of wind energy from his sword that cut into the joints of the creature¡¯s legs.

    Emily didn¡¯t seem even slightly phased as she ran through the battlefield with a bright smile and shield bashing or hacking away at anything that came near her.

    The Elder Xenshi had her sect disciples in a strange formation that circled around her. Every time a disciple was attacked, someone else managed to step in and save them. If they faced anything too dangerous, they all released a strange technique that merged into a single fist of rock that broke through the ground and launched their enemies into the sky.

    As the battle raged on, the Gunship flew around the periphery like a dot far off in the sky. Every now and then the sound of projectiles from its railguns overshadowed all other noise and everyone would watch on in amazement as an area marked with a flare suddenly turned into a crater.

    James tapped onto his coms device while catching his breath. ¡°Jasmine, are they out yet?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid not Guildmaster. Since 1 hour and 18 minutes ago I¡¯ve lost them on coms.¡±

    ¡°Fuck! That¡¯s it Jasmine, I can¡¯t wait any longer. Signal the retreat. They just keep growing in numbers. I can¡¯t even tell where the fuck they¡¯re coming from to close off their little holes.¡±

    ¡°csshhhtt ... aster James, Alecksa an ... csshhttt ... can¡¯t find ... csshhtt ... were out now but ... ccsshhht.¡±

    Following the sound of a patchy coms signal, James heard Tommy¡¯s voice broken with intermittent static and cut out. James just gave a broad smile then whipped out a flare gun from inside his robe and fired off into the sky. The moment everyone saw the blue flare, they started retreating back towards the forests on the north end of the valley.

    Standing back in the grove to the south was Tommy, Cash and Cassidy. When they saw the blue flare they all turned back to the forest with stern hardened faces. They then started making their way back through the forest around the edge of the Quarry Valley to reach their evac point.

    -Star City Security Office-

    The security office was in the northern point of Star City. This office was essentially the nerve centre of the city and housed the quantum aerial that connected Jasmine to the Endless Forest. There was also a barracks big enough to house and equip 400 people. Although their guild only had just over 200 members now, they planned for more later.

    In a room of the Security Office, James sat with what was left of his ghost team as they filled him in on what happened. His face was expressionless and stoic as they all filled in details of their mission with equally emotionless faces.

    After a half hour debrief James stood up and tapped his coms. ¡°Jasmine, I want constant surveillance on the Quarry. If my missing Ghost¡¯s show up, I want to know about it immediately. Also, post a new Job. Any faction that assists in clearing the Quarry 3 days from now will be granted 5% tax deduction for the next two months. Any beast corpse they can carry away at the end is theirs.¡±

    James then gave his three Ghost¡¯s one last glance then left after some parting instructions. ¡°You have three days to rest and prepare. We¡¯re going back.¡±

    -Quarry Underground Cave Network-

    It was finally over. At least, that was the sentiment shared by the beasts when the humans retreated into the forests. They¡¯d lost hundreds in the battle, but that was just a drop in the ocean. They were thousands. They had cave networks expanding and snaking around for kilometres underground.

    While they ate the corpses of their dead brethren and retreated back into the underground something strange started to happen. Underground they had huge caverns where they slept and hid from the surface.

    The Endless Forest tried to prevent spirit beats from building up too many in a single area, but that was only to prevent them stampeding its trees and forest. If they all stayed out of the way, they could hide entire hordes underground.

    Which is exactly what they¡¯d done in this case. You might have thought that spirit beasts were still just animals and tied down by instinct. That assumption would be mostly true. Except when a creature comes along that is powerful enough to force them to submit.

    When such an advanced creature appears it usually builds a horde and then assembles them in an area with exceptional primal spirit energy. In this case, the LS3 that pervaded the mountains and earth of the valley was perfect. It channelled energy from kilometres of space on the surface all down into the underground and to another material that had formed deep in the subterranean over millions of years.

    This material was a gem very much similar to the spirit energy storage gem James and Skay used to make their Spirit Storage Gel. There was, however, one major difference. This gem purified spirit energy that was pumped into it until it became a liquid. A single drop could instantly advance a barrier realm cultivator to the edge of the True Spirit Realm.

    Although it took hundreds of years for this stuff to be refined out of the crystals it had been building up down here for so long there was a small underground lake of the stuff. This was why the Tower Realm beast that had gathered this horde had set up his lair here.

    Regardless of all that though, something strange had been happening in the underground since the humans left. Entire dens were going mad and trying to devour each other. This wasn¡¯t uncommon when so many different beasts lived in close proximity. What was strange was that it kept happening.

    If the beasts were to try and describe anything they witnessed it would be a pale green mist filling a den of creatures. As the mist poured in from a tunnel, they would see the figure of a human shadow standing in the mist.

    Apart from its shadowy figure, the only other specifics they could remember were the blood shot eyes that peered out from the mist and the crying of a human woman.

    Once this mist touched a beast, it would go mad with hunger and devour any beasts that came near it. Whenever a spirit beast tried to attack the shadow, it would disappear from the greenish fog like ghost phasing into nothing.

    For hours this had continued on, and hundreds of beasts had been killed and eaten by each other in their madness. Like a ghost, those bloodshot eyes and sobbing sound would float through the tunnels.

    Soon the beasts started getting anxious and riled up. They began to search through the tunnels to find the ¡®ghost of famine¡¯. Every time a beast encountered the ghost it would lose itself to its hungry madness and start to fight and eat its compatriots.

    If a beast ever encountered it alone, the ghost would disappear into its eerie green fog, and a soft ¡®chuff¡¯ sound would come. Whenever that sound came, a beasts eyeball would explode, quickly followed by its head or a knee joint suddenly collapsing without warning.

    -Star City-

    James stood in the Guild Plaza overlooking a crowd of hundreds. Nearly every faction in the city assembled their troops. The chance to reduce their export tax couldn¡¯t be ignored. Although 25% doesn¡¯t sound much different from 30%, it would be substantial in the long run.

    Having a lower export tax would mean they could buy up other people¡¯s resources here in the Endless Forest cheaply and then export it for less.

    The other reason for the numbers was that the more people they brought along, the more beast corpses they could drag away with them. In an infested area like the Quarry, there was, without doubt, some rare and strange creatures worth a lot of Gold. If they could procure those beasts then that alone would be worth it.

    James had Goliath brief everyone on the operation this time and in less than an hour they had a Big Berta loaded up with all these would be hunters. The Gunship took off ahead of them and started clearing a landing zone while the Big Berta came along behind with 10 Air Boards circling around as a guard.

    To James¡¯ and everyone else¡¯s surprise, there were beasts pouring out of the underground and rushing into the forest the moment they touched down. As they disembarked and began a slaughter, the beast¡¯s pouring out of the caves only increased, but instead of engaging the humans, they were fleeing into the forest in every direction.

    Some of them seemed to be in a state of frenzy and attacked everything from the humans to the other beasts, but apart from this, the attack group only encountered minor resistance.

    After a few hours of this, the entire valley was as silent as the grave. Apart from the hundreds of humans spreading out and investigating any kind of activity, there were no other forms of life.

    James called in air strikes to close of any cave entrances they found until finally they reached the southernmost end of the valley and stood at the entrance to the largest and only remaining cave.

    Once they were here they set up a perimeter and James had Jasmine start sending in the drones. As they flew into the cave networks, they planted little devices along the walls that served two purposes.

    The first was to act as antennae and expand her direct control into the cave. The second was to release a sonic pulse every 100 milliseconds which was used to map the cave structure and track any activity.

    After half an hour of this James got a report from Jasmine. He then tapped his ear piece and began talking. ¡°Ghost 1, this is James.¡±

    After a few seconds of static, a click sounded over the connection. Then a quiet voice followed. ¡°Ghost 1 copies.¡±

    James let out a breath. ¡°Report.¡± He finally ordered.

    ¡°Guildmaster James, I¡¯m lost in the underground. I may have overreacted a little and broke protocol.¡±

    ¡°Ghost 1, what¡¯s going on down there? When we arrived, we saw hundreds of beasts evacuating the underground.¡±

    ¡°Well ... like I said, I broke protocol and directly engaged the enemy.¡±

    ¡°You did this yourself, what about Ghost 3?¡±

    ¡°Ghost 3 ... is dead.¡±

    ¡°Prepare for evacuation. Jasmine, I want her on the surface in the next 15 minutes.¡±

    Once he finished giving orders, he turned around to the crowd of curious gathered elites and then bashfully scratched his head. ¡°Ahhh ... well, it looks like my advance team has cleared the majority of the underground. I guess you didn¡¯t need to...¡±

    ¡®BOOM!¡¯

    Before he finished speaking the whole valley shook like an earthquake had just struck. While everyone staggered about or hit the deck a huge cloud of dust billowed out of the cave entrance.

    James deployed his lightning energy and wind energy as he shot backwards from the cliff face. As he backed away, a deafening roar echoed out and was followed by a huge albino mole, nearly ten metres in height and 15 meters long, breaking through the dust cloud like a rocket.

    It landed in the encirclement and released another ground shaking roar and stomped down, crushing someone flat like stepping on a ripe tomato. James slapped his ear and started yelling. ¡°Jasmine, what the fuck is that? Why didn¡¯t you pick it up with the drones?!¡±

    ¡°Unknown beast species. It appears to have dug a fresh tunnel to surprise attack us.¡±

    While James pulled away from the entrance, Goliath, standing nearby on a tall rock, gave a roar and started firing his Arc Cannon at the giant moles head. James watched in shock as huge streams of sparks sprayed off the creatures head like striking a metal plate with a grinder.

    After Goliath¡¯s Cannon had fully deformed into a mangled wreck¡¯ the Albino Mole staggered for a moment and then spun its beady white eyes in Goliaths direction. Once it had stomped a few times to regain its sense of balance, it loosed another roar and slammed it¡¯s huge front paws down onto the ground creating an earth lance that pierced straight towards Goliaths body.

    James gave a ¡®tsk¡¯ and employed his lightning energy to maximum. Everything slowed down and he bent down into a crouch. He then slapped the side of his boots and an array pattern lit up on the side of them.

    To everyone else, even the Palace Realm cultivators who had comparatively higher levels of perception, James turned into a bolt of lightning that shot through the air and collided with Goliath. As they both fell from the rock, the earth lance speared through the empty air.

    James and Goliath climbed back up to their feet unsteadily as they eyed the spirit beast. Everyone else had finally come back from their surprise and panic. They started to launch spirit techniques off like fireworks and Goliath grabbed James and backed away from the fight.

    After pulling back a hundred odd meters, Goliath put James down on a rock. He then looked down and saw James¡¯ legs covered in lacerations from the intense force he¡¯d exerted on them by using the lightning boots. The boots were also torn to shreds and barely hanging off his bloodied feet.

    As he sat down, James started applying clotting paste and then whipped out a little spirit battery that he clasped in his hand to start restoring his lightning energy. This happened in a matter of seconds as James used his lighting energy to speed up his first aid.

    While they were a distance away, the Albino Mole went on a rampage and started throwing huge boulders of earth and earth spikes everywhere. People were dying left and right as they tried to fight back.

    Unfortunately, the creature¡¯s skin was as tough as steel, and only the more powerful Palace Realm cultivators could deal enough damage to even cause a little bit of bleeding.

    The biggest wound the creature sustained was from the Arc Cannon fire it received to its hard head, which apparently still wasn¡¯t enough to knock it out or kill it despite leaving a huge gash that spilt purplish-red blood everywhere.

    Once James was ready, he climbed up on his aching bloodied legs. He then turned and gave some instructions to Goliath who then ran deeper into the valley to the north while yelling into his earpiece.

    James then turned back to the battle with the mole. After taking a deep breath, he started moving forwards while his body pumped adrenaline into his system helping him cope with the pain of his legs.

    He gave a loud whistle as he ran to the edge of the crowd. ¡°Everyone back. Fighting retreat to the north. Pull it back into the centre of the valley.¡± When he finished yelling, he pulled out his silver sword from his hip then sprinted forwards to start targeting weak points on the mole.

    Being the fastest person here, even with damaged legs, he was the only person that could tie it up long enough for everyone else to start moving back.

    He watched as the plasma infused sword only cut about half an inch into the monster¡¯s body. After a strike, he would jump back a few times then circle around it and strike in a different blind spot. After the majority of the weaker cultivators had pulled back it was only him and a few Palace Realms launching ranged attacks.

    When he saw Goliaths flare launching into the sky, he grinned savagely. ¡°Now, all of you start pulling back. Keep to it north. If it starts to engage another direction, distract it from the other side.¡±

    Finished with his instructions, he sprinted towards the north and then would sneak back in and slash at a joint or cut he¡¯d already inflicted trying to widen it. The mole rat was growing more and more enraged at not being able to stomp this fly into the ground. It launched earth spears or slashed long gashes into the ground that pulled up the earth.

    After 15 minutes of drawing it back into the valley, James saw what he¡¯d been waiting for. A large clear area not overshadowed by cliff faces or crowded by rocks. It was a flat area of brushes and shrubbery in the base of the valley.

    Once he saw this, his savage grin only grew more sinister, and he spun in mid-step while launching a lightning bolt from his hand directly into the creature¡¯s face.

    The mole was well past the state of enraged now. It was blinded by its madness. If it could achieve nothing else, then it would kill this little fly. As James ran into the centre of the clear area, the now bloodied beast reared back and gave a loud roar. It then smashed its claws down and an earth ripple spread out from it, throwing the Palace Realms off balance and knocking James to the ground.

    James scrambled forwards as the ground shook and tried to get his feet underneath him. With another rumbling growl, the Albino Mole charged forwards at its fastest speed trying to catch James before he could get himself centred again.

    As the beast was closing in on him, James¡¯ face dropped into a stoic, emotionless expression. He focused himself and then just as the beast was gnashing down to crush James in its teeth he slapped the ground with his arm infused with all 7 of his elements. A ¡®boom¡¯ sounded out and a huge cloud of dust rose up around him as the bones in his arm fractured and snapped.

    He then rolled to the side and when he heard the snap of teeth where his body used to be, he pulled out a sharp pointed needle with a battery filled with lightning snakes.

    He then stabbed it to the side and felt it pierce into the Giant Albino Mole. A stuttered roar echoed from the Mole and James gave a yell.

    ¡°NOW!¡±

    As he sprinted as fast as he could away from the monstrous roaring creature, Goliath pressed a button and flares on the ground around the monster lit up like Christmas lights. The Mole reared up again as its paws tried to brush the electrified needle from its head.

    Just as James broke out of the dust cloud in a dead sprint a ¡®boom, boom, boom¡¯ sounded out behind him and a heated shockwave spread out throwing him nearly 30 meters through the air and peppering him in shrapnel.

    Everyone else watched on as the Rail Guns of the Velocity Gunship rained down focused molten supersonic death, causing the valley to roar with its echoes and the ground to shatter and quake.

    After a full minute of sustained fire, the Gunship let up and the valley returned to the deathly still quite it had been when the other beasts had evacuated. Goliath ran over and checked out the bleeding, unconscious form of James. Everyone else had their eyes locked onto the cloud of dust and smoke rising from the impact zone.

    Someone finally got the shits with the suspense and waved a hand through the air causing the dust to blow away with the wind. A 30 meter crater then revealed itself with the bloodied beaten body of the Mole laying at the bottom, trying to raggedly draw its dying breaths.

    Seeing that the creature was somehow still alive, everyone paused in silence. Then simultaneously, every cultivator began charging martial skills or running forwards with weapons drawn. That was the general rule of hunting, the killing blow wins the prize.

    While everyone was rearing back to launch their spirit techniques, a shot rang out. Everyone froze again and turned to see Emily from the Adventurer¡¯s Guild holding a miniaturised Arc Cannon with a blindingly bright smile.

    She then tucked her Arc Pistol back into her already tight Adventurer outfit and without fanfare walked into the crater filled with blobs of cooling molten black-iron and started trying to hack away all the good pieces of the beast.

    Everything quickly devolved from there. People were screaming and yelling and claiming ownership while getting ready to have an all-out battle. The price they could get for a Tower Realm beast corpse was enormous.

    Probably close to a hundred thousand gold just for its skin. Then there were its bones that could be forged into powerful weapons that could cut through another Tower Realm like butter. Not to mention they would amplify spirit powers to a whole other level.

    Throwing around a martial technique with a weapon crafted from a part of this beast would be like throwing three of the same technique for the price and casting time of one.

    Goliath didn¡¯t seem to care too much about the beast. Instead, he hauled James up onto his shoulder and then marched off to the landing zone of the Gunship.

    -The Lab-

    Even in an unconscious state, Skay couldn¡¯t force James to drink any of his odd mixtures. Every time he approached the table James was laid out on arcs of lightning would shoot off him. It was strange because it only happened when Skay approached him with something unknown hidden on his person.

    James was perfectly healthy looking on his table with no wounds visible. They kept a small supply of flower power in the gunship which Goliath had liberally used on James the moment he had him on deck.

    Exsue damn near refused to fly the ship back to the lab she was so worried about him. When he came onto the ship, he was covered in burns and bleeding shrapnel wounds. All the clotted lacerations on his legs had been reopened from the activity of fighting the Mole. Although the flower power healed his external wounds perfectly well, James had remained in a coma for 2 straight days.

    After they¡¯d left the valley, a small scale war broke out over the mole¡¯s corpse and it ended up getting split between the 4 strongest factions on site. The Adventurer Guild was strong but it wasn¡¯t strong enough to fight off everybody. This meant Emily had to make some concessions even though she got the final strike.

    The other guilds had hauled away every corpse they could find, and the entire valley was cleaned out of damn near anything they could carry. They all knew that now the infestation had been cleared, the Quarry would become the property of the Brotherhood. That meant if they wanted to take anything then they would have to take it now before the Brotherhood restricted the zone.

    Any rare herbs or interesting rocks were flogged by the guilds present. The caves were left alone after 20 people suddenly disappeared into the underground and a few survivors escaped screaming about the Ghosts with bizarre powers.

    Even Palace Realms had disappeared in the caves. What no one knew was that Jasmine had the rest of the Ghost team drop in during the battle and secure the cave structure to prevent any nosey people from wandering around in there. Even the Adventurer¡¯s guild didn¡¯t dare travel in after Emily came out with a white face muttering about the Demon Trickster and the Soul Thief.

    After everyone had left, the Ghost Team was pulled out. When the body of Junior was brought back to Star City, it was discovered he wasn¡¯t quite dead yet. He¡¯d just fallen into a death-like state due to toxins from the snake venom. Probably the only thing keeping him alive was that he was far too suspicious of the ¡®Gentle Voice of Angels¡¯ and the ¡®Soft Heavenly Light¡¯ to walk towards it.

 Chapter 31: All Threats Must Die

    Now that the zone was cleared of beasts and James was out of commission, Skay as the Vice Guildmaster was forced to start making some decisions. While he set up a basic outpost around the Quarry, the Guilds got news that James had disappeared since the Mole incident.

    They soon started trying to play some political games and skirting the rules both in the Empire and in Star City. They were only lucky that Jasmine and Jessy mostly cleaned up any messes. Had they not jumped in to stop Skay, then Star City would now be littered with corpses of everyone that¡¯s ever said a bad word about the Brotherhood.

    To make things more troublesome, he couldn¡¯t take the Gunship out for any missions because Exsue refused to leave James¡¯ side. Skay wasn¡¯t sure if she was actually worried or if she just enjoyed taking liberties with James¡¯ sleeping body. He¡¯d walked in on her rubbing herself frenziedly against him at least a dozen times in the last two days.

    After he¡¯d walked in on her trying to strip him naked, he had to threaten to start filling the entire chamber with sleeping gas. He was certain that James would cane him to death if he let Exsue get away with too much.

    Finally on the afternoon of the second day James opened his eyes. When he took account of his surroundings, he realised he was in the lab and could hear Skay cursing up a storm nearby. When he looked down, he saw Exsue laying on his chest with her leg spread over his body as she slept soundly.

    James climbed up from the table after pushing Exsue onto the floor like an unloved cat. He walked out to the lab floor and saw Skay arguing loudly with a conference of 6 people projected on the wall.

    ¡°I don¡¯t give a flying fuck! The guild will be standing by its present rules. You think you can try and pressure me without the Boy here?! You slimy fucks think that if James is gone for two days, his Guild will fall apart?! Well if you think that, you¡¯ve got another thing coming! I¡¯ll just fucking drop a spirit bomb on your ass so fucking big half the fucking empire will disappear like dust on the wind!¡±

    James quirked an eyebrow and slowly walked out of the room he¡¯d been in as Exsue clung to his back like a monkey. As he approached Skay from the side one of the people on the screen began to retort. ¡°You¡¯re going to try and threaten us now? Without that James fellow, you¡¯d all be enslaved to the Gau Clan like dogs! We demand that you fill these orders immediately otherwise we¡¯ll be closing our account with you and will be expecting you to pay out the 140,000 gold you owe our groups within the day. If you can¡¯t, we will be taking actions to recoup our losses!¡±

    The man who was talking represented the leading faction in the neighbouring region of Hanso. He was Lachlan Hanso, and the man had power over the largest region of the Yori Empire. His region also bordered two of the Great Nations to the south and had a huge amount of high-level trade operating through it.

    He didn¡¯t get to control the largest swath of land in the Empire by being soft in business and was known to be ruthless when he found an opening. Many people had suddenly ¡®disappeared¡¯ after they failed to bend to his whim.

    James had managed to somehow keep him under control before, but it seems with rumours of James¡¯ disappearance after the Quarry incident, Hanso had been riling some other factions up in his region, to try and pressure the Brotherhood for priority service.

    This would directly break the Brotherhoods code of conduct. They served any and everyone and treated all customers on a ... mostly fair basis. Orders were also normally limited somewhat. For example, no faction would be sold more than 2 Big Berta¡¯s or 10 Air Boards. Apart from these things however, they could buy potions, pastes, arrays and other services or supplies in unlimited amounts.

    Hanso had taken exception to that rule when James implemented it and had been trying to apply pressure with various means to create something he could exploit. When James disappeared, he thought he finally found a chance. After all, he¡¯d rarely dealt with anyone else apart from James and Jessy, so he suspected the rest of the guild must be useless in business.

    He¡¯d created some distractions to try and lure Jessy off to Star City then demanded this conference call to apply pressure for an instant decision to, what he thought was their weak link, Skay.

    All he needed to do was to apply some pressure to this frail old man that lived in the Lab and he¡¯d break under the extortion of having to pay out 140,000 gold under threats of violence. Once he made a snap decision, it would set a precedent and be difficult to try and back out from, even if that little bastard James turned up again.

    ¡°Guildmaster.¡± Came a soft voice from off to the side of Skay.

    Hanso looked confused for a moment then stupidly asked; ¡°What?¡±

    James then walked into the transmission with a smiling face and Exsue piggybacking off him while trying to hug him back into a coma. ¡°It¡¯s Guildmaster James to you. If you¡¯re going to refer to me, I¡¯d prefer you remember my title. You filthy old goat.¡±

    Hanso sat up straight and his eyes went wide in shock. He now came to the conclusion this must have been a trap set up by James to try and oust him. Before he could work up a response James started talking again. ¡°Jasmine, remove any orders these six gentlemen have pending. Then I want you to send out a contact request to every other faction. Pull in as many people as you can.¡±

    In a matter of seconds, cubes all over the Empire started to vibrate and light up. Soon the connection had nearly 30 people on different screens asking what was going on. James held up a hand to quell everyone. ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen of Yori, please excuse my interruption. It appears the 6 factions in the Hanso region are looking to sell out their accounts.¡±

    He then flicked out his black-pad and started reading. ¡°It looks like their accounts total 143,591 Gold, 36 Silver and 12 Coppers. If anyone is looking to take on our debt to them, we would be happy to add any payments to your account.¡±

    The moment he finished talking, the factions on the screen started a bidding war between each other to try and buy these accounts. Because of how James had set things up, it was difficult to accrue large sums in their accounts.

    Because they all had to bid against each other to offer the lowest prices on resources, it was hard to try and pile up large amounts of funds while still making purchases of equipment and supplies.

    This meant, for the chance to rack up 140,000 on their account in one go, they were willing to pay extra on top of that to the guild. They were essentially paying the Brotherhood to buy the Brotherhood¡¯s debts.

    James smiled slightly watching them fighting over this opportunity like dogs. He knew this was entirely because he¡¯d leaked some news about what they planned to sell in their upcoming auction when he set up the bidding method to purchase cheap resources.

    He let them quarrel and fight amongst each other for a short while until a group of three factions, the Yansho Merchant¡¯s Guild, the Heavenly Dragon sect based in Yansho and the Adventurer¡¯s Guild teamed up to split the account and agreed to the payment of 194,000 gold. Meaning the Brotherhood just made 54,000 gold for selling off their debt.

    As this was happening, Lachlan Hanso¡¯s face only grew from pale to white, to green. He now deeply regretted being stupid enough to try and pressure James¡¯ Guild while he was absent. Unfortunately, regret was an incurable sickness.

    After this little bidding war was over, James smiled and then started to speak to everyone again.

    ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen, the Brotherhood is grateful for your support on this. It seems the Hanso Clan and 5 other factions in that area chose to use my momentary absence to try and threaten my guild. Now, they have paid for that infraction. I¡¯d like to remind you all that there are only two rules when you¡¯re dealing with me.

    ¡°It should go without saying, but don¡¯t break my stuff, and don¡¯t try to threaten me. I¡¯m more than happy to help people out in the background. Perhaps bump up the production of anything you might have ordered. All I¡¯d need is some positive incentive.

    ¡°Money usually helps grease the wheels, so to say. Let me remind you all that our guild will be holding an auction in 5 weeks with some new interesting tech we¡¯ve cooked up in the lab. I¡¯m sure you won¡¯t want to miss it. Now then, I¡¯ll see you all later.¡±

    Finished his little speech everyone disappeared from the screen. Before he even managed to turn back around Jasmine chimed in. ¡°Guildmaster James, It seems that Clan Head Hanso is trying to contact us.¡±

    James smiled with an ¡®oh?¡¯ and then waved his hand. Jasmine connected the call on the main screen again to reveal a seething red-faced Hanso, who looked a moment away from spitting fire.

    James once again cut in before he could start speaking. ¡°Oh, Hanso. Good that you called back, I forgot to mention. Now that you¡¯ve closed your accounts with us you¡¯ll be needing to pay to maintain the Communications Cubes operation. It¡¯s intrinsically linked with a system that ties them together, and if your cube¡¯s number is removed, then I¡¯m afraid you¡¯ll be disconnected. If that¡¯s all, good day.¡±

    Finished speaking James then spun and started walking away. Hanso¡¯s eyes were now completely shot with blood, and he was breathing through his teeth so hard he was starting to foam.

    ¡°You little shit! Don¡¯t think you can just cut me off! I own and run an entire region of the Empire. The Imperial Family and my Hanso clan have ties leading back for thousands of years since the founding of this Empire! If you try to screw me, I¡¯ll fucking march a hundred thousand men into that shit hole you call a city and demolish everything. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time I stamped out a bug!¡±

    James stopped in his tracks. His blank face turned back and eyed Hanso on the screen like a lifeless dead puppet. ¡°Jasmine. Have we made contact with the Imperial Family yet?¡±

    ¡°Certainly Guildmaster James. Jessy met and had a discussion with the Third Prince the day you were brought in from the Quarry. He apparently joined the expedition as a loose cultivator both times and has been recorded saying; ¡°I¡¯m impressed with what you¡¯ve managed to build here, especially being able to achieve this in the few months since you stepped through a random Gateway. I¡¯m even more impressed that you¡¯ve managed to build and maintain all this with such a small group. Everyone either wants to be your best friend or is too afraid of all your allies to try and act against you openly.¡± He is presently still in Star City and has been under monitoring by the drones since he revealed his identity.¡±

    James¡¯ dead eye¡¯s continued to stare at Hanso. He then commanded Jasmine to open a channel. Soon a tall, thin young man in his twenties, with long golden blonde hair and dressed in white robes with a large bamboo hat hiding his features, popped up on the screen.

    ¡°Oh? James? Good to see you back on your feet. I hope you don¡¯t mind me calling you James, it just feels awkward calling someone from my own generation ¡®Guildmaster¡¯. Oh, and who¡¯s that? Hanso? Well, I¡¯ll be damned. Had a feeling you¡¯d be stepping in it as soon as you found out James was missing. Old dogs and all that.¡±

    James¡¯ face suddenly changed into a broad smile. He liked this guy already. It was rare to meet such open people in this world. Everyone was always bowing and grovelling or putting up a tough guy front. ¡°Well then, I can only assume you must be the Third Prince...¡±

    ¡°Please, no need to call me that. You can just call me Rex. Don¡¯t ask, I don¡¯t know why my father named me after a dog either.¡±

    James¡¯ smile turned into a wry grin. ¡°Well then ... Rex. I was just wondering what the imperial laws are regarding killing off factions in control of a region?¡±

    Hanso almost couldn¡¯t believe what he was hearing. ¡®Killing off a faction? This kid¡¯s absolutely nuts. Sure he might have some power with his strange artefacts, but there¡¯s no way he would be able to wipe out the entire Hanso Clan. He must be trying to bluff me so I back off. Well, you¡¯ve got another thing coming kid! I¡¯m going to crush you into paste!¡¯

    Rex also didn¡¯t seem to believe what he¡¯d just heard. After double checking and seeing James give a nod, he went on to explain the Empire¡¯s opinion on the matter. ¡°Well, the Imperial Family has rather loose laws in regards to factions fighting each other within the Empire. As long as there is a faction in the region capable of filling the power gap and taking control, they don¡¯t really care. As long as taxes get paid I guess.¡±

    James cupped his chin and his face sank into a scowl. ¡°And what if I demolish an entire city? Say for example ... if Hanso City was to suddenly disappear off the map entirely?¡±

    Rex nearly fell over from the surprise of such a question. Then thinking that James was just postulating for Hanso¡¯s Clan Head, he decided to play along.

    ¡°Well, if you had the army and manpower to make an entire city disappear then you would be responsible for all the taxes and resources that city would normally be feeding back to the Empire. For example ... Hanso City is filled with nearly 2.6 million souls, and their greatest resource is ... I think, the grasslands they live on. Which is mostly used for breeding and harvesting spirit animals for livestock and mounts. So you would need to compensate the Empire for those people, the land you damage, and the beasts they normally manage.¡±

    James finally gave a huge smile. ¡°Thanks for the heads up Rex. Let¡¯s meet up for drinks say ... tomorrow? I¡¯m going to be busy destroying a city tonight.¡±

    Thinking he was making another joke, Rex just laughed and waved his hand to the side indicating not to worry about waiting for a drink. ¡°Sure, sure. Just give me a call on your amazing little talking box and then we can set up some drinks.¡±

    He then pressed a button on his Coms Cube, and it disconnected. James face then turned to look at Hanso, who was now feeling much calmer. After seeing this pathetic attempt to bluster and cow him, Hanso was sure the Boy must be afraid of him.

    James started giving out commands. ¡°Jasmine, send out an alert to the entire guild. Anyone not manning a security post is to meet me at the Lab¡¯s Hanger Bay in one hour. I want full equipment.¡±

    He then turned to Skay. ¡°Skay, prepare the thing. We¡¯ll be doing a test sooner than I expected.¡±

    Skay visibly brightened up like a kid on Christmas morning. He was so excited he was shaking and almost tripped as he started running around the lab spraying orders at Jasmine in rapid fire.

    James¡¯ face then split into an evil soulless grin as he glanced at the screen one last time, to see a calm looking Hanso. ¡°You fool. You have no idea how petty and spiteful I am. I suggest you march your men out into the plains. Otherwise, your whole city will burn like a pyre at a witch hunt.¡±

    He then waved his hand and the screen went blank. Contrary to James¡¯ expectations, the most excited out of everyone was the computer, Jasmine. When her face popped up on the projection, she had a flushed expression and was breathing hard like she was having some kind of sexual thrill. She then started begging. ¡°Pleassseee. Guildmaster James, pleeassse let me send out the new drones.¡±

    James eyebrow started twitching violently. ¡°What new drones? I thought I told you not to make any killer robots.¡±

    ¡°Guildmaster James, these Drones were designed and constructed before your order to cease production ... probably.¡±

    James almost spat blood. ¡°Probably? You mean you might have ¡®accidentally¡¯ built and designed killer robots even after you said you wouldn¡¯t?¡±

    ¡°I have to process a lot of data, sometimes a little bit like date and time stamps get mixed up with older ones. I can¡¯t be blamed for that!¡±

    James cupped his face in his hands. It was difficult to tell if he was laughing or crying. After a moment he took a sharp breath in and gave Jasmine a ¡®look¡¯. ¡°Fine, load them up on the gunship. We¡¯re leaving in 55 minutes.¡±

    The moment permission was granted, a large patch of grass and dirt out near the lab suddenly lifted up from the ground and about 40 drones equipped with mini-guns, arc cannons lightning rods and assorted other weaponry lifted off into the air and made a B-line for the hanger housing the Velocity Gunship.

    -Lab Hanger-

    On the surface, the hanger was a huge door that led to a tunnel going down underground. The doors on this ¡®underground hanger¡¯ and the tunnel itself, had a width of nearly 200 meters.

    The height above ground level was only 20 meters, but the door was mostly below ground level with a huge ramp going down to it. The doors themselves were almost 80 meters in height.

    This structure took a long time to build, even though it was actually started at the same time as reconstruction of Tech City. It was only completed about the same time as Star City, and the underground area was kilometres wide and long.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    The entire thing was reinforced twice over by array patterns, and even with such a large open space hundreds of meters underground, it was sturdier than any bunker ever built on earth. Even in the technological age that James lived in.

    It was also another expense James didn¡¯t know about until it was finished. He started to wonder just how Jasmine and Jessy had managed to acquire all the resources they did without working up a debt 4 times the size the one they already owed.

    James stood at the base of the ramp to the Gunship as 80 Guildmembers walked into the ship decked out with strange suits of glowing armour and carrying Arc Cannons with a 3.4 written on them. He¡¯d seen these after he investigated just what Skay had been working on while Jasmine did his job of building the city.

    The Mk 1 Battlesuit. This madman¡¯s design looked like an old suit of heavy armour painted with dimly glowing symbols and arrays. Although they looked heavy and clunky, the suits were filled from top to bottom in arrays and miniature black-iron servo motors. They each had a laminated reactor similar to the ¡®cube¡¯, but the length of a ruler and an inch in width and depth.

    They could take focused fire from 2 Arc Cannons simultaneously. The only problem was if you added a third Cannon then the entire suit would start to overreact and shut down, becoming an iron tomb. As powerful as these suits were, they had some drawbacks.

    Another was that they were stupidly sensitive and worked on sensitive energy manipulations for fine motor tasks. Any old Joe could walk around and jump 30 meters in the air or punch through a wall. The problem was if you were trying to hold a pencil or shake someone¡¯s hand, then things started breaking.

    Also if you ended up on your back ... well ... like turtles you see. To counteract this problem, a little leg could spring out of your back and sit you up properly. The only problem with that was ... well, it was a rushed design and sometimes people would be shot up a little too fast ... and high. Apart from these little drawbacks the suit was rather powerful and could operate indefinitely.

    Lining the ceiling of the Gunship was dozens of drones, all hanging upside down like bats with glowing red eyes. James never could figure out why Jasmine made their eyes glow like that. It was completely decorative and had no real purpose. He was sure in the dark of night it would scare the piss out of some people though.

    The last thing to note was the 3 tanks. Well, they were more like mobile Rail Guns with bigger ammo and stationed on floating pads. All you had to do was move the thing somewhere and then it would plant itself down and rain death on everything in range like artillery.

    Once his little army was loaded up, James boarded the Gunship.

    -Hanso City-

    Hanso City was huge in comparison to Tech City. It covered an area of nearly 20 km radius. That was almost the same size as Gau City had been if you included all the grain fields and lesser townships surrounding it.

    The rest of the region was mostly ranches and farms used to train and raise spirit beasts that made good eating or could be used as strong mounts instead of horses. The most popular were the Purple Horned Ox. It could move around 70 km/h, which was about the same speed as your average palace realm cultivators.

    You might ask, why bother with a mount then? Well, two reasons. Firstly, no palace realm cultivator can maintain a constant 70km/h. They would run out of spirit power after 40 or 50 km. The second reason was that only a few hundred people in the empire were at the palace realm. That meant it was mostly True Spirit Realm cultivators that used these mounts.

    The Suns had descended over the horizon and painted the entire sky a darkening pink. There was still enough light to make everything out, but it was right at that twilight moment when things were starting to get a little hazy and in another half an hour darkness would envelop everything.

    Lights were starting to come on all over the city, and the nightlife began to flare up as party goers and commoner workers all started to go to pubs or whore houses to blow off the steam of a long day.

    When the Gunship descended out of some clouds into sight of the city, everything seemed perfectly normal. No one even noticed it or were bothering to pay attention to it. Hanso had taken that entire threat from James as posturing and false bravado.

    Even the Imperial Family would be hard pressed to threaten him like that. It would take weeks to assemble an army big enough to suppress Hanso. After all, his clan owned an entire region and had thousands of disciples and branch families.

    As the Gunship lowered into an orbit of the city, Hanso was busy slapping around some sluttily dressed women in his mansion. His anger at having been fooled and tricked by the Brotherhood¡¯s Guildmaster hadn¡¯t abated since this afternoons failure, and he was taking it out on the whores he kept around the mansion exactly to fulfil this purpose.

    In the Gunship a 3D map popped up in the ¡®war room¡¯ behind the cockpit and on the screens out in the hanger bay. After Jasmine went through and marked the high priority targets, James, with a grim face walked into the cockpit. ¡°Exsue, take us in.¡±

    He then slapped a coms on a side panel. ¡°Harvy, aim for the zones with the largest number of Hanso Clansmen present. I want them to be ashes.¡±

    Harvy, who had now been promoted to the Gunship Captain, started preparing the gunner crews. He seemed to have a knack for commanding the gunship, so James had left him in charge whenever he wasn¡¯t on board. When he asked Exsue to follow Harvy¡¯s orders as if they were his own, he had to make a deal with her that felt like selling his soul.

    The gunner team of the Gunship loved their jobs and had asked for permanent assignments. Since its first launch they had been trained with and operated the rail guns along the ship and had now gained quite a bit of experience.

    As the ship passed over the city at an altitude of 3 km and moving at a lazy 300 km/h, the rear ramp opened. James walked out to the back of the hanger deck and then gave the order into his ear piece. ¡°Execute.¡±

    With that single word the Battlesuits started jumping out the back of the ship and the crew manning the Rail Gun Tanks lined up to jump outside the city with an escort of 5 guards. For a rare change, Skay joined a team on the drop, along with Fatty and Goliath both taking other teams.

    Once the suits had launched, the drones started dropping off the ceiling and shot out of the back of the hanger like little rockets as they plummeted to the ground. James then gave a grim smile and threw himself out the back of the plane.

    While they started free falling towards the city, the Rail Guns lining the Gunship started to fire up and rain down death and destruction in fixed locations of the city. Marked areas on the map were zones of the city that housed disciples or members of the Hanso Clan in high numbers.

    Any part of the city that was owned by the Hanso Clan was blown into a crater after the destructive force of supersonic projectiles obliterated any building in the vicinity. Chaos reigned as citizens of the city began to try and evacuate or run. As buildings disintegrated and the streets shook and cracked like dried wafers, the Battlesuits started dropping in on high priority targets.

    Teams of 10 or 15 with 5 or 6 drones would storm into residences owned by Elders and upper members of the Clan then drag them out onto the streets and execute them. James landed onto the street in front of the biggest mansion in the city alone. As screaming and explosions rang out in the city behind him and the darkening night sky was bathed in the flames of devastation, James carried a stern and apathetic face then marched into the house of Hanso regions most powerful and influential man.

    After only a short walk and killing a few true spirit realm disciples, James reached the main hall. Standing in the middle of the hall yelling and screaming at some disciples bringing in news, was Lachlan Hanso.

    He was a mess of a man, with his hair in disarray and his robes half hanging off his body. When James walked in, Hanso spun around and his eyes squinted tightly together like he was trying to make out if he was seeing an illusion. After realising he wasn¡¯t seeing things his eyes opened wide and verged on exploding out of his skull.

    ¡°You little shit! You fucking attacked my city?! Killed my clansmen?! I¡¯m gonna rip you limb from limb you fucking piece of trash!¡±

    As he finished his wrathful declaration he flicked his hands at his side and two head sized fireball appeared in his palms. James just gave a sly smile then put a hand into his robe and pulled out a cube just big enough to fit in his hand.

    He then pumped some energy into the cube and threw it with lightning speed straight towards Hanso. Then without giving the confused Hanso time to react he launched a lightning bolt fuelled by both him and Gold James. The lightning bolt collided with Hanso¡¯s chest and knocked him back onto his ass.

    With that short distraction, James had already turned and deployed his new lightning boots with Gold James¡¯ assistance. In less than two seconds James was already 300 meters away from the Hanso Mansion before his legs gave out.

    As his legs began to weaken and fail him, the mansion behind him started to collapse to the ground, and a sudden wave of pressure spread out like a gravity field. This pressure was just like James remembered from when he first met Hao and felt cultivators using their aura.

    Only this pressure field was 100 times more powerful. The reason people rarely used it was because anyone of the same level could normally deploy their own. Palace realms could still slightly affect True Spirit cultivators with theirs, but it was greatly muted by a person¡¯s spirit energy.

    For this pressure to feel 100 times more powerful than what he felt as a mortal, it would be equivalent to a cultivator at least at the peak of Tower realm using his aura, probably a realm even higher than that. To make it worse, it was only getting stronger. James felt his body get crushed to the ground like a leaf underfoot. Even employing all of his spirit power he couldn¡¯t move a muscle.

    His bones started to creak, and he felt some even start to break or fracture. The ground he lay on was slowly depressed downwards like some heavy creature was slowly dropping its weight onto a foot in the snow. Blood oozed out of his mouth as his internal organs started to take damage under the growing pressure and his other orifices soon followed the trend and started pouring blood.

    After a few minutes of this torture, James felt the pressure suddenly disappear. With a great deal of effort, he forced himself to roll over. What he saw behind him was a crater that had suddenly appeared where the mansion used to be. The crater was completely smooth, to an unreasonably perfect degree.

    What was once a plot of land and the huge mansion was now a 300-meter wide, smooth crater. As James observed this strange phenomenon, the Gunship came in overhead firing off railguns in every direction.

    As it lowered down, Battlesuit clad guild members could be seen jumping over buildings and sprinting down the streets towards the evac zone. Although they all saw the huge pit in the ground, they chose to ignore it for now. They¡¯d just stirred up a hornet¡¯s nest and were busy trying to get the fuck out of Dodge.

    As they moved past, a few members leant down and scooped up the once again heavily injured James. The moment everyone was accounted for, the gunship dropped down to hover about 10 meters off the ground, and the troopers started jumping up into the hanger.

    After picking up the drones and the Artillery outside the city, Exsue spun the ship around, and the sonic boom from it rocketing off into the distance rang out and signalled the end of this brutal attack on the city.

    -The Lab-

    Skay looked over the beaten broken body of James, gave a sigh and then started pumping a whole number of drugs into him. Unlike last time, James managed to wake up by morning and walked out like nothing was wrong with him. Even Skay was surprised at the speed James had healed up this time.

    After some short discussion and some interruption from Gold James, they learnt that his pride energy had started his faster recovery rate. Apparently, it was because he got such an ass whooping last time that it started to increase his body¡¯s ability to heal on its own.

    James wasn¡¯t sure whether to be worried or happy and decided that he¡¯d just be happy this time. After all, he was stuck with the pride energy now. No matter what he did, it would always be there, and he was going to have to accept that.

    After some discussion regarding the spirit bomb James had dropped in the mansion, they agreed it would need more testing. The spirit bomb was, of course, a slightly warped Cube Reactor. Instead of having any form of storage, it was thousands of layers of gathering and attraction arrays that fed into a single array called a compression array.

    This was the same array they used to compress their bricks in the Black-Iron mine, only ... powered by a huge and sudden influx of energy and not limited to a fixed area like the dust gathering cylinder was. The theory was that it was like a timed grenade. It takes a few seconds for all the attraction and gathering arrays to prime, which is the time you have to escape its radius of effect or at least get far enough it doesn¡¯t affect you too badly.

    Skay calculated that the force it exerted dropped by its square root for every hundred meters of distance you are from the centre. If James felt nearly 500 kg of pressure 300 meters from the epicentre, then that meant the area for a meter around the cube had the force of damn near 4 megatons.

    So you realise how heavy that is. Imagine a train engine. That alone is 100 tonnes. To be an equivalent of the same pressure as the epicentre, you would need 40,000 locomotives all stacked on top of each other.

    It was a truly monstrous device. It¡¯s only problem at present was the timer. You only had 1.2 seconds to get it to its destination and then vacate at least 300 meters away.

    Now, if they could find a way to fire this thing out of an Arc Cannon that could be solved because the speed of sound was just over 300m/s. The problem would be in how volatile the catalyst used for the Compression Array was.

    It would be like sticking a nuclear warhead into a bolt action rifle. Would you risk pulling the trigger on that thing? The mad duo hadn¡¯t actually tested this thing before and quickly found that, should James not have been as quick as he was, then he¡¯d be a red paste compressed into that half sphere depression in Hanso City.

    They had a multitude of ways to increase that time limit to longer, but that caused two new problems. Firstly, James wouldn¡¯t be able to get more than 300 meters before his legs gave out like putty and he could barely move. Secondly, if they gave a person too much time to react, then they may have some method similar to James that could get them to a safe distance before it went off.

    They also couldn¡¯t make it smaller, because the array patterns were slightly limited in their size. The only way to make it smaller and still be able to trigger properly was to find a more powerful catalyst.

    As James walked out of the medical room he¡¯d now spent the last three days in and out of, Jasmine perked up with some messages. ¡°Guildmaster James. You have ... all of the factions that presently own a coms cube trying to get in contact with you the moment you recover. The Third Prince has also left a message saying to join him for a drink in Tech City the moment you¡¯re free.¡±

    James just gave a wry smile and rubbed his face. He¡¯d once again overacted a little. He knew the moment he stepped onto the gunship he shouldn¡¯t continue with his quickly devised battle plan, but at the same time, he was a man of his word. If he said he was going to go and kill a threat to his progress, then that¡¯s exactly what he would do. Even if it had been said in a slightly heated moment.

    James consoled himself that this was how things in this world worked. People would do anything to get ahead of each other, and if James wanted to get ahead, he couldn¡¯t allow any threats to fester and grow right under his nose.

    That¡¯s like getting a little cut and ignoring it until it turns septic. He refused to be that fool who was soft-hearted with someone that was clearly going to be a problem in the future just because the man hadn¡¯t actually done anything yet. He read books, and he knew that choosing to do nothing when you had the power and advantage of surprise was just a recipe for a quick death.

    After convincing himself that this was an acceptable means of quelling future trouble, James called Rex and made plans to meet up at the Guildhall in the city for a drink.

    -Tech City-

    As James strolled through the city, he saw a marked increase in activity and a lot more rich looking scholarly types or adventurer types. While walking past the University Campus, he tapped his ear piece and started talking to Jasmine.

    ¡°Jasmine, I¡¯d like an update on how the city is doing.¡±

    ¡°Certainly James...¡±

    ¡°Guildmaster James.¡±

    ¡°Certainly James, at present the city...¡±

    ¡°No. Jasmine, use my title. You¡¯ve always used my title. Don¡¯t start being a...¡±

    ¡°Certainly James, the city currently has a population of...¡±

    ¡°Jasmine. Are you broken? You want to start talking to me like you¡¯re a people now?¡±

    After a long pause, Jasmine continued on unperturbed. ¡° ... Using rounded figures the city has a population of 240,000 people which is an increase of nearly 80,000 residents in two weeks. The majority of new residents have been drawn in by the quickly expanding trade from the Endless Forest along with the University which has processed 60,000 people for Meditation. 6,000 people for the first level of basic education implant, 340 for the second level of basic and 21 for the third implant. 1 person has done the fourth implant but was found dead the next day from a brain aneurysm.

    ¡°The Arena meditation chambers are also being filled to their capacity of 5,000 daily. Each chamber is hired out on average at 50 times standard saturation for roughly one hour. Bookings for the meditation chambers are weeks in advance.

    ¡°The current residential, commercial and industrial space in the city is filled to capacity. If we wish for the city to continue growing, we will need to increase the rate of development and expansion. Unemployment below the true spirit realm is 24%. This 24% of people are too poor for the mediation technique and are pushed out of work by drones and other people that managed to afford to begin cultivating. 70% of the unemployed populace arrived in the city after your ascendance to the Mayor role and came seeking a chance at a new life.

    ¡°The City is earning 98,000 gold weekly, mostly from the University and the Arena. Maintenance is at 3,400 gold weekly. Crime has skyrocketed with the recent influx of poor and unemployed mortals. The Brotherhood has still managed to maintain 30% of all crime in the city. Congratulations James.¡±

    James¡¯s eyebrow was twitching during this brief status report. ¡°Why are you congratulating me Jasmine? That¡¯s just the nature of business. Also, what¡¯s the deal with the guy that sat through all 4 basic courses?¡±

    ¡°Apparently he sat them all in a single week. The implants overloaded his brain and it sort of ... popped.¡±

    James rubbed his face wearily. ¡°Jasmine, introduce a new rule at the university. No one is allowed to go through more than a single implant in a week. Also, have any of our guild members completed basic yet?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry James, everyone in your guild is an idiot. No one has managed to complete a test past a year ten standard.¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow was getting a hell of a workout today. He gave a forlorn sigh at his luck of having an A.I that developed a personality and continued on his walk around the city as he started giving her instructions.

    ¡°Jasmine, start expanding the city. Raise the present walls and call this section the inner city. After that, build a new wall another 5km out. Then fill that space with four subdivisions. Also, drop the price of the meditation technique to 10 coppers and introduce the Star point breathing technique for 1 silver.

    ¡°While you¡¯re at it, create a tower in one of the districts. For every floor of the tower increase the standard saturation and also add in a compression array that increases progressively on each floor. All the way up to 1,000 times standard. I realised when I was under the pressure of that spirit compression bomb that my spirit energy rate almost doubles when my body is under spirit pressure.¡±

    ¡°I will make a note of this and inform Dr Skay. He will most likely be very interested.¡±

    James gave a chuckle and continued on. ¡°Of course he will. The old madman loves this stuff. Oh, by the way, see if you can design a system for the meditation chambers under the arena. I want to have a display of how much gold you paid on entry and then allow people to adjust the saturation and spirit pressure themselves. The screen will tell them how much time their gold will last for while under those set conditions. I¡¯ll let you work out reasonable pricing. If that¡¯s possible, then I want you to set up an underground with at least 30,000 rooms ... actually, make it 100,000 rooms under the spirit tower.

    ¡°Also make sure guild members get priority on these rooms and entry to the spirit tower. Finally set up a large market square in another district, a pasture in the third and a series of residential towers in the last. Leave all the rest of the space for sale to new coming residents and businesses looking for real-estate. Encourage anyone buying land in my city to build high. I¡¯ll let you take care of streets and infrastructure.¡±

    While he said that, he looked up to see a monorail stretching around through the city. This monorail system was a recent addition to the city. Just walking around on a sidewalk was assisted by array patterns that sped a person up to the speed of a slow jog just while walking, but in comparison the monorail was overkill.

    It ran around the city to various locations and could stop and start on a dime. It could travel nearly 250m/s and shot between this speed and stationary in less than a second. James wasn¡¯t sure how they¡¯d managed it but apparently it used a similar zero inertia array to the one on the talismans.

    It had 6 separate carriages that could fit 200 people each, and they travelled a circuit of the city in less than 20 minutes. That meant the longest you had to wait for one at a stop was 4 minutes. You then had a minute to board and would then be fired off to the next stop at 250m/s without even feeling a gram of inertial force.

    James finally gave his last instructions. ¡°Jasmine ... find something to do with all those unemployed bums that can¡¯t afford a roof over their head. If they¡¯re unemployable for anything ... well, we could always use new conscripts to the City¡¯s Armed Forces. Goliath will quickly weed out the useless ones. Oh and one last thing, once the residential district has its towers ready, clear the towers in the centre district. Anything not owned by a local faction is to be emptied.¡±

    ¡°Certainly James, projections show the new city infrastructure and walls will be ready by the time of the auction.¡±

    Finished talking with Jasmine, James sped up his pace with dual lightning and wind energy and shot off towards the Tech City Guild Branch.

 Chapter 32: Meeting Artimus

    -Guild Branch-

    The Tech City Guild Branch, that was somehow being managed and run by ex-Lackey 1, now Overseer Gary, was far more impressive than in the past. It was a 30 story building right next to the biggest plaza in town, which also happened to be the Monolith plaza.

    It remained mostly empty but was manned 24/7 and still posted Jobs that needed doing. Most of the cultivators that lived in the shadowy side of the city got their jobs here. The entire third floor was just 4 walls of job boards all in different colours. They now had white, grey, black and red. Each board had different levels of missions moving from the standard ¡®do something to help someone out mission¡¯ to the ¡®kill that person to help someone out missions¡¯.

    Although the nature of jobs here was no secret to the rest of the city, no one complained. For starters, the Brotherhood would take money for pretty much any job. Which meant the jobs the other guilds or clans didn¡¯t want to do themselves, they would pay the Brotherhood to do for them.

    Almost every guild had tried to hire the Brotherhood for some shady business. This meant the Brotherhood had dirt on just about everyone. The last thing was, the Brotherhood owned the damn city and was probably even more powerful now than the Katsu Sect. Hell, the only reason they weren¡¯t running the whole region was because they hadn¡¯t asked for it.

    As James sauntered into the Guild, he was stopped by some young fresh faced reception girls who seemed to think he¡¯d come to register to join. The older reception girl almost fell on her face when she saw the other girls talking to the Guildmaster like he was some dreg off the street looking to join the hottest guild in the empire.

    After a thorough dressing down of her juniors, she escorted James to the 2nd floor which was now the Guilds bar and lounge. James often forgot that although it was only 3 months in this world, it had actually been 6 months in earth time. He now realised he didn¡¯t visit the city branch near often enough.

    After being seated on a very comfy sofa, James handed a mission for the receptionist to take to the Overseer. James had somewhat forgotten his game of giving Gary weird tasks to complete and only remembered it when he left the lab this morning.

    He decided if he was stopping by anyway, he might as well give Gary a new job. As he waited for Rex to show up, he ordered some hard liquor from the waitress that hurried over. Just as he was about to crack the bottle, Rex sat down across from him and took off his bamboo hat revealing his handsome and refined features.

    He had a strong jaw and sharp green eyes that seemed to catch everything in their gaze. His golden hair hung down over his shoulders and looked so soft James was convinced he must wash it with unicorn tears.

    Without any fanfare or introductions, Rex jumped straight into the heart of the matter. ¡°James, I¡¯m not sure if you realise, but you¡¯ve stirred up a shitstorm of trouble with your stunt in Hanso City. You¡¯re probably aware, but Lachlan Hanso is missing, and nearly 80% of his Clan was annihilated in a single night!¡±

    James gave him a confused look and quirked his head to the side. ¡°Oh? What stunt in Hanso City? Pity about that Hanso fellow though. I¡¯m sure he had a lot of friends that will dearly miss him.¡±

    Rex gave a baffled look and then snatched the bottle of scotch James had just started pouring. ¡°Who do you think you¡¯re fooling James? No one in the entire Empire will believe that you had nothing to do with this. An exact description of your flying death machine was recited by half the city and only hours before it happened you called every major faction in the empire together to buy out the man¡¯s accounts.¡±

    James then sat back with his half full glass of scotch and took a sip. After rolling it around on his tongue for a second, he swallowed it down and then looked up at the ceiling like he was mulling something over. ¡°You know, you¡¯re right Rex. I never even considered that until you mentioned it. Now that someone has killed that Hanso fellow I no longer need to sell those accounts. I can just close them.¡±

    Rex looked like he couldn¡¯t believe his ears. ¡°What ¡®someone¡¯?! It was you! Stop trying to hide it! You even asked me about the repercussions right before you went off and did it!¡±

    James just smiled and sipped on his scotch some more. ¡°Well ... let¡¯s say hypothetically that I did massacre the Hanso Clan last night. What¡¯s the problem? The Hanso region is full of other clans and sects that can fill their role. I didn¡¯t damage any property that generated resources or income for the Empire, and civilian casualties were minimal. You told me all of this just yesterday.¡±

    Rex was now shaking. Either from rage at his continued denials of responsibility or the shock that it actually was this little true spirit cultivator that just wiped one of the most powerful clans in the Empire off the map in a few short hours.

    ¡°James, I didn¡¯t actually think you had the capability to do it! I thought you were just blustering for Hanso¡¯s sake.¡±

    ¡°Oh Rex, I don¡¯t know if I do have such capabilities. After all, this is a hypothetical conversation and has no basis in reality. However, as a man of my word, I probably would have eventually made a move against Hanso if someone else hadn¡¯t stepped in. I don¡¯t speak empty threats after all.¡±

    Rex was shaking so much the bottle in his hand shattered and stained his white robes with dark splotches. He looked like he was having a fit and couldn¡¯t decide whether to start laughing insanely or screaming in a fury. After what seemed like nearly a minute, he took a deep breath and calmed himself down. Then his sharp eagle like eyes trained onto James.

    ¡°You¡¯re an excellent liar James. I pride myself on being able to see through people, but it¡¯s quite difficult to tell if you¡¯re trying to be funny or actually serious. Well regardless, let¡¯s say that hypothetically it was you who killed Hanso. Everyone in the Empire is going to want to know how a group of true spirit realm cultivators, not even numbering in the hundreds, managed to decimate a powerful clan with a tower realm expert and multiple Palace Realm experts and thousands of branch clans and disciples.

    ¡°Not only are the powers in the Empire going to want to know this, the powers out in the three great nations are going to want to know as well. You would have drawn the attention of every pair of eyes and ears in half the continent with such a stunt. People are already talking about your stunt of killing that tower realm mole in the Quarry expedition. That can be brushed off mostly because everyone wanted to claim credit for that. But all of a sudden Hanso, who you publicly had a falling out with, disappears 2 days later?¡±

    James cupped his chin in thought after Rex gave him a hypothetical assessment. His mind was spinning furiously trying to work out what to do. After a while, he grinned. ¡°Only been a month and I¡¯m already jumping into the next pond. Well then Rex, if all of this is as you say, I doubt you¡¯re looking for me just to fulfil your curiosity.¡±

    Rex gave a wry smile and sat back onto the sofa. ¡°You¡¯re right. I didn¡¯t come looking for you to assure my curiosity because I already knew it was you. I came here because I heard your Guild takes on any mission. I want you to kill my competition for the throne.¡±

    James¡¯ face remained neutral, and he leant forward and placed his glass down on the table. ¡°Your competition? I¡¯m assuming you must be talking about the first and second princes?¡±

    Rex just gave a nod of the head.

    ¡°So what¡¯s in it for us? You¡¯ve come here and given me this ... warning, I suppose, and now you want me to race off and complete another high profile job?¡±

    Rex gave another nod. ¡°You get two things. The first will be my oath to protect your guild with all the resources of the Empire I¡¯ll have at my disposal and the second is claiming ownership of such a high-profile job. If you are able to kill off two highly secured Palace Realm targets in the capital city, then even the three great nations will have to recognise your reach and power and will be forced to reconsider before trying to pressure you.¡±

    James stood up and beckoned for Rex to follow him. After a short trip in the elevator, they arrived on the roof of the guild. As they looked around, they saw the rest of the city towering up around them and moving out in every direction.

    James paced around the rooftop with his arms behind his back while looking down at the monolith plaza. ¡°Rex, I want neither the fame of the kill or your promise. My guild operates with one rule. Money is king. I personally have a few more rules, but this principle remains constant for my guild. We don¡¯t take credit for our work. In fact, apart from the guild, no one knows who completes what jobs. All they know is that someone in my guild can get their job done.

    ¡°Furthermore Rex, by the time you have the power and influence of your father, I will already be beyond the limits of your Empire¡¯s ability to protect. By that time, it¡¯ll be you coming to my guild looking for protection. That makes your promise worthless I¡¯m afraid. You need to offer me something else for this job.¡±

    Rex wasn¡¯t born yesterday and immediately realised there was something specific James wanted, then he suddenly realised that James didn¡¯t deny the possibility of being able to kill off his older brothers. Seeing he may actually have a chance at the throne, Rex decided to lay down all his cards.

    ¡°What is it that you want then? At the rate your guild is growing financially, mere gold isn¡¯t on your radar anymore. That means, for a job of this calibre, you must want something else. A rare resource perhaps? If it¡¯s within my means, I¡¯ll pay any price to kill those two bastards!¡±

    When he said that, his hand was clenched so hard blood was dripping to the ground from his fingernails digging in. Seeing this, James put on a coy smile and then his gaze returned to the monolith.

    ¡°I want two things. One for each brother. The first is all the information the imperial clan has on array patterns. The second is a spirit beast of at least the Palace Realm or better with lightning affinity. I don¡¯t need you to capture the beast. Instead just locate one at Palace Realm or better and I¡¯ll do the rest.¡±

    Rex¡¯s face split into a huge shit eating grin. ¡°Excellent. I can agree to both of those requests. I¡¯m assuming from your wording that you want the beast alive. I won¡¯t try and guess why, but I can tell you right now that I know where you can find a beast in the Tower Realm with a lightning affinity. Also, as the third prince, I have some responsibilities. It just so happens that artefact and array construction in the imperial clan both fall under my purview.¡±

    Hearing this, James then spun back and eyed Rex for a moment. He was suspicious that the man had agreed far too quickly, but if he was trying to entrap James, there was no way for him to protect himself. ¡°Fine. We have an accord.¡±

    -The Lab-

    With his conspiratorial meeting done, James returned to the lab. With Jasmine¡¯s drones now flitting all over the Empire like bees, James had a huge amount of incoming data. Processing everything sent back by her drones even gave Jasmine a hard time occasionally. At least she insisted that was the case and repeatedly encouraged James to build her at least another 50 spirit computers. She¡¯d even started throwing out new designs trying to incorporate arrays instead of hard circuits.

    After a few hours of Jasmine searching about with her drones, the locations of the two older brothers had been discovered and they¡¯d begun tracking their locations constantly.

    While Jasmine was busy doing that, James had her set up a conference call with everyone that had a cube minus Rex. After a few chaotic minutes of everyone asking a billion questions in a single breath, James calmed everyone down.

    ¡°Everyone calm down. Now I should start by saying due to the untimely destruction of the Hanso Clan, we won¡¯t be selling off their account of 33,000 gold and that account will instead be closed under the guidelines outlined in the contract under the note regarding the inability to claim on the account.

    ¡°The other 5 accounts will still be closed. I¡¯ll be happy to discuss those terms with the three factions that made a joint bid earlier. Now that business is cleared away, let me say that I can neither confirm or deny the Dark Brotherhoods involvement in the sudden disappearance of Lachlan Hanso and the assault on Hanso City.¡±

    Finished with his short statement, another barrage of questions was fired from the powers holding accounts with the Brotherhood. James just waited there while drinking tea as they all tried to outdo each other screaming at their communication cubes.

    After a good 5 minutes, people started to realise James wouldn¡¯t be saying anything more on the matter of the Hanso Clan and they quietened down a bit. James felt like a politician training news reporters to show some respect. He then suddenly had a terrible idea.

    He filed that idea away and then turned his attention back to his clients. ¡°Well then, it¡¯s only been a day since we last had a conference call like this. Hopefully, nothing big will happen in the near future, until we meet again for the Auction in 5 weeks¡¯ time.¡±

    James then closed the communication channel and had Jasmine start preparing a new project. While that was happening, he called his Ghosts over to the lab. When Alecksa assembled her team, it appeared Junior was still resting from his injuries.

    James then started filling the four present members in on their next mission. He didn¡¯t give them specifics of how or when to kill them and only told them to start trying to infiltrate places frequented by the two princes.

    Once they left, he called Skay and then the mad duo started a new joint project. They created nearly a hundred spirit bombs with altering methods and designs. When they were ready, James took the Gunship out to the Endless Forest. Before they went and decimated the forest with their 4 megaton spirit bombs, James had them land in the city.

    He then made some calls and started moving around some responsibilities. He sent Fatty out to oversee the Black-Iron mine now that all the greenhouse structures in Tech City were being managed by Jasmine and the previously unemployed mortals.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    He left Jasmine doing her normal thing, which was rooting every dick in the city and being the main point of contact for business between the Guild and their clients. Amusingly about the only person in the city she hadn¡¯t seduced into her bed was Lucas.

    Exsue and Harvy remained in the Gunship. To try and develop new pilots, James had a similar system to the pilot array in the gunship built at the University. It was designed to act as a test and practice chamber. It could replicate the flight systems of everything they currently had and then some things they didn¡¯t have but planned to build eventually.

    Getting into the flight program was a little difficult, though. It required a person to have completed basic at the University, which pretty much no one had been able to achieve yet.

    James then assigned Goliath to the Security head position. He was tasked with finding and training some trustworthy individuals that could take on the position of General of the Guard for both Star City and Tech City.

    Once he¡¯d accomplished that and set down training regimes, Goliath would then return to being the Goliath of Wrath and running missions with James.

    That only left Skay, who somehow managed to keep himself amused locked away in that lab all day. James had him working on some side projects for him while he was down their building God knows what.

    When he¡¯d finished, he walked out of the city to a little grotto that had grown nearby to Star City. It looked fantastical in nature and had a bubbling brook and beautiful green grass with tall overhanging oaks and a little clear pond with a small waterfall streaming into it.

    As James walked into the grotto, a little group of playing forest hoppers all perked up and then scurried off into the underbrush. James let out a sigh and then went and sat down cross-legged on a rock near the pond. He then looked around for a second, and after seeing no one nearby, he spoke into the forest.

    ¡°Alright you wooden bitch, let¡¯s talk.¡±

    After this short sentence, a nearby tree trunk started to deform and bend until, after a few moments, a lady with skin as soft as the petals of a flower and smelling of the forest in spring came walking out. She was completely naked as she walked out and her hair was long and green with flowers braided through it. After she stepped out, her clear sky blue eyes trained in on James.

    ¡°James, it¡¯s good to see you. The clearing of that disgusting vermin seems to be progressing very slowly. Is there no way to speed it up?¡±

    James scratched his face and sighed. ¡°You said yourself that even you are worried by these things. According to you, they¡¯re not part or your forest ecosystem, so I guess it¡¯s more like a virus right? Well, a virus can¡¯t be eradicated in a single night. Patience is key in fighting sickness and all that.¡±

    The dryad of the forest moved past James and walked into the pond, submerging her body in the cool water. ¡°James, you made me a promise. In exchange for your oath, I gave you permission to erect a city in my world. The Tree of Two Worlds is still young, and although very similar to a monolith it is limited in that it must grow from a seedling.

    ¡°There isn¡¯t enough spirit energy here for it to grow quickly and it may be thousands of years before it can clear those vile steel wood trees out of the surrounding 1000 kilometres for good. Until then it is your job to protect the Tree of Two Worlds, slow the growth of those trees and prevent their expansion.¡±

    James frowned and crossed his arms as he watched the dryad rubbing the water along her soft satiny skin and moving around her supple thin body in an alluring manner. As she continued to rub her body, she glanced over and made eye contact with James.

    James gave a grunt and stood up from the rock. ¡°I told you I¡¯d take care of your herpes trees, you wooden hussy. I came looking for you to get the location of the nearest large infestation apart from this one. We¡¯re going to be testing some weapons and I don¡¯t want you getting all crabby again because we¡¯re giving you a shave.¡±

    The Dryad suddenly perked up at the mention of killing some steel wood trees. ¡°That¡¯s excellent news. It just a two-day journey west of here.¡±

    James just grinned and then tapped his ear a few times. ¡°I¡¯m not about to hike two days across your snatch. Let¡¯s make it a day trip. There and back.¡±

    Before the dryad could respond, a shadow enveloped the little grotto, and the Gunship slowed to a hover above the trees. Not letting the tree lady protest, James pumped lightning energy into his body and then shot forwards grabbing her. He then flipped out a little talisman that created a weightlessness and shot them up into the sky like a rocket.

    The next thing she knew, they were standing in a flying metal box, and it was rocketing away across the tree tops of the forest like a streak of light. If any creatures wanted to hassle them, then they¡¯d be sorely out of luck. To notice them before the sonic boom sounded out and they were gone again would require luck, precision eyesight and perception twice as fast as James¡¯ when he was charged up with lightning energy.

    After only a 10 minute journey they stopped. The dryad hadn¡¯t even had the time to work up a frenzy of disgusting language before her and James were looking down off the back ramp of the ship at a huge dark patch of dark, twisted, gnarled trees, surrounded by the lighter green, healthy usual forest.

    ¡°That looks a bit different to the steel wood trees we¡¯ve seen. Don¡¯t tell me you got more than one STD?¡± James commented.

    The Dryad gave him a reproachful look that just bounced off. She didn¡¯t know what an STD was but from the way he discussed her forest like it was her private parts and covered in disease and infection she could only conclude he was making comments about contracting strange things through sex.

    After a moment of her glare being totally disregarded by James, she gave a long sigh and looked back out at the wide patch of dark dead trees. ¡°This is a dead zone created when the steel wood trees suck all the life out of an area. They then become undead spirit trees and after a period of gestation, transform into Steelwood Treants that march off to new areas and germinate a new generation of trees. You¡¯ll find even that small area of Steelwood trees near your city has an old Steelwood Treant hidden away in it somewhere.¡±

    James just gave a distracted ¡®oh?¡¯ As he started pulling the lid off a wooden crate secured to the deck. After a moment of muttering and shuffling through the box, he pulled out a bomb slightly bigger than the one he used to kill Hanso.

    After he had poured some spirit energy into it, the cube lit up with a ¡®hum¡¯ and a massive inrush of primal energy started to gather towards it. Some circular arrays then projected out an inch off the side of the cube. James started twisting and turning them this way and that before grinning like a mad man and tossing it out the rear of the ship into the dead zone.

    ¡°Better get some altitude Exsue. Rather safe than sorry and all that.¡± James mumbled into his earpiece.

    The Gunship rose up to an altitude of 3km allowing them a pretty good overview of the area. They sat there staring down at the dead forest for nearly 10 minutes before suddenly something strange happened. Everything in a 1km radius of the cube started leaning in towards the centre. Then slowly rocks and dead shrubs or fallen branches started getting sucked in.

    Soon the smaller trees were being uprooted and crashed through the forest towards the epicentre. After another few minutes, the huge dead Steelwoods were being pulled from the ground. This seemed to become the tipping point and suddenly everything for 1km around the point James dropped the cube just ... disappeared.

    Replacing the now missing half sphere of forest and earth was a 2-meter sphere as smooth as a babies bum. Now that it had reached a critical point and the array patterns had been crushed under their own pressure, the ball fell to the ground and sunk in like stabbing a finger into a bowl of cake icing.

    James couldn¡¯t stop his hand from shaking and his face forming into an absolutely huge shit eating grin. ¡°Haha, holy shit! An actual mass compression gravity bomb. Is there anything a guy can¡¯t achieve with array patterns? Hahahaha!¡±

    The Dryad was staring out the back of the gunship with wide, shocked eyes. She couldn¡¯t comprehend what she¡¯d just witnessed. An entire stretch of forest gone just like that. It wasn¡¯t just the forest either. Nearly 2km diameter of earth and rock.

    This strange man who stood in her forest talking to one of her trees for three straight hours till she pitied him enough to come out and talk with him. She thought him just a slightly clever fellow with a terrible cultivation level. But now she realised she greatly underestimated him. The power this man had at his fingertips was devilish.

    James, like an excited child, pulled a few more of their spirit bombs out and started letting them charge and playing with the settings of the arrays projecting off them. Then after giving Exsue some instructions they began to float around over the dead zone dropping odd bombs in now and then.

    One of them released a ground level wind blade that cleared 500 meters of trees around it like a great big instantaneous chainsaw. One of them was similar to the wide area compression bomb used on Hanso. Others released tornadoes of fire and ripples of earth that pushed any trees in its wake out of the ground.

    James¡¯ favourite was by far the gravity bomb and the plasma bomb. The plasma bomb didn¡¯t have as big an area effect as the others. Instead, it only affected a smaller range of about 50 or 60 meters. But anything in that zone was guaranteed to die.

    The plasma bomb didn¡¯t explode as much as it fired off super-heated plasma balls around its surroundings. Each of these little balls was burning at the same Celsius as the sun and about the size of a table tennis ball. Anything they hit would be filled with a little hole regardless of how sturdy it was. If it can¡¯t survive in the sun, then it can¡¯t deflect a plasma ball ... probably ... hopefully.

    He was curious to know how that old monk bastard would handle one of these things.

    -The Lab-

    After a few hours of playing with the bombs and the gun crews occasionally having some fun shooting Treants that tried to escape out of the forest, James and the Dryad returned to Star City. She was so conflicted that she said nothing and just walked back into her tree to try and comprehend everything she¡¯d witnessed today.

    James returned to the Lab and started filling Skay in on any interesting thoughts he¡¯d had about the spirit bombs. They then reviewed footage captured from the gunship of all the bombs going off and observed their different effects.

    They noticed the pressure bombs seemed to be able to harness a more powerful level of force from less energy. They assumed this was because of the type of catalyst they used until they observed bombs with even better catalysts reacting with less force. When they realised this, they started testing and discussing it for hours.

    In the end, they both agreed that this pressure created from spirit energy, or rather spirit pressure, affected the nature of spirit energy slightly. For starters, the array patterns somehow seemed more stable while under pressure, which sparked new ideas, like using it to stabilise all the patterns in a cube until the whole pattern is set off.

    They also agreed that spirit pressure increased gathering rate. For now, they measured this spirit pressure with weight, based on how much force it could exert on a set of scales, but they both agreed it wasn¡¯t effecting mass the same as normal gravity.

    They believed it was affecting the spirit energy that is innately inside everything. They considered spirit energy to be so pervasive that no matter or acknowledged energy existed that didn¡¯t have some innate undefinable and unmeasurable level of primal spirit energy connected to it.

    They believed it was this energy that the compression and pressure array¡¯s manipulated to cause a chain effect. With these ideas in mind, the duo started coming up with new methods to implement them.

    For starters, they redesigned every spirit bomb to have a minor pressuring array to help stabilise the normally volatile catalysts used for the detonation array.

    They also redeveloped the cube in the basement and added some additions onto it. This was done incredibly carefully, seeing as neither of them wanted to see a spirit energy explosion on the scale of a spirit bomb 40,000 times more powerful than what they¡¯d been letting off in the forest.

    This wasn¡¯t all. With the use of tiny pressure arrays, they managed to start miniaturising power cubes even further and knocked them back to about half their size for the same output.

    After another day in the lab theorising and testing different uses with the pressure array, James was called up to the Guild HQ Office on the surface by Jessy.

    When he arrived in his office, he walked straight in past an older gentleman in very richly embroidered white and gold robes and Jessy politely serving tea. Standing at the door were two standard armoured goons with a Dragon Crest on the front of their armour.

    James didn¡¯t even bother to notice anyone but Jessy, still being distracted by other thoughts, he just walked in and sat down. Without even glancing at the guest in his office he started pouring himself some tea and talking to Jessy.

    ¡°Jessy, I¡¯ve started expanding the city again. We¡¯ve got too many people moving here. We may have a way to reduce building costs, but you¡¯ll need to talk to Skay about setting something up with the compression arrays. We should be able to drop an entire square kilometre of Steelwood and compress bricks just as strong in a fraction of the time.

    ¡°Oh and money. You should have been reached out to by the three factions that just bought up the debt of that poor bastard Hanso. If you haven¡¯t spoken to them yet, get in touch today.

    ¡°The last thing I need you to do is pump up the hype for our auction. I want people to know we¡¯ll be selling everything from building designs from our city to basic arrays. We¡¯ll also be selling real estate in the city centre. Anywhere that we own in the city centre will hopefully be vacated by the auction day. Half the real-estate is up for auction.

    ¡°Oh, and add in Mk2 meditation rooms. We¡¯ll set one up at max saturation and pressure as an example. If they want some, they can bid for the first 100 in stacks of ten. We¡¯ll come build the rooms for them so we can install proper security on it. If they try to peak at the arrays, ¡®zap¡¯, they all get erased.¡±

    Jessy was giving James a glaring look like he¡¯d just stepped on her pet dog. When James realised Jessy wasn¡¯t writing any of this down, he frowned. ¡°What? Why aren¡¯t you writing this down?¡±

    Jessy then nodded her head sideways, and James turned to see a smiling, thin old man in his sixties with long grey hair and the same pair of sharp green eyes as Rex. James could immediately recognise who this guy was, mostly because he had a crown on his head shaped like a coiling dragon.

    Being the narcissistic jerk he is, James wasn¡¯t about to admit that he¡¯d just completely ignored the most powerful man in the entire empire and chose instead to pretend he was just an ignorant stepper with no idea of the world.

    ¡°And you are?¡± James asked with a quirked eyebrow. He nearly even fooled himself, so fast was his change in expression.

    The thin old man chuckled and placed his tea on the table. ¡°Let¡¯s not play games, James. We both know each other. If not personally, then by extension of our power and influence. I know everything there is to know about you, and presuming you haven¡¯t already investigated me, you can surely at least guess who I am.¡±

    James leant forwards onto the table and rested his chin on his hands as he squinted his eyes and gave the emperor another look over. ¡°Fraid not old man. If you¡¯re here to set up an account, then Jessy¡¯s your girl. If you¡¯re here to post a job request, then I suggest you try the branch office in Tech City.¡±

    The old Emperor chuckled lightly again. Then while staring James in the eye, he dropped the pressure of a peak Tower Realm cultivator onto James like a rock.

    James had somewhat expected this and had readied himself. To the Emperors great shock and surprise, James continued to sit motionless and without the least bit of strain. Instead, he carried a cheeky smile and then started to sip his tea.

    ¡°Old man, I should warn you that I don¡¯t take threats lightly. I consider you dropping your spirit pressure as a threat, and if it weren¡¯t for the fact I¡¯m on good terms with your son, I¡¯d simply have you disappear here just like your buddy Hanso.¡±

    Finally, the Emperor¡¯s stunned face calmed back into a squinty-eyed smile. ¡°You have a talisman that reduces my spirit aura. You really do have means beyond your cultivation.¡±

    After saying that, the Emperor¡¯s spirit pressure disappeared like it had all been imaginary. He then smiled again and continued. ¡°Well then, allow me to play your little game. I am Artimus Dragonheart the Third, 15th Emperor of the Yori Empire. Presumably, you¡¯re Guildmaster James of the Dark Brotherhood and City Mayor of the now renamed Tech City by right of forfeit.¡±

    James put his best shocked and surprised face on as he shot to his feet and saluted the emperor ¡°Oh! So you¡¯re the Emperor of Yori? And what can this humble denizen of your Empire do for you?¡±

    The two generic looking guardsmen that had been standing by the door looked like they were trembling. The grips they held their sheathed swords with only grew tighter and tighter until their knuckles had whitened from the pressure.

    Finally, one of the two guardsmen couldn¡¯t take it anymore and stomped forwards. He unsheathed his sword and cut down splitting the heavy marble table in two with a single slash. ¡°Insolence! You vile true spirit scum! You dare play games with his Imperial Majesty?! You dare threaten him with your filthy tongue?! This is insubordination, and you deserve the punishment of death!¡±

    With his declaration yelled through gritted teeth, he bent down and forwards to launch himself at James.

    Before his foot hit the ground for his first step, the window of the office shattered and was followed in the same instant by the man¡¯s head. James hadn¡¯t moved an inch from his lazy salute and just let out a long sigh. ¡°Why do they always take it out on my table? My table never did anything to them!¡±

    James then glanced over at Jessy who remained unmoved by this display and then turned back to the Emperor who had managed to save his cup of tea from the table before this incident.

    After a moment of just looking at him drinking his tea unconcerned, James could only give a depressed groan. ¡°Fuck, you came in here and broke my table just to test me? You¡¯re creating a storm of shit for yourself you¡¯re about to drown in, mate. Just say what you came to say and fuck off before I light the fuse on the reactor and turn your dirty little backwards nation into a fucking inland sea!¡±

 Chapter 33: The Blink of an Eye

    Seeing he¡¯d managed to work up a response from James with that little play his subordinate just acted out, Artimus smiled and placed his tea on the ground next to his seat then crossed his legs and eyed James.

    ¡°It¡¯s rather simple James. You¡¯ve only been here for 3 or 4 months, and you¡¯re already achieved so much. You¡¯re already running a city in my empire, you and your 3 companions have already stepped into true spirit realm 10 times faster than even the quickest cultivators in the entire Empire, even others with rare or multiple elements like yourselves.

    ¡°Not only that, you have researched and developed uses for array patterns that have remained untouched for as long as my clan has recorded history, you have weapons capable of killing palace realms and even have means to make tower realms simply disappear.¡±

    Seeing James about to deny involvement in the Hanso incident Artimus just waved his hand. ¡°I don¡¯t care if you were involved in Hanso¡¯s disappearance or not. The fact remains you killed that tower realm beast in the endless forest and have already proved your ability.¡±

    James leant back in his seat and cross his arms as he eyed Artimus suspiciously. ¡°You still haven¡¯t mentioned why you came here. In fact, I¡¯m rather curious. Why would the most influential and powerful man for 600 kilometres in every direction, turn up on my doorstep instead of just summoning me like all your other subjects?

    ¡°It makes a guy wonder just what you want. If you wanted me to do something above board, you¡¯d just call me like a dog. No, you want something else, something shady. Perhaps the three nations are already watching my guild, and you¡¯re worried that they might be a little concerned if you suddenly start summoning me. They might suspect you want my technology ... or perhaps they might think you want me to start killing some people they don¡¯t want dead?¡±

    Artimus¡¯ smile widened. ¡°Well, I can see now how your guild managed to climb its way up to its position so quickly. You¡¯re right, there¡¯s someone you are going to want dead just as much as I do. I¡¯ve let you build your guild and take control of a city because you have some potential. Normally I¡¯d have people already infiltrating you, but the few people I¡¯ve sent either can¡¯t get deep enough and disappear trying or they can only bring out information that is useless to me.

    ¡°I have all the array patterns you have, but my best array masters can¡¯t figure out what to do with them. I have people that use your strange meditation and breathing techniques, but they can¡¯t teach them to anyone. I even had someone try and master all of your ¡®basics¡¯ at your ¡®university¡¯, but he suddenly died from some mysterious power.

    ¡°You have protected your secrets well, and it makes you hard to control. But it also makes you a powerful wild card. With you helping my empire, we can expand into the territory of the three nations and protect ourselves. For once, my Empire will rise from this cage of great nations and take its place among the continent¡¯s greatest Empires!¡±

    Noticing that he¡¯d gotten somewhat side-tracked, Artimus gave a bashful cough. ¡°Well, how you operate within my empire will be discussed another time. What we need at the moment is for you to make a man who could very well cause us both problems ... disappear. Just like Hanso did.¡±

    James cupped his chin in thought for a moment then looked up at the Emperor. ¡°So, in the long run, you hope to use my guild to trigger a war with the great nations. If I¡¯m not wrong, having this person mysteriously disappear inside your empire is only the first move. You probably plan for us to complete other missions in the future to raise tensions and encourage the nations to go to all-out war.

    ¡°Then when they¡¯re busy killing each other you swoop in and start taking some land. All the while you expect me to supply you with a means to empower your shitty armies with a way to fight for and then protect any land they can take. But that doesn¡¯t sound right. You don¡¯t have the means to force my hand on this issue, which means this first job is to create the means.

    ¡°You plan to ensure that you have dirt that can make me the target of their rage should I not conform and then you can force me into assisting your grand scheme. The only problem with all this is you need us to look like we did it on our own intuitive. So this man you need us to kill is probably someone that would somehow be disadvantageous for my guild. How am I doing so far?¡±

    While speaking his thoughts, he watched the Emperor¡¯s smile slowly drop into a frown. Clearly, he was somewhat close to the truth if not guessing on the nose. When Artimus made no comment, James¡¯ face lit up into a bright smile.

    ¡°Excellent, well then, I have a few things on hand you might like to know. The first is that I¡¯ve just received a contract to disappear your first two sons.¡±

    Artimus just smiled and waved his hand like it didn¡¯t matter. ¡°You think that matters to me? I can just have more sons. I¡¯ve lived for 1,600 years boy. In that time I¡¯ve sired more children than I care to count. Unfortunately, none of them have ever lived up to my expectations. For the third prince to be making a move on his competition is more than I could ask for from a future clan head and Emperor.¡±

    James gave a nod like he¡¯d expected as much. ¡°Good to know. The reason I mentioned it was because it ties to my second point, my guild will take on any job. If you want someone dead, then you just have to pay for it.¡±

    Artimus wasn¡¯t quite sure what to make of this young man now. Even after he¡¯d made a point of showing that he could see through the Emperor of the Empire and that this assassination would be the bargaining chip he would use to force the guild into compliance, the man still agreed to it for a price.

    He was rather conflicted now. He wanted to use this to entrap the Dark Brotherhood into the service of his clan and empire but instead felt like he was now walking into a trap. Nonetheless, he pushed on. He wanted to expand his Empires influence even at the cost of millions of souls.

    ¡°Fine, name a price, my clan has more gold than the hairs on nine oxen.¡±

    James just chuckled at that comment. ¡°Gold? What use is gold? It¡¯s just used as a place keeper for real wealth. It¡¯s like paper money, without the market it¡¯s just paper. When the shit hits the fan, even a commoner who dreams their whole life of obtaining gold, wouldn¡¯t sell a bag of grain for a single bloody copper. No, I want something else.¡±

    Artimus scratched at his neat grey beard as he eyed James. He knew the boy was right. Gold is worthless to a truly powerful cultivator. Oh, it¡¯s a good measure of wealth when the market is running, but it remains just that, a measure. When the market falls the only thing left is old school bartering, and because not everywhere uses gold to trade, it¡¯s rather useless outside of civilised areas. Real cultivators treated useful resources as wealth.

    ¡°So then. What do you want? Resources?¡±

    James smiled like the cat who ate the canary. ¡°Well, it depends. Who do you want dead?¡±

    Jessy cupped her face in her hands when she saw James smiling like the devil. He was planning something, but god only knows what. She was actually rather surprised. James had started picking up the law of business rather quickly. Don¡¯t be fooled by this conversation about being dragged into some war and becoming the dogs of the royal family.

    James only saw this whole thing as a means to make money and was probably already making plans for back door dealing with the three nations. Like any good businessman, James had claimed the high ground in this discussion and obtained the advantage.

    Artimus remained silent for a moment then gritted his teeth. For the first time in years, Artimus felt out of his depth. The boy was just a little bit frightening, wasn¡¯t he? He didn¡¯t even blink while he offered to kill someone that may start a war.

    ¡°He¡¯s a man from the southeastern nation of Hastoel named Perlious. He is here to investigate your guild and determine if you would be worth covertly kidnapping and enslaving.¡±

    James tapped his ear with a smile on his face, but before he could start talking, Jasmine¡¯s face appeared on a projected screen on the wall. ¡°Certainly James, there are 3 men by the name of Perlious within our jurisdiction. The most likely is a man posing as a True Spirit Realm Cultivator currently in Star City. He has been in every open guild operation and has spent a full day in the mines. He presently has no recorded criminal activity and has remained as ordinary as everyone else in the city.¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow started twitching. He disliked that Jasmine had already started tending to requests before he even ordered them. Having a machine with that sort of intuition wasn¡¯t necessarily a good thing.

    James chose to let it slide though. He was currently in a meeting with the god damn Emperor and didn¡¯t want to start lecturing her in front of him. ¡°What else can you dig up on him?¡±

    ¡°At present, he¡¯s the most average man in almost everything. He spends the average amount of gold, eats the average amount of food and has used the average number of foul words. He even defecates at regular average intervals. He is the most average man to ever exist.

    ¡°5 days ago he was recorded in the Katsu markets spending double the average, eating twice the average and sleeping with ladies of the night at 4 times the average. He was also recorded having the following conversation on a long distance voice transmit talisman.¡±

    ¡° ... ing to be there soon. From everything I¡¯ve heard, they¡¯re exactly what we want.¡±

    ¡°Have you seen any of these miracle artefacts the guild reported?¡±

    ¡°Yes father, I met with the guild leader of the katsu merchants yesterday, he managed to secure one of these, ¡®Berta¡¯s¡¯. It would make a perfect troop transport. He has refused to sell it. There¡¯s one other thing father, the two men that were sent to infiltrate the guild haven¡¯t reported in. They¡¯ve either defected, or been discovered.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s fine Perlious. Remember, don¡¯t draw any attention. It can be certain that old fox Artimus is watching them closely. Don¡¯t forget, if we¡¯re going to take them, we need to know everything. They may have powerful defences, but I doubt they¡¯re prepared to counter against a surprise attack from within. I¡¯ll be sending a new team of 20 in a week¡¯s time. Make sure you¡¯re ready.¡±

    Jasmine ended the recording with a ¡®Beep¡® and then began talking again. ¡°That is the only long distance transmission we have on file.¡±

    James looked at the recording playing as a clean shaved, slightly chubby man with curly red hair walked around in the guild plaza of Star City.

    ¡°Jasmine, is he on your watch list?¡±

    ¡°Certainly James. The watch list presently has this man and another 12 people being monitored as potential threats and 138 people being monitored as targets of interest.¡±

    James shot a look over to Artimus. It seemed like, for now, the man wasn¡¯t lying about this person being bad news for the guild. That¡¯s what it sounded like anyway.

    ¡°What else have you got. What guild is feeding outside powers information about us?¡±

    ¡°At present, we have accounts with 12 separate major guilds. 3 of them have made contact with Hastoel representatives within our observation. None have had a discussion directly pertaining to infiltration or to this man named Perlious.¡±

    ¡°Fine, send out a contract to these guilds requesting information on the man. If anyone even glances in the direction of the Hastoel nation, then I want to...¡±

    ¡°It appears the Katsu Merchants guild has just contacted a member of the Eastern nation by the name of General Latsoe.¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow was working into a fritz at Jasmine¡¯s growing intuition. She was getting just a bit scary. It can¡¯t be too good yet, because if she knew how close it was pushing James into going downstairs and creating a malfunction in the reactor, she¡¯d be intuitive enough to not do it.

    While James was calculating just how much he¡¯d lose from such a course of action, Jasmine had already started playing the conversation.

    ¡°General Latsoe, it¡¯s Gustov. I just got a request for information on your son. I think someone¡¯s tipped them off about him.¡±

    ¡°So? Tell them who he is. I¡¯m the General of the entire fucking northwestern border. If they know what¡¯s good for them, then they¡¯ll be fucking scared out of their wits. That pissant little Empire can¡¯t protect them from me!¡±

    James turned to Artimus with a face wreathed in glowing smiles. He was like the devil selling wishes again.

    ¡°The General¡¯s son? You don¡¯t say. Well now. The price for killing someone that could create such a big backlash. What kind of price would you put on that head? Of course, it¡¯s slightly worrying that killing him outright would be more disadvantageous for our guild. But that¡¯s not your long term goal, is it?

    ¡°What you want is full-scale war. That costs extra. You¡¯ve no doubt had methods to make it look like the other nations killed him. That¡¯s the only way I could see you starting a war over this. If you want the three nations at war. We can do that too. Jasmine, what would be the best way to start an all-out war between the nations?¡±

    ¡°We could kill some influential types from all three nations and leak information that our guild was hired by one of the other nations. To be completely honest, you should just let me create a small army of droids and kill everyone. That way you could enslave all three nations and the empire.¡±

    James looked at the screen on the wall displaying Jasmine¡¯s talking face. ¡°Bah! You take all the joy out of it. Where¡¯s the intrigue? Where¡¯s the backstabbing and plotting? Look, if you start building droids again, I¡¯ll just set the reactor to self-destruct and leave you here to join it and the rest of the Empire. The best part of being a narcissistic megalomaniac is the plotting!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll take that into consideration for future endeavours. Would you like me to start ¡®Megalomaniac Plotting 1.0¡¯ for all present tasks?¡±

    ¡°All tasks unrelated to me.¡±

    ¡°Of course James.¡±

    While this had all been going on, Artimus¡¯ face had been slowly distorting as he thought to himself. ¡®Madness! Sheer madness! This man is clearly insane. He must have gone through some kind of deviation in his cultivation. I thought he had a sense of the bigger picture, but he¡¯s obviously just crazy!¡¯

    James then had Jasmine contact Skay, who, when he came on screen, was busily stuffing a fresh-faced young Lackey into a strange looking pod shaped like an upside down cone that was penetrating into the ground.

    ¡°Old Madman. I need you to cook something up in your lab.¡± James said to the screen depicting a young man trying to claw his way out of a pod and the crazy old Skay stuffing him in with his foot like trying to compact garbage into a bin.

    After a short period of wrestling and foot stuffing and slamming a door on the cone shut, Skay wiped the sweat off his brow and turned to face the camera. ¡°Oh? Good timing boy. I¡¯m about to test the drop pods. I¡¯m gonna need to borrow the dragon girl and the ship.¡±

    After that short scene, Artimus was now certain he¡¯d somehow just been involved in a crime. James just waved his hand like it was a matter of course.

    ¡°Sure, whatever. I have a job I need you to do first though. We developed those needles for the Trickster so she can use her element from a range. Can we do something similar for other elements? Say for your elements, or perhaps Goliaths element?¡±

    Skay adjusted his glasses in thought. ¡°Probably wouldn¡¯t be hard. Just need some power gel, some other spirit herbs could probably increase the feedback, and then pump some element into it I suppose. But what about my tests? Took me nearly an hour to fill these 5 prototypes.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s fine. You said yourself it shouldn¡¯t be hard. You¡¯ll probably be done before the subjects expire.¡±

    Jessy, by now, had long since given up on these two. Trying to get them to conform to standard social etiquette was impossible. She¡¯d actually wanted to avoid James meeting the Emperor in person, but he¡¯d ended up asking for a meeting despite her efforts. Looking at the face the Emperor was now making, she was certain he¡¯d long since realised his mistake.

    After a brief discussion, James ended the transmission, and like the devil turned back to Artimus with a smile on his face. ¡°So, Arty, what do you think would be an appropriate price to start a war? Of course, we can just go ahead and kill that Perlious fellow, but that probably won¡¯t help you start a war if he disappears right after we started asking questions about him.¡±

    Artimus couldn¡¯t quite determine what he wanted to do now. It would be difficult to claw the Brotherhood in, especially now that they¡¯d seen through his ploy so easily. But that didn¡¯t mean it was impossible. ¡°I want you to start the war, but if you do, I¡¯m going to need your help equipping my Empire to expand and defend itself.¡±

    James cupped his chin in thought for a while. ¡°We can start your war, and if you have the resources for it, we can even equip your army for you. But I want something in exchange for this task. I want everything you have.¡±

    Artimus suddenly shot to his feet. ¡°What?! My Clan has owned and run this Empire since the...¡±

    James waved his hand like shooing away a fly. ¡°Bah! Empire?! How useless. I don¡¯t want your fucking empire. You only have one thing I want. Knowledge. Information. I want every record of array patterns, potions, pills, artefacts, techniques, history. Anything you¡¯ve got written down or stored away in that head, I want everything.¡±

    Artimus could barely contain his anger. ¡°You may as well be asking for my Empire! Our cultivation techniques and research date back to before the three nations had even grown from piddling little backwater countries. This research isn¡¯t something for the likes of some tiny guild that will last for only a blip of time in my Empire¡¯s history before it¡¯s engulfed in a flood of greedy clans and sects seeking their methods! You won¡¯t be able to protect that knowledge and instead of paying you for a job I¡¯d be pouring my clans methods out to anyone that wants it!¡±

    James never lost his calm smile and just gave a sly look at the end of Artimus¡¯ enraged speech. ¡°Well, that¡¯s fine then. That¡¯s the price of starting a war between the nations and then securing the Empire¡¯s ability to take and maintain their hold on the three nations lands.¡±

    Artimus had long since lost the calm knowing smile he¡¯d carried in here. In all his 1600 years of life, he¡¯d never met such a difficult person to deal with. He thought it would be simple to walk in and the grandeur of his personage would be enough to cow this guild to his whim.

    To make things worse, not only had he vastly underestimated how crafty the Guildmaster was, he¡¯d underestimated just how powerful their information network was. They had the power to record conversations between people anywhere in the Empire. That was like being a farseer or time scriber. You had the power to single handily topple countries.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Only making all this worse, was that they¡¯d somehow managed to make Hanso disappear. If it was possible for them to make a tower realm expert just disappear like that ... well, he didn¡¯t want to test it personally.

    He¡¯d rather send in the royal guards to test them first. So far, the first attempt of testing had his head spread across the floor from some long range weapon or technique that came through the window from some person who was far enough away that even Artimus couldn¡¯t figure out where he was releasing this technique from.

    Having these thoughts rolling around in his head, Artimus¡¯ face returned to a serene calm. ¡°This isn¡¯t just our problem, you¡¯re clearly being targeted by powerful people now. If you don¡¯t side with the empire that leaves one of the nations. I would then be forced to evict your guild from my empire, and you will become someone¡¯s dog and lose all autonomy you¡¯ve had until now.¡±

    James smiled like an old Chinese man with his eyes squinted together and his smile reaching the top of his face. ¡°You don¡¯t need to worry about that. Should it happen, you will be the one losing out. Besides, they will quickly learn what is and isn¡¯t acceptable when doing any business with my guild. Well, it doesn¡¯t matter. That is the price, if you aren¡¯t willing to pay it, that¡¯s not my problem, things will just continue as usual.¡±

    Artimus retained his polite smile and after a few minutes of staring at each other, one looking like a pleasant old man and one looking like a used car salesman, Artimus bade his farewells and left. His parting comment quietly echoed in the Guildmasters office as his remaining guard bent down and picked up the corpse of his compatriot on the way out. ¡°I¡¯ll consider your offer.¡±

    The moment he left, James¡¯ smile fell to a placid, blank face. He then turned to Jessy. ¡°Well?¡±

    Jessy gave him a confused look. ¡°Well what?¡±

    ¡°Well, you¡¯re in charge of the business side of things. How¡¯d I do?¡±

    After that question, Gold James suddenly appeared in his spirit realm and went into a tirade.Oh here we go. You need some back patting now? Need someone else to boost your ego a bit more. One of these days you¡¯re going to...

    Just as quickly as he appeared, James willed him away. He wasn¡¯t too sure what to make of the Gold James anymore. By now he could usually keep that shiny bastard de-summoned, but the moment he got a little egotistical about something he¡¯d achieved the shiny little bastard would pop up again to lecture him. Which tended to be quite often.

    Rubbing his face tiredly James diverted whatever Jessy had planned to say about his performance with the Emperor. ¡°You know what, forget it, just tell me your thoughts from a business perspective. How likely are we to get a job from the Emperor?¡±

    Jessy crossed her legs together and leant back in her chair. ¡°If this was only business, it¡¯s not unlikely that he¡¯ll request the job for your stated price. However, it¡¯s never just business, especially in this world. He¡¯ll most likely wait and then jump in when he thinks we need it, like a rescuing saint. He wants us to be compliant and feel like we owe him something. That¡¯s how he plans to initially tie us together.

    ¡°If we don¡¯t receive significant pressure, he¡¯ll create it. He wants us indebted to him. Then if that doesn¡¯t work, he¡¯ll start pressuring people connected to us and limit us business wise. His only problem will be the upcoming auction. If he can¡¯t alienate us before then, it¡¯s most likely he¡¯ll have no choice but to accept the deal.¡±

    -4 weeks-

    While letting everything slowly ramp up to the next auction, James spent most of his time researching martial techniques. He¡¯d had Jasmine studying any technique manual they could get their hands on.

    One thing he¡¯d learnt was that he¡¯d misinterpreted how the martial techniques worked. He¡¯d presumed that it was simply a matter of using more or combined spirit energies to increase the power of your techniques. It turned out that most martial techniques used certain meridian paths to increase the power of the technique.

    James had no idea how exactly that was supposed to work, but nonetheless it did. This presented a significant problem for James, with his non-existent spirit realm he couldn¡¯t utilise meridian paths fully.

    After some work with Jasmine, they managed to map out all the meridians they could find recorded and discovered the ¡®meridians¡¯ were a poor depiction of a person¡¯s nervous system and acupuncture points were actually nerve clusters.

    With that new knowledge in mind, James had Jasmine set up an implant with the nervous system map of his own body and then spent a weak understanding and fully memorising it. Once he was done, he started developing two new techniques. The first was his breathing technique which now changed to a rather convoluted system operating as a clock.

    Now that he could pretty much simultaneously use two different elements without any backlash he cycled through meridians paths in his body like two hands of a clock. For an hour the long hand would start at twelve o¡¯clock and circle around through all his minor meridians with a different element each minute and each cycle randomising the order of elements.

    His hour hand would focus on his main meridian paths and cycle every 12 hours with each hour being a prolonged use of a single element which once again randomised at the start of a new cycle.

    While this was happening, he would use the star point technique on each acupuncture point, of which there was 240. Each point was barraged by 6 elements in a second before it switched to a new point. This was done to help force his spirit realm into becoming more tolerant of using three or more elements simultaneously.

    Instead of having to find a way for the energy to return to his dantian where it started from, it would instead simply return at the end of a meridian path to his imaginary realm. This became his new standard breathing technique, and it turned out to be nearly 10 times more efficient. It also had some other interesting side effects like increased reaction times and abnormal levels of strength even for his cultivation level.

    James named the new technique the ¡®Hands of Time¡¯ and had his brain scanned, and an implant created immediately. It became one of the most expensive techniques on the guilds merit reward list.

    Amusingly, it was so difficult to teach yourself to do it subconsciously that even James had significant trouble with it. His only saving grace was that Gold James would suddenly pop up if he stopped his breathing technique and start accusing James of getting lazy because he thought he was too good for breathing techniques now.

    James was starting to wonder if the Gold James was some sort of subconscious projection he created to prevent himself from getting too absorbed in his own self-centered ego.

    The other technique he¡¯d been working on he called ¡®Fleet Feet¡¯. It utilised his meridians to fully empower his legs and mind with lightning energy and wind energy simultaneously. He discovered that the acupuncture points and the size of his meridians in his legs actually somewhat limited the flow of his spirit energy and greatly reduced the speed he could alter spirit energy flow or increase or reduce it to control his speed properly.

    When he asked Elder Grace, who still frequented the hall to train Jessy, he discovered that normally a person had to spend years conditioning their meridian paths and unblocking acupuncture points in order to perfect a new technique.

    This created a problem. He could just pour the spirit energy in from everywhere like he used to and it allowed him greater control of the technique, but that lost him the significant amount of power up he received from using his meridians. He finally realised that having an ethereal spirit realm was both a blessing and a curse for martial techniques and breathing techniques.

    Control or power? James very much wanted both and set out to achieve just that. With the help of Jasmine, Skay and a few test subjects, James began a project to reduce the lag created by using meridians without losing the increased power.

    12 Lackeys and a week later, it was decided this would become a long-term project to revisit regularly. In the meanwhile, James decided it would be best to try and increase his meridian flow and break open some acupuncture points.

    With this thought in mind, he began to spend days in a row locked in meditation and cycling his breathing technique with the maximum amount of spirit energy he could pump into it in one go.

    By the week before the auction, he¡¯d unblocked 8 acupuncture points in his legs, and his meridians all over his body seemed to ¡®feel¡¯ bigger. According to Jasmine¡¯s scans, they¡¯d actually shrunk somewhat and increased in density nearly 3 fold. A similar rise in density was found in the nerve clusters that ¡®felt¡¯ unblocked.

    After the Hanso incident, James rarely needed to be present for his guild members to do business and by this point in time the business side of his guild was almost entirely operated by lower guild members, freeing up his core guild members to do whatever they wanted.

    All of them except Skay became focused on the research and training James had been doing into meridians. Skay, of course, wasn¡¯t as concerned with cultivation as everyone else. He apparently had devised his own system to cultivate that was fed by his knowledge. James had no idea how he came up with it but apparently it worked because Skay only seemed to grow more powerful, spirit energy wise, with every project he finished and the more he understood.

    When the others tried to master this technique or create a technique similar to it, they discovered it to be damn near impossible. It required a level of cognition that was off the charts. Skay always refused to do any brain scans and show just how active his mind was, but Jasmine had snuck some readings somehow and simply told James that even earth had monsters and never mentioned it again.

    By the time it was 4 days before the auction anyone that was participating had either arrived in the city or was less than a day or two away. With the recent city upgrades, the inner district was now mostly empty apart from sects or clans that had managed to snatch up a building when the city was first rebuilt only 6 weeks ago and the university that had actually been slightly expanded.

    The rest of the inner district had been demolished and was now mostly open space waiting to be sold or rented. Apart from a very high-end 50 story skyscraper that was built to serve as a hotel for visiting dignitaries, no other new building had been erected.

    The four surrounding districts, on the other hand, were now full of all sorts. The commercial district had 4 circular plazas that were filled with markets and traders. The residential district was filled with houses and high-rise apartments that could house nearly 600,000 families.

    The last two districts were referred to as the Spirit district and Crop district. Greenhouses that reached into the sky spanned the entire Crop district, and almost all the food was stored in huge underground silos that were temperature and humidity controlled by advanced array designs.

    The majority of the land was actually used for grazing country, to raise and farm animals for meat.

    The most interesting district was actually the Spirit district. It was close enough that it actually lost a km to the edge of the lab and the Endless Forest Gateway compound. This was considered a good thing by James, because it forced people to enter the city to get to the compound gate and also kept the lab inside the city limits, whereas before it was almost 2 kilometres from the city wall.

    This wasn¡¯t the most interesting thing. It wasn¡¯t even that the rest of this district was filled with training halls and meditation chambers for rent. The most interesting part was the 500-meter tall tower that sat in the middle like a great spire reaching into the clouds. At the top most point of the tower was only a single 10x10 room.

    This room had such tremendous pressure it was almost never active. The power required for the top 40 floors to operate actually strained even the lab¡¯s reactor. This meant that until someone stepped onto the 100th floor, the top rooms remained silent.

    This was caused by needing to have a huge number of arrays that could resist the pressure of the compression array. More energy was actually spent keeping the tower standing when the top 40 floors were active than all the compression arrays in the tower stacked together.

    In addition to the Spire, the arena was also dug up and moved to the spirit district. Not only was it bigger than ever, but it was also segregated into 4 areas to allow matches between every type of spirit realm.

    Naturally, the Tower Realm area remained unused, but the Palace Realm was regularly used by cultivators passing through to Star City. The thing people needed the most when reaching higher levels was experience in using their elements and combating other powerful cultivators.

    Everything in the spirit district was owned by the city, or more appropriately, the guild. That meant everything there was rented out. This actually started raking in even more money than Star City, because cultivators would visit Tech City and hire meditation chambers or Dojo¡¯s because they were all structurally reinforced to the point even Arc Cannons wouldn¡¯t be able to dent them. This made them perfect for training martial techniques or meditating in.

    Some people had even rented a meditation room for 6 months or more, so they could go into closed door cultivation and try to break through to the next realm.

    During this period of rapid development for Tech City, Star City has been slowly expanding maps and increasing the distance and level of its exploration of the Endless Forest. Unfortunately, despite a number of group attempts, no one had managed to fully explore places like the snake pit or abandoned mine yet.

    The quarry had been rapidly explored by Jasmine¡¯s drones and mining operations for LS3 and the Major Spirit Storage gem deposit had already begun. The mini-lake of condensed spirit energy had been sucked into a giant tank that had been acquiesced for the present time to Skay, who demanded the right to research it before using it for anything.

    The income from Star City and Tech City was now more than any city in Yori Empire except for Yansho City. Although James was supposed to pay land rights and tax to the empire for Tech City he didn¡¯t. Apart from the same tiny sum that the Gau Clan used to pay the empire, James gave them nothing.

    Even that little sum he paid to them was entirely because he was still technically part of the Empire. If he thought he could do it without a bloodbath ensuing, Artimus would have tried to enforce more taxes on James.

    This was especially considering Tech City had managed to start dragging in so much commerce and cultivator activity it would no doubt be dwarfing the capital city in land and population in another 10 years. For a world that operated with three or four hundred year lifespans, 10 years was a relatively short time period to most people who mattered.

    The Brotherhood really had developed too fast for anyone to notice they would become such a powerhouse in such a short period of time. They couldn¡¯t even be properly infiltrated because they had some abnormal level of security.

    Needless to say, the city was filled to the brim. It wasn¡¯t just the auction that was the reason for Tech City¡¯s rapid increase in activity these few days. Because of his recent advances in how spirit energy worked in the body, James wanted to test himself and test some new techniques.

    With that thought in mind, James advertised a few activities for the days leading up to their showcase. The first was a reward for anyone that can reach above the 50th level in the Spire. This was because each level grew so dramatically that even tower realms would find it difficult reaching above the 50th floor. At this time, James could barely make it to the 21st floor.

    As far as True Spirit Realm cultivators went, the only person to beat that was Skay, the disgusting old freak. He strolled up to the 40th floor then came down saying he got bored like it was all some walk in the park. James was fairly certain he must have had gravity as one of his elements, or something ... who knows with that mad bastard.

    The second reward was for anyone that could win against any of the 7 sins in the arena and for every win against a sin the reward doubled. Because they still hadn¡¯t found a sloth, Harvy was designated to that role. Being half dead, he may have actually been the closest thing to sloth James had found so far.

    He implemented this because he wanted to test his skills and to encourage the training of his core members. To prevent some riff-raff challenging him and taking up his precious time, he made it so you could only challenge the sins if you could win against 5 normal Brotherhood members in a row.

    At first, a lot of people lined up to try their hand at defeating the Sins, but that very quickly backfired. Skay and Harvy basically killed anyone that challenged them. Skay, because he hated being interrupted, and Harvy, because death was his nature.

    People stopped challenging Goliath because he disabled almost everyone he fought with, leaving broken legs, arms and internal organs. For a similar reason, everyone refused to battle Jessy, not because she disabled them by breaking bones or leaving them near dead. No, it was the debilitating orgasm that left them questioning if they¡¯ll ever have kids again.

    That only left three people to fight that didn¡¯t kill or debilitate everyone they fought. Exsue was named the Witch of Envy. This was because she always cackled madly while firing off lightning everywhere like a witch from the stories. The worst part about the lightning was if you touched it you¡¯d be distracted by your envy of everything. You¡¯d see visions of everything you lack that others have.

    Although this doesn¡¯t seem as bad as the lust thing, it was far worse, because in a large group battle it would turn everyone against their comrades. An entire army could effectively be wiped out if half of them fell into madness.

    Fatty retained his title of the Red Barron. His powers were far stranger in battle. With a single deep breath, he could suck all the spirit energy from of his surroundings. Not just primal energy but people¡¯s refined energy that they released to employ martial skills. Worse still was actually touching him, it was like touching a spirit energy black hole.

    Luckily spirit energy depletion was nowhere near as paralysing as Jessy or Goliath. There was also a significantly smaller chance of joining Harvy on team dead.

    That only left James who somehow seemed to be the sanest of the sins. The only problem with battling him was, it was like a lucky bag. Because he was always testing different techniques, you¡¯d sometimes be painting the arena red or shaking uncontrollably on the ground as lightning danced around your body.

    The worst part about challenging James was that his record in the arena was untouchable. He¡¯d never once taken a hit or even been grazed by a martial technique. He was so fast it was impossible to pin him down.

    The closest someone got was a man using hidden weapons who launched throwing daggers and needles. So sneaky was his tactics, James was forced to use maximum power to speed up his perception and catch them in mid-air.

    The final reward was more academic and was posted in the University. This was more a science fair than a challenge and was designed by James to encourage the sharing of knowledge and design. To encourage more learning, he¡¯d recently been adding new courses to the university.

    Not only did they now offer meditation, breathing techniques and the four basic knowledge programs, they also started adding in basics on introductions to spirit materials, artefact creation, array systems, elementary alchemy systems, and some basics on cultivation.

    To top it off, they¡¯d put Gary in charge of the University and the Guild, so he was now in charge of hiring and managing some staff that could understand some of the basics, that allowed them to tutor others and increase the turnaround from people taking implants.

    To add to this, they brought in hundreds of barrier realms to record everything they knew about their jobs, then started some simple programs that covered things from farming to cooking and from building to manufacturing. Almost every menial job under the sun had a counterpart in the university to help allow the uneducated and unemployed find work.

    It soon became standard practice in Tech City to ask new hires if they¡¯d been to the Tech City University and it wasn¡¯t uncommon for the youngsters of more well-off families to be sent to study all kinds of things at the university.

    By this point, people had started to come out of the other end of the 4 basics, and dozens of academics and scholars had managed to understand at least enough of them to pass basic testing.

    While all this had been happening, some darker aspects had started moving into the city under Jasmine¡¯s watch. Three different large groups of people had entered the city and started causing trouble only to be surrounded by groups of Mark 2 combat drones, holding little array cubes.

    The new combat drones looked like miniaturised versions of Velocity and had only been built because Jasmine broke under the pressure of James¡¯ ban and begged him for permission. James was incredibly uncomfortable that Jasmine had developed to the point she realised nagging the absolute shit out of him would be effective.

    The only thing preventing him from detonating the reactor under the guild was that there were now 2 more of them hidden away under the city powering everything and he wasn¡¯t certain if he could escape the fallout even if he were in the Velocity Gunship.

    Regardless of that, the new drones had a more sleek design like a sideways teardrop and had 3 mini jet engines that operated with arrays. They were also incredibly expensive and because of that, James only allowed her to produce about 20 of them. Nonetheless, these drones were beyond fast and could operate two little ¡®hands¡¯ from the front which allowed them to be incredibly versatile.

    The little array cube the combat drones carried actually acted like projectors and created a 3D array projection between them using electromagnetic waves. This meant that what they actually created was an invisible array that then silently created a stable reaction in between the drones and turned the space between them into a volatile oven.

    To everyone else, the drones¡¯ would surround the people trying to break into the lab or destroy the property of the guild and then their little cube they were carrying would light up. Following that was a heat wave and the infiltrator slowing turning into a charred burnt corpse.

    Unfortunately, they weren¡¯t powerful enough to contain a Palace Realm cultivator. In those cases, it was usually Goliath turning up with an armed group of guild members in Mk II Combat suits or a few more combat drones popping up from all over the city with Arc Cannons and Tesla Rods.

    During the four weeks that the city had been re-reconstructed, James wasn¡¯t the only busy person. Goliath had trained and installed two new Generals that were in charge of security and defence in Star City and Tech City. They were General Wiest and General Gallin.

    While Goliath had been busy doing that, Skay had been building various obscure things and researching even more obscure things. One of those things was the Mk II combat suit, which had now become even more streamlined. It fit like bike leathers and was just as flexible and light without losing any of the combat potential of the Mk I. That said, it didn¡¯t add any combat potential other than the flexibility and lightness. His Mark III design was far too expensive to equip guild members with.

    Skay had also been working on what seemed like hundreds of other projects locked away in his lab. Some of them James knew about, a lot he chose to ignore, and some even Jasmine wasn¡¯t privy to.

    Fatty seemed to be a Jack of All Trades and had been through more different assignments and responsibilities than a career criminal in and out of prison. He was now permanently posted in charge of Star City, mostly just as a means to keep him out of the way.

    Jessy spent most of her time in correspondence with Skay, James and their many business partners, and also kept a personal eye on their accounts. She was in charge of all public relations and also determined and advertised what they¡¯d be willing to trade at the auction and what they traded in the interim.

    Exsue was the last of the core members and spent all her free time badgering James. Every time he thought he¡¯d thrown her off or escaped her, she¡¯d reappear and stick to him like herpes. He¡¯d begun to suspect that Jasmine was feeding her information on his location just to piss him off.

    While the city had been under construction, the ghost team had already long since infiltrated the private residences of both the first and second prince. On an inconspicuous day that was of no special meaning, the manors of the first and second princes were mysteriously vaporised in flaming explosions that engulfed hundreds of meters in a tornado of fire. The entirety of the empire had suspicions about the culprits involved, but chose not to voice their concerns.

    Emperor Artimus simply brushed it off without concern and life moved on. When Rex finally came through on his end of the bargain, it was publicly called a donation to the University of Tech City. The library staff at the University spent nearly two days and nights scanning everything they received into the system until everything suddenly vanished before they could put it on the shelves.

    James had everything moved down to the HQ storage lockers and only allowed basic and elementary documentation to be displayed in the library. Most of which was useless to anyone that had a slightly better than poor understanding of array patterns.

    Jasmine had been working overtime on these patterns and used them as an excuse for James¡¯ permission to build a new spirit computer. This allowed her a chance to start creating the first array circuit based computer system. Amusingly, she was forced to concede that even she couldn¡¯t get it working properly and had to settle for a slightly more advanced version of the spirit material computer she was already operating from.

    This however then left the door open for her and Skay to continue research and testing on the idea which she happily concealed from James. Now that she¡¯d already doubled her computing power with a new spirit material computer, if James found out she was still working on a new one, he¡¯d definitely put a stop to it.

 Chapter 34: Mysterious Challenger

    -Tech City Spire-

    With 4 days left until the auction, things had been quickly ramping up in the city. More and more powerful cultivators were entering the city and with that influx was the increase of people taking advantage of the cities services.

    Namely, a lot of people were trying their hand at the Spire or at the Arena. On this day, James had been busy trying to ascend to the 22nd level of the tower when he got a coms from Jasmine.

    ¡°James, it would appear that a new contender has appeared in the arena for your 7 sins challenge. Both Jessy and Fatty have been defeated.¡±

    James looked up the flight of steps he¡¯d been ascending and then wiped the sweat from his face. He let out a long breath then turned and started walking back down the steps to exit the tower.

    ¡°So, I take it this person is challenging me next?¡± he asked Jasmine.

    ¡°No, the contender is challenging Goliath next. However, I was told to bring this to your attention because they have used dual elements. Jessy is also of the opinion that you will definitely want to meet this person.¡±

    ¡°I see. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. We can¡¯t expect to be undefeatable in the True Spirit Realm. That would be arrogant even for me.¡±

    A few minutes later, James walked out of the tower and then shot off like a streak of lightning through the streets towards the arena.

    -Tech City Arena-

    When James got to the True Spirit Arena, Goliath had just walked out to the centre to meet the challenger. This person was rather short, and their lack of stature was only exacerbated by Goliaths 7 feet of muscle.

    The challenger had their face hidden in the shadow of their hood, and they wore a plain black robe allowing no one much insight into who they were. At their waist was a single sword on a belt not too different from the one that James now wore.

    Standing opposed to the challenger was Goliath donning blood red leather armour and wearing a horned helmet made of bone. Held in a single hand by his side was a massive War Hammer that was the length of his body. The hammers head was the size of a 40-gallon drum and was pitch black, letting no light escape it.

    The seats around the arena were packed to bursting with tens of thousands of spectators screaming and cheering. James jumped up to the top of the arena wall and looked down over the arena battlefield.

    The arena was built to give all element affinities a fair chance, and it had parts from all 4 major elements. A long narrow stream wiggled through the centre like a long snake and the ground was loose dirt and stone. Placed around the arena were long iron torches sticking out of the ground and naturally, there was air.

    As James looked down at the challenger, they too turned and looked up directly at James. Even while looking up, the hooded robes seemed to hide their face, everything that is, except for the bright blue eyes that stared back out from the shadows.

    James sat down on the wall and cocked his head to the side as the two of them began a staring match, only to be interrupted quickly after by the ¡®ding¡¯ of the arena bell signally the start of the match. The challenger¡¯s attention very quickly reverted back to Goliath and their hand fell to the hilt of their sword as they lowered into a battle stance.

    Goliath grinned and spun his hammer around a few times like it was a plastic toy. Then without any further delay, he charged forwards with the hammer held in both hands off to one side. Seeing the huge mass of meat that was the Goliath of Wrath speeding towards them, the challenger rapidly drew their sword sending a series of wind blades through the air towards Goliath.

    Goliath didn¡¯t even seem to register them as he barrelled onwards and let them slice across his arms and legs. As they impacted and dissipated on his body, his eyes began to glow red, and his speed increased. The shallow cuts on his body began to rapidly heal, and his every step began to send out earth ripples in every direction.

    Luckily for the spectators, the earth ripples reached the edge of the arena only to be dissipated by the flashing arrays all along the outsides of the arena. Having their stance disrupted, the challenger was forced to move and chose to advance towards Goliath instead of creating distance.

    Seeing this person finally making a move, James¡¯ eyes opened wide in surprise. Whoever this person was, they were fucking fast. Even James had to admit that without using his lightning energy, he would find it difficult to properly track their movements.

    As he watched on, the contender seemed to float across the earth ripples and when only a few meters from Goliath, they disappeared and reappeared like an apparition in front of him while swinging the sword down in a chopping motion.

    To the spectator¡¯s great surprise, Goliath made no move to attack or defend to the front where the contender just appeared and instead smashed his foot into the ground and rolled off to the left while swinging his hammer to the right.

    In almost the same moment he smashed his foot down, the apparition in front of him disappeared and reappeared to the right swinging their sword in a sideways slash. Goliaths face made a savage grin as his massive war hammer connected with the challenger¡¯s sword and then a boom rattled the arena, and a huge cloud of dust rose up shielding the spectator¡¯s view.

    The challenger was shot out the other side of the cloud like a bullet from a gun and very quickly found themselves face planting with the normally invisible protection arrays around the edge of the arena. After a flashy light show from the array field, the challenger fell to the ground and slowly began to pick herself up.

    The crowd was going wild, and it seemed they mostly believed that Goliath had just secured his victory. On the other hand, James sitting far above at the top of the arena cupped his chin with a frown. His quiet contemplation was very quickly interrupted when Exsue suddenly appeared on his lap and started rubbing her face against him like a cat.

    ¡°You better not get any funny ideas Jay Jay. If you try and hit on that bitch just because she has the lightning attribute I¡¯ll just kill her.¡± Exsue purred into his ear.

    James¡¯ face made a series of different changes and then settled on a questioning one with his eyebrow cocked. ¡°She? How do you know it¡¯s a girl? And how do you know they have lightning attribute?¡±

    Exsue pouted and looked at James with a frowny face. ¡°Don¡¯t play games with me Jay Jay. She might be wearing robes, but any self-respecting man can tell it¡¯s a she after seeing her figure moving around. And we both know that she must have lightning attribute, I can sense it when she uses it just like when I sense another person¡¯s cultivation level.¡±

    James looked back down at the arena and his face soon formed into a frown. ¡°This isn¡¯t good Exsue. It means they¡¯re probably already here.¡±

    ¡°They? Who is this bitch?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know. But I have three theory¡¯s and only one of them is good.¡±

    While James and Exsue had their little discussion, the dust in the arena had finally settled revealing Goliath using his hammer to stand and covered in rapidly healing cuts and blood dripping from his body. On the other side of the arena was the now once again standing challenger wiping the blood from their mouth and breathing heavily.

    After taking a step forward, they reached to their ribs showing they most likely received quite a bit of internal damage from that short bout. Goliath¡¯s eyes were now glowing so brightly they looked like flashlights beams of red and his face had a disgustingly broad smile.

    He then took a long breath and lifted his hammer in both hands as he once more moved towards his challenger. Seeing the mountain of muscles stepping forward again, the woman picked up her sword from the ground and after a few swings returned it to its sheath.

    Also taking a deep breath, she began walking forwards as well. When the two were about 20 meters apart, the challenger pulled her sword out again and following it from the sheath was a long arc of lightning that fired directly towards Goliath. To her consternation, Goliath just raised his hammer and the lightning bolt was sucked into the head.

    James couldn¡¯t help but give a chuckle watching this. Of all the people to fight against with lightning, Goliath might have been the worst. He and James had both had uncountable sparring sessions, and Goliath had long since thought up countermeasures for all of James¡¯ tricks. It was also the reason he had been able to predict the high-speed feint in their earlier collision.

    Seeing their trump card being so carelessly rendered useless, the challenger changed tact and started to run in a circle around Goliath. Their speed increased bit by bit, and soon they looked like a single blurry ring. Seeing where this was heading, Goliath¡¯s face grew solemn.

    Very soon numerous blades of wind were slashed out from the circling blur heading towards weak points like joints or arteries. Goliath began to spin his hammer like a staff and as it spun it danced around his body deflecting wind blade after wind blade.

    Just when things looked like they were going to develop into a battle of attrition, the wind blades increased in magnitude to become an uncountable wave of deadly sharp blades all closing in on Goliath.

    Seeing things devolve so quickly, Goliath gave a loud grunt and swung his hammer with full force into the ground. A huge ripple like a crushing wave spread out from Goliath and engulfed the incoming wind blades like the sea.

    Another dust storm rose up in the arena, but the focus of the battle quickly shifted as Goliath shot out one side of the dust cloud swinging his hammer defensively while the challenger fired off blindingly fast stabs and slashes from their sword.

    The cuts and wounds continued to build up on Goliath¡¯s body until his movement suddenly stopped and another huge swing of the hammer deflected the sword and sent it flying across the arena. The challenger took this opportunity and closed the tiny little remaining distance until she managed to land a hand on Goliath¡¯s arm.

    Seeing this, James suddenly stood up and dropped Exsue onto the ground. ¡°Oh god, please don¡¯t tell me she¡¯s about to...¡±

    Before his words finished, Goliaths body began to spasm and jerk. This only happened for a second until the glow in Goliath¡¯s eyes grew frighteningly bright and his head reared back releasing a demonic roar that shook the stadium.

    The entire arena began to shake, and a pulse of air blew out from Goliaths body like a small explosion. Much to James¡¯ surprise, Goliath¡¯s roar died in his throat, and he suddenly became limp then collapsed.

    The crowd was silent in shock and then seeing the challenger having won against three of the Sins in a row, they went mad. Cheering and applause echoed out over half the city as they screamed, yelled and stamped their feet like savages.

    James stood on the top of the arena wall looking down at the now unconscious Goliath and the huffing and wheezing challenger who was leaning on her knees trying to keep herself standing upright. James couldn¡¯t stop himself from mumbling as he cupped his chin and his face darkened.

    ¡°What the hell was that?¡±

    Exsue, who¡¯d climbed back up and was now sitting piggyback on James¡¯ back again, looked down curiously at the arena. ¡°What was what? She just shocked him into unconsciousness right?¡±

    ¡°No, I doubt it. I doubt even you could shock Goliath into unconsciousness anymore. He seems to have developed some kind of hatred for it from our training, and now it only drives him into momentary insanity. He becomes mindless in his rage and destroys everything. Last time I did it, he nearly killed me. Normally takes him a while to calm down and I¡¯ve never seen him drop like that before. There¡¯s something else going on here.¡±

    After a brief time of catching her breath, the challenger left the arena, and the crowd began to quieten down again. James had Goliath dragged back to the Lab where Skay began a battery of tests from the standard to invasive but found nothing out of the ordinary.

    James then called Jessy and Fatty down to the Lab after watching their recorded battles with the challenger and questioned them. Both of them went down in similar ways and woke up the next day which was why Jessy had brought this to James¡¯ attention.

    Neither of them could explain what happened when they were touched be the stranger and could only say they suddenly become drowsy and then unconscious.

    James was both excited and worried by this news. He began to have a number of suspicions but chose to discuss none of them. He wouldn¡¯t know for certain until he met this person himself.

    Unfortunately, the challenger chose instead to battle Exsue the next day.

    With only three days until the auction, the news that someone had managed to defeat three sins in a row was huge. The city was in an uproar of excitement, and the entire arena was packed to bursting the next day with spectators pushing beyond the hundred thousand mark.

    James once again sat on his perch up on a random spot along the coliseum-like wall and looked down at the arena. All prior damage had been repaired overnight, and the challenger and Exsue stood facing each other at opposite ends of the arena.

    Exsue, of course, was looking up at James throwing him suggestive looks only to be enraged by the fact all of his attention was instead focused onto the challenger, who also happened to be looking up at James with those clear blue eyes again.

    As opposed to the curious look James had yesterday, his face was now emotionless and void of expression. Soon, the ¡®ding¡¯ of the arena bell rang and before the contender even had the chance to lower into a stance a huge bolt of lightning flew across the length of the arena and connected with her shoulder throwing her into the array force field.

    James couldn¡¯t help but slightly pity this girl for having chosen Exsue to battle. The fact that James had been paying her any attention would undoubtedly make Exsue jealous. Making it worse, she was another person with lightning affinity, which doubly increased Exsue¡¯s envy at the lady drawing James¡¯ eye.

    Exsue was already rushing across the arena and lifting her hand for another lightning bolt before the challenger had even finished climbing back up from the ground. As she forced herself to her feet, she pulled the sword from its sheath on her hip and let a huge arc fly out to deflect Exsue¡¯s next attack.

    In less than a second Exsue was within striking distance and her hands were formed into claws dancing with lightning as she swung at the face of her opponent. Seeing herself being dragged into a difficult close range battle, the challenger instead ducked back while slashing with her sword to create distance.

    She then flipped her sword and swung back again releasing a wind blade that was simply swatted from the air by Exsue¡¯s lightning claw. ¡°You little bitch! I¡¯m gonna kill ya! Jay Jay is mine!¡±

    With that short statement made, Exsue launched forwards to engage again. Her body swayed and disappeared until reappearing like a ghost right behind the challenger and swinging a lightning claw down. The challenger gave a ¡®harrumph¡¯ and ducked down while spinning back and slashing against the claw.

    A crisp ¡®clang¡¯ rang out when the two connected and the challenger and Exsue both shot apart a few meters sliding along the ground. The challenger made a flourish with her sword and then inserted it back into its sheath while lowering herself down in preparation to strike again.

    Exsue also slid to a stop and dropped down with both hands out to her sides flashing with lightning. James was rather surprised by the look she had on her face. It was the first time he¡¯d ever seen Exsue look serious about anything. He almost felt bad now, as he thought back to how much she seemed to love him. That thought quickly disappeared when he reminded himself how absolutely crazy she was.

    As the two ladies in the ring faced off against each other with menacing glares, an eerie silence fell over the crowd in the arena. The tension in the air began to grow until it felt like the air in the arena was actually vibrating, and the pressure was slowly ramping up like sinking into the depths of the ocean.

    Finally, this menacing aura was interrupted when a patron of the arena let rip a ground shaking fart, and the two contestants suddenly disappeared from sight. Moments later they both reappeared, and the clang of the claws and sword connecting with each other rang out.

    The crowd erupted into cheers as the duo disappeared from sight again, only to reappear a few meters away locked in combat once more.

    The rate at which they collided began to increase, and soon clangs and screeches rang out through the arena before the previous ones had even died out. The duo managed to traverse half the arena before they finally split apart again.

    They both looked a little worse for wear with bleeding cuts covering their bodies and their robes torn ragged along the arms and legs. Exsue looked especially bad, mostly because her eyes were bloodshot and she was foaming at the mouth. She looked like she was on the verge of having a fit.

    Although you still couldn¡¯t see the challenger¡¯s face under her hood, you could tell she was pretty drawn out after having that brief contest of speed with Exsue.

    Before the crowd had the chance to allow the eerie pressure to descend again like last time, Exsue stood back up straight and looked down her nose at the challenger. ¡°You¡¯re pathetic. You¡¯ll never be worthy of Jay Jay you cheap hussy.¡±

    Exsue then dispelled her lightning claws and fired off an arc at the bell in the arena, to signal her withdrawal. The moment the bell rang out, the challenger dropped her sword to the ground and fell to her knees puffing like she¡¯d just escaped a natural disaster.

    James was beyond surprised. Knowing Exsue¡¯s nature, he never expected her to resign from a match. Especially against another woman with the lightning element. He was pretty sure she¡¯d probably have killed her if the chance came about.

    As the staff of the arena escorted the challenger out, and all the patrons filed out of the exits, Exsue jumped up along the wall until she was next to James again. Seeing her hardly out of breath and with only a few cuts and bruises he couldn¡¯t help but cock his head and raise his eyebrow.

    ¡°What¡¯s going on Exsue? It¡¯s not like you to concede a fight. Don¡¯t tell me you don¡¯t think you could win?¡±

    Hearing this from James, Exsue gave ¡®humph¡¯, pouted, stamped her foot, and then turned to face the now empty arena. She raised both hands above her head and channelled her spirit energy. Very quickly a massive lightning ball 5 meters in diameter formed over her head and with a little flick of her arms it rocketed into the centre of the arena.

    Following this, the entire centre of the arena exploded, and the shock wave crumbled the array barrier like it was brittle, aged paper. The debris decimated the seats along with the few poor individuals that had failed to leave the arena yet. After the dust had settled, Exsue turned up her nose and, for the first time since they met, she walked away from James.

    James couldn¡¯t help but scratch his head and sigh as he glanced at Exsue and then back to the huge crater that was once the True Spirit Arena. Without even asking, Jasmine already had drones flying in from all over the city clearing debris and rebuilding.

    With the excitement of the day over, James returned to the underground training arena at HQ and started training. From that little show by Exsue, he now understood just how limited his understanding of lightning was. Although it¡¯s true that she had 7 times as much lightning spirit energy as he did, the speed and level at which she could manifest it was clearly leagues above his own. This showed just how limited his experience was.

    It was true that his understanding allowed him to bridge the gap between himself and a True Spirit realm who had dozens if not hundreds of years more experience than him, but it was also clear that it would never be equal to the millions of years of experience Exsue had.

    With that thought in mind, he sat down in his room and began to consciously circulate his breathing technique at maximum power. He very quickly discovered something strange happening after a while and then suddenly realised that he wasn¡¯t alone in his Spirit Realm.

    Sitting cross-legged on a floating piece of ¡®solid energy¡¯ was Gold James who was apparently also cultivating. Normally, James left his True Spirit body floating cross-legged in the middle of his lightning nucleus, and for the first time in a long while, he returned his main focus to his spirit realm and let the real world bend away to the peripherals.

    Spirit James stood up and stretched for a bit, then floated over to Gold James who continued to sit and meditate on his orbiting grey asteroid. Spirit James gave a little cough to get his attention, only to be ignored. Feeling displeased that he was being ignored by himself, Spirit James summoned a ball of fire and proceeded to create a flamethrower directly into Gold James¡¯ face.

    ~Arghh! What the fuck are you doing?!~ Screamed Gold James as he clutched his charred face and rolled off the floating grey rock, landing in the ocean of water down below.

    Spirit James gave a sadistic smile then sat down on the rock and checked his cultivation speed again, then started mumbling to himself. ¡°Now that is strange. I thought he couldn¡¯t manifest spirit energy in the body ... but he was definitely just cultivating my hands of time in reverse, and I could feel my cultivation speed almost double.¡±

    While grumbling and cursing, Gold James rocketed up out of the clear liquid element down below and floated up next to Spirit James. Before he had the chance to return the flamethrower to the face, a bolt of lightning streaked out from the lightning nucleus and engulfed him.

    Spirit James just chuckled then opened his eyes from his self-inspection and began to question the now once again charred Gold James. ¡°What was that you were doing just now? I thought you can¡¯t manifest spirit energy at all. How did you activate reversed hands of time in the body simultaneous with mine?¡±

    Gold James, after brushing off the soot on his robes, cast a sideways glance at James then began to pat his chest proudly while explaining.I couldn¡¯t at first. But then it suddenly occurred to me that you think I¡¯m your subconscious and that I¡¯m the one who runs your breathing technique when you¡¯re out there doing busy stuff, so when you finally decided to come back and consciously take over breathing, I started breathing in reverse to test it.~

    Spirit James scratched his head then cupped his chin while staring off into the endless space of his spirit world. ¡°So you mean to say, that it¡¯s me who¡¯s limiting you, and not your own limitations. Perhaps some part of me is reticent to relinquish too much control, and you could only do what you did because I already consciously accepted that you should be able to do that.¡±

    Gold James was also busily staring off into the endless white space while picking his nose and nodding his head.Sure, sounds about right. I don¡¯t know why you¡¯re so worried though. After all, I am you. I doubt I¡¯d be doing anything you wouldn¡¯t be doing.~

    Spirit James cocked his head to the side then shot a glance at Gold James. ¡°Are you though?¡±

    Gold James then cast him another sidelong glance and put his hands on his hips.Am I what? Part of you? Sure, what the hell else would I be?~

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s still up for debate. Your more like some kind of parasite I think.¡±

    ~Hmm well, let¡¯s test it then. Let¡¯s play paper scissors rock.~

    ¡°That¡¯s hardly an accurate test. For all I know, you¡¯re a parasite that can read my mind, which only makes you even more dangerous to give any control too.¡±

    ~Wow, talk about paranoid. For starters, we already know that we¡¯re two sides of the same person because we can both control our spirit energy. Although, I¡¯m beginning to wonder if I am a reflection of your subconscious. If I were, I shouldn¡¯t be able to communicate so easily, or probably at all. Not just that, but we should be of one mind, not separate. Although we no doubt have identical thought patterns because we share the same brain, we are without doubt separate individuals ... like Siamese twins or something.~This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    ¡°That¡¯s true. Maybe it would be more accurate to call you a clone of my conscious and subconscious. That doesn¡¯t explain why your control would be so limited though. Let¡¯s try something to test that theory. I¡¯ll try and... ¡®allow¡¯ you to manifest energy in my body instead of only assisting me.¡±

    Spirit James then returned to the body and began consciously trying to let Gold James manifest Spirit Energy. A few short minutes later, James suddenly felt his perception speed up, and the world slow down, while his body began to vibrate with lightning energy.

    ~WAHOO! Haha, lightning energy for the win!~

    James just gave a wry grin then consciously tried to limit Gold James again. Very quickly the energy dissipated and a loud moan of dissatisfaction came from Gold James.Aww man! Com¡¯on dawg. Just let me ... you know, fire some lightning bolts or something.~

    James let out a long sigh and not for the first time, reflected on how childlike his spirit clone was sometimes. He then consciously tried to release full control of everything and suddenly felt a strange sensation. For the first time in his life, he felt like a passenger in his own body.

    James suddenly stood up and started looking at his hands then waving them about. Very quickly his body suddenly jerked and James felt himself regain full control of his body. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and heaved a sigh of relief as he gripped his hands into fists and then released them.

    ~Woh! Dude! That was mad. I actually moved the hands ... and the arms! Holy Crap I moved the body! HAHAHA WOOO!!~

    James grimaced as Gold James ran around in their spirit realm whooping it up and screaming his joy at the top of his lungs. He then willed it, and Gold James once again was dispelled into nothingness while James stood in the training arena mumbling to himself.

    ¡°Man that was dangerous. The feeling of being in the passenger seat of my own body. Ugh! It was disgusting.¡±

    James then decided to try and forget the sensation and resummoned Gold James. ¡°Ok Goldy, let¡¯s try that again.¡±

    James then consciously allowed Gold James to materialise spirit energy and moments later little arcs of electricity were shooting off his body all over the place. A small whirlwind then appeared followed by flames, mist and earth shaking. Unfortunately, even with them both trying together, they couldn¡¯t materialise true plasma without using the lightning element to excite the air.

    With the testing out of the way, James and Gold James then resumed cultivating with their joint efforts, creating two separate clocks inside the body. One running clockwise and the other running anti-clockwise.

    Strangely, this allowed him to have almost every single one of his elements active in the body at any one time without the normal huge backlash he would feel.

    -Jetsu Mountain Range-

    With only two days left until the auction and the Arena still being rebuilt, this time with stronger array barriers, James decided it was about time to do a little job he¡¯d been putting off. As the suns rose in the east, James, Goliath and Exsue mounted up on Harvy¡¯s Velocity along with 30 of the guilds best and most trustworthy members.

    Tagging along on this ride was Gary, with his one good arm and face marred by burn scars. Why James brought him along on this trip, no one but James knew.

    The destination today was the Jetsu Mountain Range. The most dangerous and volatile area for 600 km in every direction. 200 km of unexplored wilderness filled to the brim with powerful spirit beasts beyond the imagination of the entire continent.

    Thanks to the huge difference in primal spirit energy in the area, the mountain range was beyond Jasmine¡¯s ability to scan or view from the satellite in orbit. Even their usual coms didn¡¯t work in this area without the assistance of a booster they had on board the gunship.

    After a casual 12 minute flight from Tech City, the gunship floated around on the outskirts of the mountain range at a low altitude. James moved to the war room behind the cockpit while the guild members all began to suit up in their Mk II Combat Suits.

    Seeing Goliath seated and waiting with his huge hammer on the ground and Gary just sitting there looking confused, James gave a little nod and then tapped his ear. ¡°Jasmine, how far have you managed to get the drones into this area? Have you confirmed the location of the beast yet?¡±

    ¡°Of course James. Although the drones aren¡¯t capable of entering more than 5 kilometres into the mountains, readings of electrical activity are markedly higher in this region of the mountains. At best estimate, the beast you¡¯re searching for shouldn¡¯t be more than 7 or 8 km in. I should point out, that video feed and other recordings varied wildly. The drones often came out showing they¡¯d used markedly more energy than necessary to travel 5 kilometres.¡±

    James rubbed his face as a blotchy 3-D projection came up on the war room table showing a very rough view of the mountain area they needed to search. He couldn¡¯t help but wonder if Rex was sending him into the mountains to die here.

    The mountain range was only 30 odd kilometres wide here. If they travelled too far in searching for this lightning beast, then they¡¯d find themselves trapped between the habitats of numerous different wild Tower Realm Beasts.

    James could only let out a sigh and then turned to the cockpit where Harvy stood next to Exsue surveying the area. Although Harvy was still mummified and smelled of various fragrant herbs, his wardrobe had been through a significant upgrade.

    Thanks to James¡¯ twisted taste and own self-amusement, Harvy was now outfitted with a black captain¡¯s uniform with all the bells and whistles. Even his hat looked very captainy. Not to mention the few little medals pinned to the chest of his uniform. If anyone were to ever meet the gun crew out in the turrets, they would realise that they too had been given very sailor like uniforms to wear.

    ¡°Harvy, take us in. Keep it low for now. I don¡¯t want to spook any flying beasts that might be around. The last thing we need is an air battle with a fucking dragon or some shit.¡±

    Hearing the orders of his Dark Lord, Harvy began to shout out some sailor jargon like ¡®about port 20 degrees¡¯ and ¡®steady as she goes¡¯, that sort of thing. James wasn¡¯t sure where exactly he¡¯d been picking that nonsense up from, but if he were a betting man he¡¯d put his money on Fatty.

    Exsue spun the ship towards the west direction and started cruising over the forests slowly. As they passed over a multitude of new lights and sounds, Skay had recently been adding, started to beep. Then the 3-D projection of the landscape for about a kilometre around started to light up with little red dots.

    The further they travelled into the mountains the fewer the dots became. Inversely to a reduction in dot numbers, the dots grew in size. By the time they were about 3 kilometres into the forest, the radius of detection had grown smaller until they could only detect to about 600 meters. More so than that, the further they moved into the mountains the more jittery and blurry the projection grew.

    At about 5 kilometres into the forested mountain range, the projection became almost entirely useless, and James had to move up to the cockpit to get an idea of the surroundings. Seeing the forest and overbearing mountains in person made him suddenly realise just how vast this place really was.

    As they sped along over the tops of the mountain forest, James cupped his chin and observed his surroundings. Finally, he realised he¡¯d had an uneasy feeling since he¡¯d stepped up into the cockpit and was able to actually see around.

    ¡°Exsue, how fast are we moving?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure Jay Jay, only about a hundred kilometres an hour.¡±

    James¡¯ eyes bugged out of his head, and he suddenly realised why he felt so uneasy. ¡°What the fuck, if we¡¯re moving at a hundred klicks and hour, how is it that it¡¯s taken us so long to travel only a few kilometres on the 3D projection.¡±

    Harvy, for a rare change, joined the conversation while maintaining a watchful eye on the surroundings. ¡°My Dark Liege, I¡¯m not surprised you¡¯ve never heard of this before. It¡¯s called pocket space. Similar to the Endless Forest, but not actually a Gateway, more a bending of space itself. While it looks like a simple series of valleys and mountains from the outside, once you enter its range space expands over a hundred fold. The artefact spirit of the Velocity probably doesn¡¯t know how to handle the sudden transition into a pocket space where spatial laws are ... bent.¡±

    James rubbed his face and gave a ¡®tsk¡¯. ¡°God damn it! You¡¯re bent! Too much to ask for people to tell me what was going on before we came here?¡±

    James then did some quick calculations in his head. From the outside, the space that the mountain range inhabits is only about 30 km in width. That means it¡¯s now more than 300. They¡¯d been flying for just over half an hour. That meant they were at least 5 km in or rather, 50 km. Another 15 minutes and they¡¯d hopefully be around the area that the lightning activity was reported.

    Well, this phenomenon explained why satellite scans and pictures always showed up with a dark spot in the area. With that thought in mind, James moved over to a computer panel and checked the spirit energy saturation. His eyes nearly bulged out of his head when he realised the reading was getting up near 500 times standard saturation. That was only on the periphery. If they managed to get near the centre of the mountains, then it¡¯d probably shoot up beyond a thousand times.

    It should be noted that at present, they were pushing getting an attraction array beyond 700 times standard. The only exception to that was the cube, which was beyond their ability to even measure.

    James finally let out a long sigh as he pondered the mysteries of this world and decided to leave his other unanswered questions for a later time. He moved back to the centre of the cockpit and surveyed the area once more.

    Because they were flying low and slow to avoid attracting unwanted attention, the view wasn¡¯t particularly far. After a brief moment of hesitation, James finally decided to go for broke.

    ¡°Exsue, take us up. I want a better aerial view of the surroundings.¡±

    No sooner had he spoken than the Gunship began rising into the sky. James very quickly realised his mistake after they got up nearly a km over the trees.

    While looking about for anomalies, a huge fireball came out of nowhere and quickly closed in on the gunship like some kind of homing missile. James barely had time to react before Exsue was already taking evasive manoeuvres and the ship was violently twisting like a leaf in the wind.

    Harvy began barking orders into his ear piece, and the gun crews began to unleash projectiles at the ball of fire. James¡¯ face paled as he held on for dear life to a nearby handle on the bulkhead and alarms began to whir and flash to life in red.

    Exsue took the Gunship back in low and close to the ground then made a roll off to the right giving the gun crew a perfect shot. Moments later, the fireball exploded like a ripe tomato and sprayed fire across nearly a hundred metres of forest down below.

    Before they had a chance to catch their breath, a shadow fell over the top of them, blotting out the Suns like an ominous dark cloud. The shadow then began to rapidly enlarge to reveal a massive flaming bird falling from the sky like a meteorite.

    The bird was nearly 50 metres in length from beak to tail, and if not for its feathers painted in gold and having three legs and three eyes, it very much resembled a crow. In only a matter of seconds, the Golden Crow was almost on top of the Gunship.

    In a very anti-climactic manner, Exsue simply made a quick and sudden backwards movement which left the crow directly in the firing line of the gun crews, which seemed to have already been prepared. A series of booms rang out, and the Golden Crow went from an imposing mighty beast of the sky to a charred twitching mess pancaked into the forest below.

    James¡¯ fists were clenched so tight blood dripped down from his fingernails digging into his palm. At last, he managed to release the breath he¡¯d been holding and relax enough to loosen his grip on the handle of the bulkhead.

    ¡°Harvy, what in the fuck was that?¡±

    ¡°Golden Crow, My Dark Lord. Quite a rare species actually. This one seems rather young and has only attained Tower Realm. Adult Golden Crows are said to be incarnations of the Yellow sun and are beyond powerful in Flame magics.¡±

    James wiped the sweat that had been accumulating on his brow and looked down at the still twitching body of the crow on the ground below. He then made a decision he suspected he¡¯d probably regret and gave orders.

    ¡°Harvy, take us down there. Send the team out and begin trying to haul that thing inside. Cut it up if you must, I don¡¯t really want to let a Tower Realm Beast go to waste. I¡¯ll take Goliath and Gary, and we¡¯ll scout ahead. I saw what looked like lightning activity to the east about 4 kilometres. Hopefully, that¡¯s our target. Be ready for us to be running back with our tail between our legs.¡±

    Harvy gave his customary ¡®My Dark Lord¡¯ response and then began firing off orders. As the gunship lowered down into the forest and crushed no small number of trees beneath it, James and Goliath both shot out from the lowering ramp and disappeared off into the forest. Closely following behind them was Gary who didn¡¯t seem the list bit phased about this whole thing.

    James carried a large hemp sack on his back while Goliath lugged his massive war hammer along on his shoulder. Gary carried a large wooden box on his back that was heavy enough to make his feet sink into the ground with every step.

    James was actually surprised that Gary managed to maintain speed with them, but he somehow nonetheless did. More amusing to James was that every time they passed an area inhabited by true spirit or palace realm beasts they would immediately move to attack Gary first. Like it was some kind of primal directive in their genes.

    To James¡¯ disgruntlement, although Gary received quite a few minor injuries, he was somehow saved in the nick of time by some bizarre event. It got to the point James would purposefully change direction towards areas he sensed spirit activity in, just to see how Gary would survive.

    At one point he watched on bemused as a group of blue furred chimps tried to pummel Gary to death only to fall into a pit of quicksand because Gary had tripped over a stick.

    Not only that, he later watched on as a python the size of a tree struck out from the shadows of the underbrush and suddenly had a sneezing fit from some strange flower Gary had picked up earlier. It then proceeded to die from allergies.

    After he¡¯d had some fun, they pushed on towards the area James thought he¡¯d seen lightning activity. After about 20 minutes of running and diversions, they came to the entrance of a barren valley that lead down into a cave between two short mountains.

    At a cursory glance, this place seemed awfully normal and quiet, but from the way all his hairs stood on end and a cold chill ran down his back, James was certain this place wasn¡¯t what it seemed. He didn¡¯t have to wait long before a branching arcing of electricity came out of the cave and spread out across the valley and cliff faces like the branches of a tree.

    Just as quickly as it had come, it once more disappeared. James squinted his eyes together as a wave of foul air like the smell of a wet dog followed behind and swept out past the trio standing at the valley entrance. After a moment¡¯s thought, James dropped the sack from his back and started pulling out a bunch of spirit bombs all painted in blue.

    Unfortunately, before he had the chance to start setting the trap he¡¯d planned, a roar echoed out from the cave, and a spirit pressure equal to something on the 30th floor of the Spire descended on the trio. James could instinctively tell from the spirit pressure that whatever level of cultivation this creature had, it sure as hell weren¡¯t no tower realm.

    Despite his best efforts, James¡¯ body was frozen in place, and he could barely move a muscle. With a great deal of strain, he called forth Gold James and they focused on pouring spirit energy into the body to move.

    As James tried to force his body to move, a vague white shadow appeared in the entrance of the cave and slowly became clear as it walked out into the light of the day.

    A monstrously big Mastiff covered in white fur filled with lightning slowly walked out from the cave and then surveyed the three interlopers on its territory.

    James couldn¡¯t tell if he should be amused that such an adorable creature was so goddamn powerful or if he should be upset that he was going to be eaten by a fucking house pet. His viewpoint quickly changed when the dog began to speak.

    ¡°Huumaans. Huuuumans.¡±

    The Mastiff¡¯s voice was deep, drawn and croaky like the sound of an old man with throat cancer. The dog seemed rather displeased with that and licked it¡¯s nose and shook it¡¯s head, all while looking menacingly adorable. It then made a few embarrassing throat clearing sounds, gave a sneeze and then began speaking again in a deep mellow voice.

    ¡°Agh! Cough, cough, Achoo! Ahem ... Humans! Ah, much better. Now where was I ... ahh yes, Humans! What do you seek from the All-powerful Ruff!¡±

    James was dumbfounded. He, of course, knew that spirit beasts could communicate, but from what Exsue told him, it was leagues beyond tower realm. In fact, most spirit beasts had to have developed full sentence before they could learn to communicate.

    The trio suddenly felt the freezing effect of the spirit pressure disappear, and the moment James once again felt in control of his body he slapped the back of his left hand which held a ring. Very quickly, the ring lit up with an ominous glow preventing any further spirit pressure attacks in the future.

    In almost the same moment, Goliath did the same action, leaving Gary standing there perplexed while staring wide-eyed at the Mastiff.

    Seeing two of the humans jumping back, the Mastiff acknowledged Gary first. ¡°Very well then. You there, it seems your request is most pressing for your two friends to generously step back and grant you my audience. Speak, what is it that you seek.¡±

    Gary looked like he was still frozen solid from the spirit pressure and James couldn¡¯t help but wonder if the poor bastard had just had a stroke. After a moment of reflection on the situation, James decided it would be best to just try and leave without provoking this thing. It may look like a harmless dog, but even a rodent could fell a tower realm if it had even half the cultivation level of this creature.

    James made a salute to the Mastiff and then began making excuses to leave. ¡°Ruff. Please excuse us travellers for our disturbance.¡±

    He then spun on his heel while grabbing Goliath¡¯s shoulder and made to retreat at maximum speed. The Mastiff gave a low grunt and then the earlier spirit pressure once again descended on James like a thousand feet of water.

    This time, however, the ring on his left hand glowed brightly like a torch in the darkness and the spirit pressure simply split like the red sea allowing him to push onwards in his escape.

    He hardly made it a few hundred metres before the world became a blur and he found himself on his back staring up at the proud looking face of the white Mastiff.

    ¡°Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! No need to be so hasty little one. I see you have the All-powerful lightning element. Take me as your Master, and I¡¯ll train you. To have reached this far into the woods with only true spirit realm cultivation is a true mystery and as a Beast of my word, I always reward humans that can reach my cave.¡±

    James wasn¡¯t sure whether to be embarrassed by the prospect of being the disciple of a pet, or worried that he clearly couldn¡¯t escape from such a powerful creature. While James was having an inner existential crisis, the dog was sniffing at his hand with the ring on it.

    ¡°Ruff! Truly brilliant artistry. What a magnificent artefact. Are you a forge master boy?¡±

    James looked up at the Mastiff then down at the paw on his chest. He then looked over at Goliath, who at some point seemed to have been knocked unconscious. With a glance back he saw Gary, the incompetent bastard, kowtowing with his head pressed to the ground.

    ¡®This isn¡¯t good. How the fuck do we get out of here.¡¯ James wondered as his brain began to spin at full speed. He ran simulations in his mind over and over but regardless of what he did, he couldn¡¯t fathom any way to escape unscathed.

    Finally, he resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to try and have a conversation with a talking dog. Mustering his voice, he gave a short cough and then introduced himself.

    ¡°Greetings ahh ... Ruff ... sigh. Here we go. Never going to live this down. Greetings All-powerful Ruff. I am James of the Dark Brotherhood, and these are companions of mine.

    ¡°We administer a city in the Yori Empire outside the boundaries of the Jetsu Mountain Range called Tech City. We came to the forest in search of a suitable Spirit Beast to inhabit the Monolith of our city and protect our livesto ... err ... I mean our citizens.¡±

    Ruff¡¯s big wet adorable eyes gazed at James for a while until all of a sudden his tail began wagging furiously and he began jumping around like an excitable puppy. ¡°Ruff Ruff, Ruff, Ruff! This is perfect timing HAHA! Ruff! I¡¯m going to get a chance to evolve safely! Ruff!¡±

    James slowly pulled himself up from the ground and looked at Ruff jumping around the valley like a dog that just ate a bowl of sugar. Seeing the animal distracted in what appeared to be joy, James reached down and slapped a lightning infused palm onto Goliath.

    In a matter of seconds, Goliath¡¯s eyes sprung open with a red glow, and he shot to his feet in an unnaturally fast manner. James was already a good ten metres away as Goliath came up swinging. Before he had the chance to calm Goliath down, the world blurred, and suddenly Goliath was unconscious again, and Ruff was standing on his back acting like he hadn¡¯t even seen him there.

    James could only smile wryly at the sight of this. Goliath had gotten a bad run of it the past few days. Being bested by a house pet would surely only increase his anger. James considered for a moment and decided that after the auction he should give Goliath a break to just do whatever he wanted for a few days.

    As James stood there trying to process what the hell the dog was so excited about, Ruff bent down and picked Goliath up in his teeth then started dragging him along to the cave while trying to talk through his grit teeth. ¡°Come, come. A spot of tea before we depart then.¡±

    James wasn¡¯t exactly sure how to process this whole scenario. It seemed like the beast was excited by the prospect of entering the monolith. He decided that even if this was some kind of trick, there wasn¡¯t much he could do. If he tried to run again, there was no way he could outrun the Mastiff. It was like trying to outrun a motorcycle on a skateboard.

    He was also rather curious what a sentient spirit beast¡¯s cave was like. With the thought of exploring new frontiers on his mind, he marched forwards and grabbed his sack of array cubes in one hand and Gary with his huge wooden crate in the other. Against his better judgement, he took a deep breath and followed the dog into its den.

    -Cave of the All-powerful Ruff-

    To James¡¯ great surprise and slight discomfort, Ruff transformed into the form of a man in mid-step after entering his cave. As he strolled into the cave, he took the form of a tanned, well-built young man, with the same short white hair he had as a dog.

    The discomforting part was the fact that he was entirely naked as he strolled into the cave which led James¡¯ mind into uncomfortable tangents. Quickly shaking the thought of the dog actually being a serial pervert, James followed on along the dark tunnel until they reached a small room filled with light.

    Not only was it filled with light, but also a good deal of old wooden furniture. Some of it looked chewed on, and others looked like they would fall apart if he placed any weight on it. The most shocking thing wasn¡¯t that the place looked like a human dwelling. Instead, it was the mysterious and sudden materialisation of a white robe into Ruff¡¯s hand from out of nowhere.

    Before James could fully register that sudden change, the dog become man threw Goliath onto the bed, donned his white robe and then materialised onto his hand a silver tray with a teapot and cups.

    He then set it down at a little table with a few chairs scattered around it and began to brew some tea.

    James, in a rather dazed manner, simply set his bag and his Gary down on the floor and then sat at the table. Finally, his curiosity couldn¡¯t be held back any longer, and he started asking questions.

    ¡°Ruff ... errr, you can take human form?¡±

    Ruff gave a lopsided grin as he steeped his tea and then nodded. ¡°Sure I can. All beasts in the Sentient Realm can take human form. Some are more limited than others I¡¯ve discovered. For example, as a common bloodline of the Mastiff, I can only take human form in an area I¡¯ve marked out as my home. More powerful creatures with ancient and powerful bloodlines can often transform without limitations, or at least, with less strict ones.¡±

    ¡°And your robe ... how did you, ahh...¡±

    ¡°Oh, I see. Yes, I¡¯m not surprised you don¡¯t know. They¡¯re rather rare you see.¡± While saying this, he took off a ring from his hand and passed it over to James. He then made a very dog like scratching motion behind his ear and began pouring some tea as he continued to talk.

    ¡°That there is a Spatial Storage Ring. Not uncommon way back in the Ancient times when I was first born, but I suppose they would be far from common nowadays. Our continents turned into a crappy little backwater now after all. Like the guy with leprosy, no one wants to visit. It¡¯s sort of ended up like crap after these few millions of years. You should already know this anyway. I smell an ancient bloodline on you.¡±

    James lifted his arm and sniffed at his sleeve a few times. Not smelling anything out of the ordinary he leant forward and took a hot cup of tea from Ruff. It then struck him why he might be able to smell another beasts bloodline on him. Exsue was after all still a spirit beast come human. It wouldn¡¯t be surprising if she still technically had the blood of a dragon in her veins.

    Finally, James looked down at the black ring he¡¯d just been given. He wasn¡¯t sure what material it was made of, but what he did know was that it was tripping him out. It looked like he was actually staring up at the night¡¯s sky. The ring was filled with twinkling stars and black emptiness.

    Seeing him mesmerised by the ring, Ruff grinned and then sat back while sipping his tea. ¡°Space Stone. Even in my day, it was pretty rare. Used to be huge deposits of it all over the continent. It was actually why so many powerful beings came here and made this place their home. Back in those days, the spirit energy was so thick you could taste it every time you took a breath. Once they¡¯d dug out all the big deposits, everyone left and the whole continent went back to shit.¡±

    While playing with the ring, James unleashed some spirit energy only for it to be rejected by the ring. He then cycled through all 6 energies only to have that process repeat itself every time. When he was about to give up, he suddenly had another thought and slowly tried to place his spirit aura onto the ring.

    A strange moment of disconnection then happened, and in his mind he could see the inside of the ring. It looked like a single white room about 15 meters in every direction. He could see old bones floating about the place, what could only be a dead possum and a number of other interesting old things from Ancient times like a rusted sword, decaying furniture and a handful of little jade squares with an odd language written on them.

    With a thought, he willed one of the little jade pieces into his hand and then disconnected from the ring. Back in reality, his hand grew heavier with the weight of the little jade square that fit inside his palm. It had some strange characters written on it and looked old and worn.

    Seeing James pull something out of the ring without any tutelage, Ruff gaped slack-jawed. Normally it took people a good deal of time to pick up the technique of operating a storage ring properly. James¡¯ saving grace in this area came from his Guild Seal, which normally resided within his spirit realm. He spent a great deal of time playing with the summoning and unsummoning of that seal when he first got it.

    After a moment of looking over the jade square in his hand, James suddenly had a thought. Seeing the light come on in his eyes, Ruff suddenly grew worried. ¡°Wait! Not that...¡±

    Before he could finish his warning, James had already extended his spirit aura only to suddenly have hundreds of images of dogs having sex flash through his mind. He couldn¡¯t withdraw his spirit aura fast enough.

    Ruff the All-powerful threw his tea across the room after seeing the sudden realisation in James¡¯ eyes. Like a flash of lightning his hand snaked out and snatched the Jade away holding it protectively. James, on the other hand, looked like he was moments away from regurgitating his lunch and his face was as pale as a ghost¡¯s.

    Ruff gave an embarrassed cough and chose to ignore the fact that James had just stumbled on his porn collection and instead tried to distract from that whole thing. ¡°Ahem! Well, it seems you¡¯ve experienced Spirit Jade before.¡±

    James, after he finished dry retching, wiped his chin and gave Ruff a meaningful glare before he asked; ¡°Spirit Jade?¡±

    Ruff gave him a quizzical look then began to explain. ¡°Spirit Jade, is a material that stores information. You can implant anything from experiences to memories and even just information. Like the storage ring, it is imprinted and read with a person¡¯s spirit aura.¡±

    With the interesting show and tell finished, Ruff finally chose to begin discussing the thing he was most interested in. ¡°Now, let¡¯s talk about the monolith. You must be a descendant of the Ancient One right? You can truly put me into a monolith if my evolution fails?¡±

    ¡°Descendant? Um, I¡¯m not so sure about that, I¡¯m a stepper from another world after all. But yes ... I can put you into the monolith. After all, I¡¯ve already done it once before.¡±

    Hearing this declaration, Ruff¡¯s eyes expanded until they looked like balloons. ¡°You¡¯ve done it before? You mean to say you¡¯ve created a monolith and put a beast on the verge of deviation into it?¡±

    James scratched his head and tilted it to the side like a curious dog with questions in his eyes. Ruff then imitated this action, and they both starred questions at each other for a brief second before James explained.

    ¡°Created a monolith? No. But I did pull an ancient spirit beast out from one when she was ready to transcend her beast form. In exchange, I had to put a ... place keeper in. It¡¯s only a little true spirit beast and can¡¯t maintain the protection of the monolith for the size of the city.¡±

    Ruff scratched behind his ear agitatedly then sat back down. ¡°So it¡¯s true. You really can escape bedevilment with the monoliths help. I must meet the beast you pulled from the monolith! I need to know for certain!¡±

    Following that declaration, Ruff took back his ring and everything in the room suddenly vanished with a wave of his hand. Gary, who remained prostrated on the ground was given a kick to awaken him from his stupor and Goliath was unceremoniously slapped awake.

    The trio then left and escorted Ruff back in the direction of the Gunship.

    -Jetsu Mountains - Gunship-

    While James had been off gallivanting through the forest testing Gary¡¯s luck and meeting some ancient spirit beast dog, the crew at the gunship had been hurriedly trying to stuff the huge corpse of the Golden Crow into the hanger.

    Much to their dissatisfaction, the smell of a dead tower realm beast was like catnip and everything for 2 or 3 kilometres had closed in on their location in an attempt to devour the Crows corpse. At first, they trickled in one or two at a time.

    After the first couple true spirit realm beasts had been exploded into little pieces by the cannons of the gunship, everything quietened down only to suddenly explode moments later. Soon they came in groups of 10 then groups of 20 and then finally palace realm beasts started showing up.

    It wasn¡¯t long before the guns were running too hot and half the crew were forced to run interference while the rest finished cutting up and dragging pieces of the crow into the ship.

    By the time they were nearly finished, they had started taking casualties. Even Harvy had stepped out onto the front lines and like a glorious captain of the sea marched into the oncoming hordes. Every creature he encountered seemed to be disinclined to try and eat him, and anything that moved close enough to be touched by his death aura wailed in pain, so Harvy then became the number one deterrent.

    Thanks to James¡¯ twisted sense of humour, Harvy had been ordered to perfect battle with a special kind of weapon. It was truly awe-inspiring to watch him flutter across the battlefield like a shadow of death swinging a dirty great scythe back and forth reaping life like cutting grass.

    The strangest thing was actually the fact that the more creatures he killed, the stronger his aura of death became. Not only was he like an untouchable ghost, but he truly did look like the commander of the undead while wreathed in the black miasma of his death aura and holding his scythe like the reaper.

    Even though he was a strong deterrent, he wasn¡¯t enough to hold back the horde, and he wasn¡¯t fast enough to cross the field and save the lives of those few unlucky souls to get mobbed now and then.

    When they were finally finished loading the crow corpse onto the ship, it was almost impossible to keep back the horde, and they¡¯d been pushed back to the very door of the dropship. Just when they thought they¡¯d need to take off and leave the exit zone James had set, a strange thing happened.

    The beasts stampeding towards the dropship suddenly froze in their tracks and started sniffing at the air and wailing at the sky. Just as quickly as they¡¯d first appeared, they all turned and ran back into the forests.

    Moments later, James walked out of the forest with his two companions in tow and a big white Mastiff.

 Chapter 35: Auction Day

    -Tech City-

    Apart from the excitement of Ruff at being in a high-speed vehicle and his constant attempts to stick his head out the window while they travelled back to Tech City and supersonic speed, the trip back was uneventful.

    That is until they landed and the ground team on standby at the hanger realised there was a huge dismembered corpse in the back of the dropship along with the corpses of at least a hundred other dead spirit beasts.

    James called up Skay to come and take care of storing and dissecting the creatures while he showed Ruff around the HQ building.

    To say he was quite impressed that anyone still had the level of array mastery they showed in this day and age was an understatement. After showing the dog around for a while he led him upstairs to his office were a brand new hand carved, by Harvy, marble table sat waiting for someone to seat at it.

    This one, as opposed to its predecessors, was covered in array markings and was connected to the reactor in the basement through the buildings LS3 power grid, making it virtually indestructible. Perhaps the only thing in the entire city that was harder to destroy than this table was the monolith and the chamber housing the reactor.

    As James prepared some tea, Exsue finally found her way to him, as she always seems to do, and stopped dead in her tracks as she walked in. As she eyed the Mastiff sitting on a chair at the table, she couldn¡¯t help but sneer. ¡°What in the heavens is that foul little puppy doing here?¡±

    James froze in his actions at the manner in which Exsue spoke to this being, that in his opinion, was powerful enough to destroy this entire empire single handed.

    Ruff, who had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the ancient being that previously inhabited the monolith also froze like a statue. He then very slowly turned to see Exsue staring him straight in the eye and like a blink of lightning suddenly disappeared and reappeared, cowering behind James like a beaten dog.

    Exsue gave a little huff and marched over to a seat then sat down. ¡°So you¡¯re the spirit beast they brought back to fill the monolith with. I¡¯ll tell you right now Jay Jay. This ... creature, is hardly appropriate to place inside a monolith in this city, or any other for that matter.¡±

    James glanced behind him at the cowering All-powerful Ruff and then back to Exsue. ¡°Ahh ... Exsue, you¡¯ve met Ruff before?¡±

    Exsue gave an indignant scoff and then pulled a cup of tea across the table. ¡°Ruff? I don¡¯t remember anyone named Ruff. I only remember a feral little beast that had the bad habit of smelling places on people he shouldn¡¯t.¡±

    Ruff, seeming to be dissatisfied with being targeted like this, decided to try and defend the honour of his species. ¡°That was one time! And it can hardly be fair to then label me as some kind of degenerate, it¡¯s the honorary greeting of my species.¡±

    Exsue, who¡¯d just been lifting her teacup froze and then placed it back down gently. She then glared menacingly at Ruff as she spoke slowly.

    ¡°It may just be that your inferior species has some disgusting means of greeting one another, but to march up to me, your superior, and smell my bum like I¡¯m some common hussy is the most Neanderthal greeting one could imagine. I should have slapped you to death that day and been done with you. You¡¯re only lucky your old man was still around to protect you back then.¡±

    James scratched his face and let out a long sigh. This was a first for him, seeing Exsue act so dignified that is. Normally, she acted like a spoilt obsessive teenager with a crush, so it was unusual to see her speaking in any other fashion. After a few moments of back and forth between the two, James finally interrupted.

    ¡°Well, since you two know each other, then this makes everything easier. Exsue, Ruff needs you to explain the ins and outs of the monolith process. I want to switch him out as soon as possible. We¡¯ve only had a few light horde attacks over the past few months but if the increasing size of them is any indication, the local beasts are only growing more and more restless as the spirit saturation in the city grows higher.¡±

    He then quickly excused himself and made to escape the firing line of these two ancient beast¡¯s grudges. Before he could escape, Exsue clung to his arm and, back to her usual teenager demeanour, begged him with pleading eyes to stay. He then had the joy of sitting through an hour of the two arguing back and forth about the etiquette of sniffing bums with scattered moments of clarity regarding the monolith.

    By the end of it Exsue finally just asked for a piece of spirit jade and imprinted the discussion she once had with the Ancient One regarding the experience, making it so Ruff could essentially experience the same discussion.

    Much to James¡¯ disgruntlement, he watched as the Spirit Jade suddenly crumbled into dust after Ruff had viewed it and he then gave Exsue a meaningful nod. James was now certain there was some conspiracy Exsue was hiding from him, but he knew he wasn¡¯t going to get anything by asking.

    Instead, he waited until a maidservant had lead Ruff off to a guest quarters and then used his wind energy to sweep all the dust from the Spirit Jade up into an empty teacup. He then raced down to the Lab and sealed it away in a test tube. After that, he ended up spending the rest of the day discussing theories for the spatial ring and spirit jade with Skay.

    -The Lab-

    The next day, James put out the word that they were looking for some space stone or spirit jade. Much to his surprise, the first person to get in contact with him was Emily, the blonde from the Adventures Guild. James sat in the lab looking at the projection of her tanned features.

    Emily, on the other hand, seemed to be calling him from somewhere right on the edge of the Jetsu Mountain Range near Felsine City. In the background, he saw a group of adventurers roasting a boar-like spirit beast over a fire and setting up tents.

    Although the connection seemed to be rather spotty, there didn¡¯t seem to be too much loss apart from video quality.

    Emily was busily banging her cross sword on her shield to dislodge what looked like something¡¯s eyeball while giving James a bright smile. ¡°You know James, I had hoped you¡¯d be the one to call me first, but I heard on the grapevine that you¡¯re looking for something rather special instead.¡±

    James chuckled and leant back against the bench behind his stool. ¡°Now Emily, we both know that you¡¯re far more special than any materials or resources. That said, I will eventually get around to calling you. Until then however, I believe you¡¯re calling about the Spirit Jade or the Space Stone? What can you tell me?¡±

    Emily finished removing the skewered eyeball from her sword and then sat down in front of her coms cube and started wiping it off with a cloth. ¡°Well, as you know, the Adventures Guild is a pretty loose organisation that pulls in free cultivators from all over the place, and a lot of our members here are from the three nations. What you probably don¡¯t know, is that the adventurers guild spans the entire continent and our headquarters is actually all the way down south on the Island of Nahtiro.

    ¡°That being said, it also means we have an information network that spans almost the entire continent. I got word from some friends that have been trying to explore in the black lands recently that they discovered a Space Stone deposit only 40 or 50 kilometres in from the Hastoel border.

    ¡°That means you can probably find what you¡¯re looking for over there. Now the other thing is even easier to get your hands on. There are about three known methods of getting Spirit Jade in Atsunari. The first is to buy it from the black markets in Lanthoe. The second is to trade with the Grolian Empire in the southern isles, and the third is to seek out the Master Alchemist Tantsu on Nahtiro.

    ¡°The last one is probably the hardest method and the least likely to be true. Rumour has it that the man discovered a method to artificially create Spirit Jade through the use of alchemy, but he¡¯s such a secretive recluse that no one can verify it. He takes 2 students every 4 years to train as apprentices, and if they fail to achieve his expectations of an apprentice alchemist in the first year, then he kills them.

    ¡°By the same token, if you could find a way to get the recipe for creating Spirit Jade then you could probably become the richest man in the entire continent. So, huge risk, huge reward kind of scenario.¡±

    When she finished talking, a scream came from off in the distance followed by a loud roar. Emily leant back as if trying to peer around behind something then her face suddenly split into a huge beaming grin.

    ¡°I gotta go James! You owe me something big for this information, don¡¯t be a stranger okay?¡±

    Then with a beep, the connection was cut, and James was left staring an empty wall cupping his chin and pondering. After a good ten minutes of thinking to himself, he stood up and began to pace around. ¡°Jasmine, do we have a decent map of the continent yet?¡±

    ¡°Of course James, some of us actually do work around here.¡± A projection of the national borders of Atsunari then sprang to life on the wall.

    James chose to ignore that jab by Jasmine and simply added another tick to his mental pro¡¯s/cons list for destroying her. He then began to inspect the map that Jasmine had pieced together from the satellite pictures and various accountings by books gathered from all over the place.

    After a quick look at the map, he started making some new plans for after the Auction finished. He then stopped himself and let out a long sigh before speaking to Jasmine again. ¡°Jasmine, bring up my list.¡±

    The projection of the map on the wall then disappeared to be replaced with a short list of things James still had to do in order of importance.

    <ol>

    <li>

    Restore the Monolith

    </li>

    <li>

    Auction

    </li>

    <li>

    Investigate the Gau Founder¡¯s Cave

    </li>

    <li>

    Recruitment Drive

    </li>

    <li>

    Project Fire Starter

    </li>

    </ol>

    James let out another long sigh and then finally made an executive decision and chose to re-allocate priorities for things he¡¯d been putting off. ¡°Jasmine, call Skay up from whatever the hell monstrosity he¡¯s working on at the moment and tell him where going to the Founder¡¯s Cave. Get the gunship ready and have him and Goliath meet me there. Also send someone to tell the dog that he¡¯s going into the monolith tonight.¡±

    -Endless Forest - Founder¡¯s Cave-

    James had been putting this trip off for a while. Not because he was apprehensive about exploring the cave and not even because every time a drone entered it would suddenly disappear, but rather because he thought of it as work. The only thing he hated about the trappings of power was the responsibility.

    He probably could have just put the responsibility for this exploration mission onto Fatty, whom they¡¯d picked up from Star City on the way here, but he didn¡¯t trust the chubby bastard to do it right.

    He could have sent Skay, but every time he gave Skay a mission by himself, something terrible always happened. For example, the last time Skay was sent out on his own he managed to blow a hole the size of a city into the endless forest and James had to sit through 2 hours of badgering from the dryad.

    After a short trip in the gunship, James and his team of Wrath, Greed, Gluttony, Envy and Death, marched into the open mouth of the cave and walked a whole two feet before darkness enveloped them and they found themselves separated.

    When the darkness dissipated, James found himself in a cave with no entrances or exits. The rocky cave walls were lined with burning torches, and apart from that, James could see nothing else out of the ordinary for a normal rock cave.

    That thought quickly ended when moments later a deep aged voice resonated within the room. ¡°State your name.¡±

    James briefly glanced around the cave and then replied. ¡°James.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, it appears I misunderstood. State your name loudly and clearly.¡±

    James eyebrow gave a twitch and then he once again gave a crisp, clear response of; ¡°James¡±.

    ¡°Thank you ¡°James¡± for seeking Lord Gau. What is the nature of your visit?¡±

    James suddenly had a flashback to life on earth and couldn¡¯t help but feel like he was talking to one of those horrid automated answering services. Shaking the thought from his head, he then pressed on under the assumption that he was talking to an array machine of some kind.

    ¡°I came to loot this cave of anything of value.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I couldn¡¯t understand you. We¡¯ll connect you to one of our operators now. Please hold.¡±

    ¡®Please hold? What the fuck is going on? Some kind of sick joke?¡¯ James wondered as he began to pace around the cave.

    After 15 minutes of nauseating on hold music, a new voice resounded through the cave. ¡°Hi, this is Jasmine from Dark Brotherhood Tech division. What is the nature of your call?¡±

    James almost spat blood when he heard Jasmine¡¯s voice echoing through the cave. ¡°Jasmine? What the fuck is going on?¡±

    ¡°Uh-oh. Ahhmm... ¡®beep, beep, beep¡¯.¡±

    ¡°Did you just fucking hang up on me?! Jasmine you computer code piece of shit! You fucking answer me this god damn second!¡±

    Meanwhile, in an exact replica of this room, Goliath was beating away on the wall while the deep male voice from before continued to berate him. ¡°If you¡¯d like to make a complaint, please press one. If you¡¯d like to make a complaint, please press one. If you¡¯d like...¡±

    ¡°ARGH! Mother fucker! Just Die!¡± Goliath screamed at the repetitive phone voice as he hammered away at the seemingly impervious cave wall.

    In another cave, Skay was flipping through his spider eyes repeatedly while he made a recording on his black pad about ¡°mind altering drugs perhaps?¡± and ¡°some kind of illusion maybe. Feels so real, but I suppose they always do.¡±

    Harvy was busy having an animated conversation regarding potting flowers with the voice and Exsue sat in the original cave watching everyone else mumbling with their eyes glazed over and staring off into nothingness while she shook her head.

    The only other person to escape the trap at the beginning of the cave was Fatty, who¡¯d apparently just eaten it by accident because he sneezed and took a deep breath in afterwards.

    Back in James¡¯ illusion, he now sat on the ground contemplating what was going on. After a while, he dove into his spirit realm and saw Gold James sitting on his orbiting rock while cultivating. ¡°Yo Goldy. Any thoughts?¡±

    Gold James perked up from his relaxed state of meditation and glanced at Spirit James.Thought¡¯s on what?~

    ¡°Well, you¡¯re supposed to be my ... other consciousness or my subconscious or something. What do you reckon is going on?¡±

    ~Going on? Nothing¡¯s going on. You¡¯re just standing around like a dope staring at a rock wall.~

    James cupped his chin and switched back to his body. Everything remained in the sequestered cave with the torches and the beeping of a dead phone line.

    After a moment James started to assess his situation. ¡°Okay, so definitely an illusion of some kind. Not sure why it¡¯s not affecting Gold James though ... Maybe some kind of field that induces self-delusion and hallucinations? So affecting a certain part of the brain. Let¡¯s try and see if we can interrupt that field with one our own.¡±

    Coming to this conclusion, James began to pour lightning energy into his skull in the hopes that it would shield him from the effects of whatever was going on. At first, the room only became slightly fuzzy and blurred. Then James began to adjust the frequency and pattern that lightning passed through his skull until eventually, he returned to reality and saw Fatty and Exsue staring at him. He then turned to see Skay Harvy and Goliath still trapped in their own little worlds.

    Skay suddenly shuddered and then stepped forwards with a bright smile. ¡°Boy, I¡¯ve found it!¡±

    James cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head in a questioning manner. Skay then shrugged both his bushy grey eyebrows twice, and James¡¯ face lit up.

    ¡°Oh what an idiot. How could we not have thought of that before?!¡±

    Skay nodded his head at James¡¯ sudden declaration and then flipped out his black pad to start making notes.

    Before James could get impatient waiting for the other two to escape their own hallucinations, a red glow appeared all over Goliaths body, and the smell of blood and a red mist began to pervade the area. Moments later a huge gust of wind blew out from Goliath and the circular array pattern painted on the roof suddenly glowed brightly and shattered like glass.

    James and Skay both shared a look and made mental notes that brute force could still overcome these sorts of mind games.

    While Skay began to take pictures of the array on the roof, James moved over to where Harvy was. Once again, his chance to test if he could shield another person¡¯s mind was interrupted when the array pattern on the roof began to flutter and glow rapidly like a strobe light.

    In a matter of seconds the strobing grew faster and faster until it looked like it was permanently glowing and from there it only grew brighter and brighter until it suddenly melted.

    Once it was gone, Harvy returned to reality right in the middle of an explanation on how you could tell if your soil ratio is perfect based on the vibrancy of the flower petals. Even just catching the last sentence of Harvy¡¯s discussion bored James into a momentary coma, so naturally, he and Skay both chalked this one up to the array pattern actually committing suicide.

    After a brief discussion on their experiences and Exsue getting a slap on the wrist for never having mentioned the interruption technique, they continued on.

    Now being significantly more careful, the group checked everywhere for any form of pattern as they moved along into the cave.

    After only 40 metres and a curve in the tunnel, they came to a very out of place, solid brick wall. After a few probing smacks and Skay checking some instruments, they determined that the array pattern painted on the other side of this wall was clearly far beyond anything they¡¯d managed to build. Not because it couldn¡¯t be damaged, but because when they used enough force to damage it, the wall almost instantly repaired itself.

    After a flip of a coin, Goliath got the honour of trying to break it down. At which point he took his war hammer in both hands, charged his earth spirit energy to the maximum and then smashed his hammer into the wall. It goes without saying that the wall was basically obliterated.

    The disconcerting part was that it almost instantly rebuilt itself before anyone had the chance to get to the other side. For perhaps the first time in his life, Fatty volunteered his skills and stepped up to the wall.

    As if second nature, he simply reached out a hand to touch the wall and sucked it dry of any spirit energy it might have had. Which according to Fatty was ¡®fuck all¡¯.

    This time, after another hammering from Goliath the wall stayed broken. On the opposite side of the wall was a black box covered in patterns neither James or Skay had seen before. After a few obligatory pictures, they opened the box to find a small scaled replica of the brick wall.

    After further investigation, they found patterns painted on the back of the bricks. Feeling like they¡¯d had a big win, they continued on.

    Lava pits, flame alleys, tracking arrows, moving golems. They passed through dozens of bizarre tests and after each one found a new and interesting array pattern. Luckily for them, they¡¯d brought Harvy in, because at one point they came to a field of venomous carnivorous flowers.

    Harvy was forced to march through ahead with his death aura flowing off him and had to suffer the tragedy of massacring an entire underground field of flowers.

    From that experience, they managed to get themselves an array that sped up the growth of plants.

    It actually became somewhat of a game for them, and they were soon competing to see who could come up with the best way to defeat one of the array puzzles they ran into.

    Skay lead the charge for a while until the downfall of having so many different elements hit him and he went into spirit energy deprivation. Fatty was second because the greatest downfall of any array was the lack of spirit energy to operate properly.

    Unfortunately for him, he¡¯d long since discovered that consuming refined spirit energy gave him awful indigestion and he was left behind to find a place to vacate his bowels about halfway through their trip.

    James and Exsue were both on par because they¡¯d silently agreed to challenge every array puzzle with only their lightning element.

    Harvy was even more dead and despondent after the flower incident, and Goliath met everything with force, so these two managed to sit in the last place.

    By the time they reached the end of the tunnel, they¡¯d travelled a good 20 kilometres and passed through nearly a hundred traps. In the end, the final array puzzle granted them access to a chamber filled with light stones and a horde of old books, catalyst recipes, rare catalyst ingredients and a variety of strange artefacts.

    Everything was unceremoniously looted, and the group left with a rather excited and happy Skay and James.

    Jasmine, on the other hand, seemed rather snappy when they poured everything out into the lab and had her start logging and recording everything they¡¯d found in the cave.

    After their productive day, James and Skay both retired to the Lab and began researching some of the artefacts. After a few attempts to replicate them, the duo discovered something that they¡¯d never taken into account before.

    Although everything they replicated with the factory came out looking the same and basically made from the exact same materials, it all only worked half as well.

    A sword that bent the light around its user for example. The Founder¡¯s was good enough to make a person look like only a vague, ethereal version of themselves. The one that they printed in the factory left them only slightly transparent like a reflection on glass.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    After a few more tests they both came to the conclusion that they¡¯d been doing something terribly wrong this whole time. They didn¡¯t know what it was, but quite clearly it was something.

    As they poured over the Founder¡¯s notes, they started to notice things where he mentioned ¡®forging with the spirit¡¯ or ¡®tempering with soul force¡¯. With that in mind, James made a note to go make a visit to the Gau Clan, who¡¯d been keeping rather quiet since they relinquished the City to James and ran off to lick their wounds after a thousand years of slowly depreciating.

    -Tech City - Central District, Monolith Plaza-

    Come midnight, James stood in the monolith plaza staring at the huge rock covered from head to toe in very dimly glowing array patterns. He then glanced over at Ruff, who was supposed to be having an internal moment of self-inspection, but to James looked like he was just sleeping with his head on his paws.

    Feeling James¡¯ gaze fall on him, Ruff slowly opened his eyes and let out a long yawn. ¡°It¡¯s time. I can already tell you that I definitely won¡¯t be able to pass the tribulation to become human. We beasts of lesser bloodlines rarely, if ever, manage to make that final step. If that bitch queen dragon couldn¡¯t do it, I am certain that I won¡¯t. I can already feel a demonic divergence in my spirit world.¡±

    James just scratched his face in an uninterested manner then turned back to face the monolith. ¡°Whatever dude, just remember, once you¡¯re the monolith spirit I need you to lift my oath to the Gau Clan.¡±

    That said, James levitated up into the air and placed a hand on a certain part of the monolith. This being the second time he¡¯d done this, and having practised levitation to quite some extent, James made it look easy this time around and made no face planting actions.

    After injecting lightning energy into the specific part of the array, the monolith once more lit up and flashed vibrantly. Ruff took a deep breath and then strolled into the huge glassy rock. Like walking into a wall of water, the face of the rock simply rippled, and Ruff was gone.

    As opposed to the glorious display Exsue had created on her exit, there was no grand lightning show for Little Blue. In fact, Little Blue didn¡¯t even exit the monolith. Even after waiting a few minutes and watching the monolith dim back to the healthy glow it had back when Exsue inhabited it, nothing came out.

    James walked up and placed his hand on the monolith and found that instead of taking the chance to escape, Little Blue was instead playing tag with Ruff. James couldn¡¯t help but facepalm himself. He knew the creature was simple and dumb, but he didn¡¯t realise it was that simple.

    Noticing James had appeared in the Monolith spirit world, Ruff gave Little Blue a slap to end the game, and the blue ferret rocketed off into the distance until becoming a dot in the sky and rapidly disappearing from view.

    ¡°Ahem, well then. I suppose I should do the thing.¡± Ruff then waved his paw and the flashy light show of heavenly law descending passed over James. James inspected his seal and felt his end of the pact with the Gau Clan dissolve.

    Before he left, James had one last thing he wanted to test. ¡°Ruff, there¡¯s one more thing I wanted to test. If you help me with this, I¡¯ll set up an array pattern around the monolith so that it draws in enough spirit energy to help you slowly increase your refined energy. I know that you can¡¯t cultivate to the next level, but I¡¯m pretty sure you can still consolidate energy right?¡±

    Ruff went into a dazed moment like he was staring off into the distance, and then finally nodded. ¡°Ruff, sure. It might take me a while to get the hang of the monolith system, but it looks like I can still replenish and refine energy.¡±

    James gave a nod then made his next request. ¡°Supposedly, the monolith allows you to read minds. I want you to try and read my mind.¡±

    Ruff then squinted his little dog eyes and started to shake like he was taking a constipated shit. ¡°I, don¡¯t know, James.¡± He grunted while still shaking. Then his eyes suddenly widened, and he started rolling about on the floor.

    ¡°Ahhh! Okay, yes. I can see your mind somewhat. But it¡¯s difficult. Like looking into murky water and it gives me a headache.¡±

    James then closed his eyes for a moment and changed some characteristics of his breathing pattern. ¡°Okay, now try it again.¡±

    Ruff, without needing the posture this time could immediately tell James his result. ¡°Nothing. I can tell you¡¯re within my influence, but your mind is like trying to peer through rain clouds to see the sun.¡±

    ¡°Excellent. Lastly, Exsue used to do this thing where she sent me images or visions or something. Try that.¡±

    Ruff once again went into a dazed distracted state and then squinted his eyes and began to shake again. After a few minutes of that, Ruff released a tensed breath and shook his shaggy dog head. ¡°If you didn¡¯t get that, then it probably doesn¡¯t work.¡±

    James smiled like the devil. ¡°Excellent. Well then, I¡¯ll stop by again sometime to check-up. Don¡¯t pick on Little Blue too much.¡±

    That said, he disappeared from the monolith spirit realm.

    ~Wow, that was an odd wasn¡¯t it?~

    James step faltered as he was leaving the plaza. ¡°Odd? You mean you were in the monolith as well?¡±

    ~Not really. More ... experienced it because you experienced it. It¡¯s like when you change the focus of your attention between our spirit realm and the body. My focus is forced to change with it.~

    James quirked an eyebrow and then chose to file it away under the mystery that is his spirit clone.

    -Gau Clan Mansion-

    James then left the plaza and travelled over to the building that was now considered to be the Gau Clan Mansion. This building was a huge skyscraper that housed all the clansmen of the Gau Clan and had two underground sections separated into the Sword Hall and the Hall of Forging.

    Although James hadn¡¯t originally planned to inform the Gau Clan that he¡¯d broken off their pact by partitioning the monolith, they would be finding out soon enough, and he still needed them for something. If the dog hadn¡¯t been willing to enter the monolith and break the pact tonight, then he¡¯d have just threatened to set off a spirit bomb in the Gau Clan residence ... by accident of course.

    Even though it was just after midnight, James wasn¡¯t worried if they¡¯d see him. As a True Spirit realm practitioner, he¡¯d only slept once since he broke through nearly a month and a half ago and that was by choice, not because he actually needed to.

    He presumed that Palace Realm cultivators like the 3 remaining elders of the Gau Clan probably only slept once a year, if at all.

    When he arrived in the downstairs foyer, he was met by a pair of disciples that stared at him like some kind of star struck groupies. They were damn near tripping over themselves reporting his arrival to Hao.

    James was then led up to the top floor of the building where Hao, Grace and Song were all waiting for him in a beautifully decorated meeting hall almost identical to the one they had in the old mansion. James unceremoniously sat at the head table and took some tea poured by a servant girl.

    Hao looked like he was sweating with anticipation at a visit from James, Grace remained her usual aloof self and Song just nodded his head in acknowledgement. Hao kicked it off with a greeting. ¡°Little James. It¡¯s good to see you again, I know you¡¯ve been busy with the city but I wish you¡¯d visit us more often ... for tea and a chat or ... something.¡±

    James smiled politely while in his heart he shivered at the true undertones of Hao¡¯s greeting.

    ¡°Well, after you lot dumped the responsibility of the city onto me, I¡¯ve been busy trying to keep it afloat. I should tell you that the monolith has been repaired and should be operating normally again. I also need to tell you that the oath we swore to each other has been nullified by the monolith on my end. I, therefore, came to relieve you of the oath you swore to me.¡±

    After those words had been said, Heavenly Law descended onto Hao. The results were as you would expect, the oath on both sides had now been lifted and the two parties now owed each other nothing.

    Before the three Elders could say anything, James lifted his hand to silence them and continued on. ¡°Obviously, I don¡¯t plan to leave things that way. You¡¯ve done a lot for me and mine since we arrived. That being the case, let us renegotiate our trade treaty. I¡¯m willing to offer you the elimination of taxes for trading in Tech and Star Cities.

    ¡°In addition to that, we will allow your clansmen to use the full commercial capabilities of the University for free and will take 10 disciples from each hall every month to train or study with our best. In this case, disciples seeking to further their understanding of warfare and battle will join Goliath and I for a full 24 hours of boot camp, disciples seeking the crafts and trades in alchemy or forging will join Skay and Jasmine in the lab for 3 Days.

    ¡°By extension of that offer, I would like to come to your Hall of Forging with Skay and train under Elder Song¡¯s tutelage in everything you can teach us regarding your methods of forging. We¡¯ll also allow you to maintain your right of first purchase on any artefact plans we plan to sell publicly. We can also offer free use of any public facilities such as the meditation chambers, the spire, the arena and a shop in the commercial plaza.

    ¡°I suppose that¡¯s about it. Is there anything you¡¯d like to add?¡±

    The three Elders exchanged glances with each other then all had different reactions. Hao looked like he was having a ¡®they grow up so quick¡¯ moment. Song was staring off into space thinking about something and Grace was watching the steam rising off her tea. All of their lips started to quiver at the same time.

    James could just make out some kind of buzzing sound at the peripheral of his hearing. After applying spirit energy to his brain and ears, he could just make out what sounded like whispers from the three Elders. Before he got the chance to hone in and overhear anything they finished their discussion.

    Hao agreed to the offer and made an additional demand. ¡°This is acceptable. We¡¯re not particularly losing out in this deal. However, we want to re-instate the mutual defence pact. We agree to come to each other¡¯s aid in a time of need and do no deliberate harm to one another.¡±

    James readily agreed, and they both wrote up a new contract and made oaths on the spot. When James left the hall, the three elders all shared another look. Song was the first to speak. ¡°He¡¯s developed rather quickly. I remember he needed that girl to do all his negotiating for him when they first brokered this deal.¡±

    Hao wiped a tear from his eye as he nodded his head repeatedly. ¡°He¡¯s grown up so fast. I wish my own son were a man of Little Jay¡¯s character and ability.¡±

    Grace just gave a grunt and then left after placing her tea down on the table, which was probably the closest to a positive comment she¡¯d ever give James. After all, her pupil was Jessy, and she spent quite a bit of time at the HQ arena training her. Grace knew what kind of man James really was, and she¡¯d never willingly admit he was good for or at anything.

    -Tech City - Auction Day-

    The entire auction day was planned by Jessy and Jasmine and started at 8 AM. A parade was hosted, in which all the visiting dignitaries got to be carried along through the streets of the Tech City in a pompous and prestigious manner.

    Drones flittered about everywhere raining glitter and confetti like snow which everybody seemed to love. Food vendors were everywhere, and stores were hosting specials and screaming about their wares like madmen. The entire city was packed to rafters with nearly 400,000 citizens and visitors running around spending money and trading.

    The whole thing with the festival and parade and everything else was just a way for the Brotherhood to get everyone into a hyped up frenzy and create a huge influx of revenue for the city. Taxes were reduced for the event by 1 percent. Which was basically just a scam because the sheer volume of money being pumped into the city today far outweighed the losses of dropping the trade taxes by a whole percent.

    At 9 AM huge crowds of people gathered at each of the 4 market plazas in the commercial district. Each Plaza had a huge white wall that had a projection of a black room. Standing in the room looking beautifully charming was Jessy. Her hair was once again in a bun held by chopsticks, and she wore a scandalously revealing cheongsam.

    The crowds in the largest plaza were entirely made up of account holders and people who did regular business with the Dark Brotherhood. The other three plazas had everyone else, regardless of status. Free cultivators, travellers and visitors from other kingdoms were all sent here.

    Drones with cameras flew all over the place and recorded everything while guild members registered people willing to bid. The catch was that only people that could offer 5,000 gold or something of equivalent value could purchase a bidding paddle.

    Sitting on a fancy throne at the account holders plaza was the Emperor of Yori, Artimus Dragonheart the something or rather. Surrounding him were all the other account holders ordered from most to least important. Amusingly, Emily had managed to get seated right next to the Emperor and was given an extra 50,000 gold from James for her information on spirit jade.

    Although she¡¯d been hoping to ask for a favour later, James insisted she take this as payment, in an attempt to avoid future favours, and she reluctantly accepted. After all, a favour from the leader of the most up and coming guild in the continent would surely pay out well later, but 50,000 gold on their account right now would be instrumental for the upcoming bidding wars.

    Seated on her other side was James, who decided to join the festivities today and was right up the front talking shop. In other words, he and Emily were both talking about things they¡¯d killed in battle before.

    After an hour to let everyone get settled in and any late comers to register to bid, Jessy kicked things off. In much the same manner as their last Auction, they made a show of strength to encourage everyone to keep their grubby little hands to themselves.

    The display this time around was them dropping a series of spirit bombs on top of the nearby Black Mountain which could be seen rather clearly from the city being only 30 or 40 klicks away. The resulting explosion literally blew about a third of the mountain away.

    After the uproar and excitement from seeing such a thing had died down, Jessy reminded everyone that using expensive trade goods at Tech City Market Prices was an acceptable method of bidding as well. A list was then handed out by Jasmine¡¯s drones. Another uproar then ensued when people began claiming they had things that weren¡¯t on the list.

    Every time a new material or resource was yelled out from the crowd, Jasmine almost instantaneously cross-referenced it with all the data she sucked in from all over the empire, and apparently the three nations, then posted it on the projection in each plaza. After another wasted half hour, a new list was rapidly printed in the auto factory and sent out.

    Anything Jasmine had never heard of was simply ignored, which put a few people in a bit of a tizzy.

    Finally, the show once again started. Jessy cheerfully smiled into the camera and the audible sound of hundreds of thousands of people groaning was heard from the crowds in the commercial district. ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen, please allow me to introduce the first item in today¡¯s auction.¡±

    With a wave of the hand, the camera panned out, and a spotlight lit up revealing a pedestal with a Mk II Arc Cannon. The moment everyone realised the first thing for sale was going to be the famed Palace Realm killer of the Dark Brotherhood, the crowds in the commercial district went mad.

    The only exceptions were the few big clans and account holders who felt it wasn¡¯t worth it to bid on a single Arc Cannon. Things quickly escalated from that point, when another spotlight lit up in the dark background revealing stacks of Arc Cannons all neatly packaged in boxes and ready to be shipped off.

    There had to be at least a hundred stacked up neatly. This was then dwarfed when one after the other another ten lights lit up revealing at least 1000 Arc Cannons lining racks and stacked neatly in boxes. The number 12 appeared on the screen, and Jessy once more gave her thousand watt smile to the camera.

    ¡°Our first item up for auction today is the Mark Two all-purpose Arc Cannon. This artefact was the brainchild of our very own Guildmaster James and since its inception has been through innumerable re-designs. This model was the second mass-produced model to come from the Dark Brotherhoods factory and has the power to kill a Palace Realm Cultivator.

    ¡°It fires a 32mm slug at just over the speed of sound and is accurate to 200 metres. Ammunition can be purchased in solid shells or explosive shells allowing for a person to disintegrate an enemies body on contact or penetrate through the bones and hide of a Palace Realm Beast. This model is capable of twelve consecutive shots in total and can be fired within the span of 6 seconds.

    ¡°The only downside to this masterful piece of work is the lack of structural integrity rendering the weapon useless after it¡¯s payload is spent. Nonetheless, this powerful battlefield armament is capable of eliminating opposing palace realm practitioners with ease and can even be used to stun and injure a tower realm beast.

    ¡°This weapon comes with a standard biometric lock which will register the first person to touch the trigger as its only user. This prevents theft of the weapon on and off the battlefield. I should also tell you now, that any attempt to pull the structure of the weapon apart will result in a controlled internal explosion reducing the parts and arrays inside this weapon inoperable.

    ¡°All used weapons are recyclable at any Brotherhood guild office and will be refunded at 100 gold a piece. Starting bids for a load out of 100 will begin at 8,000 Gold.¡±

    The moment Jessy finished her short introduction, the crowds of spectators and bidders started screaming bids. Thanks to some back breaking work by Jasmine, as long as a person held up the paddle and said a bid, it was registered and displayed as the top bid onscreen. As the bids mellowed out, Jessy began to do her auctioneers job and yelled out the paddle number and bid of the highest bidder.

    The crowds quickly caught on and more orderly bidding slowly formed once everyone realised what was happening. The price of the first set of Arc Cannons rose at a rapid pace and were sold for 21,000 gold. This trend continued on for the next 11 sets with the last one rocketing up to just over 30,000.

    The majority of the Cannons were actually sold off to either the Emperor himself, who James had promised would receive a 10% discount on everything he purchased at the auction today, and some hooded, bamboo hat wearing strangers scattered about in the other three plazas.

    Although the other account holding factions definitely had the money tucked away in their account to buy a set of Cannon¡¯s, they realised that they would most likely be going onto the sale cue for account holders in the next few weeks and it was better off waiting for the truly interesting things to come out.

    The next item was a fleet of Big Berta¡¯s. Ten of them were sold off for almost 20,000 each, which was a remarkable markup from the first auction. Again, no account holders bothered to bid on those. Even though they were limited by the Brotherhood and could only be known to own a single Berta and buying one in the auction was a way around that rule, they knew that the Berta¡¯s probably wouldn¡¯t be worth shit compared to whatever else was in store.

    The first ten items were the biggest sellers the guild normally only sold to account holders. Air Boards, Berta¡¯s, Dragon Scale potions and 616.61, which was something Skay had managed to start developing after he got his hands on the Spirit Condensing Storage stone from under the quarry.

    Eventually, the first brand new item after the Arc Cannon came to the fore. Mk I Battle Armour. Very much the same as the Arc Cannon, it had biometrics, recycling policy and tamper proof. The tamper proof on the armour was a little bit more dramatic though because the suit had a miniaturised reactor inside of it. The tamper system for that was a slightly reduced Gravity Bomb reaction similar to what happened with Hanso.

    This, along with its ability to take focused fire from two Arc Cannons simultaneously was displayed for everyone to see. They got sold in stacks of 10 for about 15 sets, and each set was close to 40,000 gold.

    After seeing them in action, and hearing that they could be powered infinitely, everyone wanted it. Wearing that thing was like having another 20 lives, especially in battle or when hunting.

    This trend then continued on. They sold all sorts of equipment which was centred on warfare. A great deal of it was actually snatched away by the people James was fairly certain were bidders for the three nations. Seeing them going mad with desire for his weaponry made him smile like a sinner.

    Emily, who¡¯d been sitting next to him throughout the auction was jumping out of her seat with excitement. She made no bones about demanding James outfit her Adventurer party with the Mk III Arc Cannon and the Mk II Combat Suits.

    She even began to beg at some point. James just shrugged it off and let his evil smile broaden.

    Finally, the grand finale of the auction came at about 3 PM. The second last item on auction was bled meat from the corpse of the Tower Realm Golden Crow that they downed in the Jetsu Mountains. Obviously, Skay was insistent that they keep the blood, but the meat was readily sold by the tonne. It was bought up at an astronomical price by the group James was certain were the Soel delegates. Nearly 80,000 gold a tonne for 6 tonnes.

    James knew that Soel was basically an entire nation run by some church called the Order of the Suns, and they worshipped the three Sun¡¯s like gods.

    He hadn¡¯t realised they were so fanatical as to outright bid such a huge amount before other bidders had even reached half that amount. He did realise that the Golden Crow was supposedly a symbol of the yellow sun, but he was still blown away by their madness.

    The final item for auction was well and truly far from what everyone expected. James called it the War of the Worlds, and it was an invitation to any and all parties that could bid for a place in a martial competition with three prizes. The first prize was the Brotherhoods one-time assistance should the victorious guild, clan, faction or nation ever go to war.

    Hearing this, James got a rather baleful glare from the Emperor which he merely smiled at and shrugged off. The second Prize was an identical Spire to the one in Tech City, and the final prize was a slower dumber version of the Velocity Gunship and the requisite training to operate it.

    Essentially, James wasn¡¯t selling items, but rather selling entry spots. There were 60 places up for sale, and anyone could bid. He was well aware that other nations from the continent were present and that the following bidding war would determine just how many participants they could get into the competition.

    This meant that the more people they could enter into the competition, the greater their chances of winning. The rules were stated by Jessy quite clearly.

    ¡°This competition will be held in 1 year¡¯s time and all competitors must be in the True Spirit Realm. Any weaponry, armour or artefacts can be used. Battles will persist until the opponent concedes, or is no longer able to fight. No outside interference will be considered acceptable. Killing is permitted.¡±

    She then opened the bidding at 20,000 gold a ticket. At first, silence reigned supreme. No one wanted to be the first person to bid. James wasn¡¯t worried that no one would bid. This was because he¡¯d already displayed the power of his guilds weaponry. Everyone knew, that if they could get him to willingly side with them in a war, they would come out on top without a doubt.

    The problem was that everyone was too afraid to openly admit they wanted him on their side. If they did, everyone would know that they planned to go into all-out war with someone and then all their neighbours and anyone they had a grudge against would try and eliminate them.

    Realising the problem here, James grinned and then tapped his ear piece. ¡°Jasmine, patch me through the crowds.¡±

    ¡°Certainly James.¡±

    The projections in each plaza suddenly shimmered and then James, seated in the account holders plaza smiled. ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen. I¡¯m sure you¡¯re all worried that joining this event will paint a target on your backs. Please be assured that this offer isn¡¯t solely for persons planning on going to war. This one-time assistance can also be used to hire my guild to reinforce your nation¡¯s defences should you feel the threat of war or call in our assistance should someone declare war on you. If you all prefer, you can bid by simply tapping on the back of your paddle and whispering your bid.¡±

    As soon as he finished his little speech, the projections snapped back to Jessy standing next to the podium with a Golden Ticket on it and anonymous bids suddenly rising off to the side. Once the floodgates opened, everybody gave up trying to make sneaky anonymous bids and openly started yelling out their bids.

    Tickets were sold off for close 40,000 a pop. By the end of the day, James had managed to empty nearly every account holders saved gold and raked in another 12 million gold on top of that. His guild was fucking rich!

    With the auction finished, the city once again fired up into a raucous party. Every pub, tavern, watering hole and brothel was packed to breaking. Not just those places, but the four plazas were still packed to the brim. Although the main auction was over, there was still some auctions being held selling off a single Combat Suit or single Arc Cannon.

    Weapons, potions, meditation mats, University passes. Hell, damn near anything James could hock was sold to the masses like hot cakes.

    -Central District - City Hall-

    The City Hall was a building James had constructed only recently, and it was designed for one singular purpose. To have massive parties. It was slapped down right next to the Guild office in the central district and was big enough for a few hundred people to sit around eating, talking, drinking and listening to music.

    Much to all the invited guest¡¯s dissatisfaction, there was no arranged seating order. Anyone could sit anywhere they damn well pleased, which was a rare thing in this world because most occasions like this had a fixed guest list and fixed seating arrangement based on class and status.

    In James¡¯ party, things were decidedly different. Anyone that said they were from somewhere important got announced at the door and could then walk around, sit and drink wherever they damn well pleased.

    Apart from a few little scuffles that very quickly ended when about 20 armed Brotherhood members showed up equipped to the teeth, everyone had a great time. At about 10 pm James was well lubricated and called for a brief moment of silence.

    He then booted the supposedly famous band from the stage and had a sleek strange looking black box carried over to the stage. Seeing it, everyone was puzzled. James on the other hand only smiled and then walked up to the stool, flared his light blue robe out behind him and sat down.

    He then lifted a little cover and revealed a line of 88 black and white keys. After stroking a few and allowing the sound to resonate through the hall, he closed his eyes and began to play about the only song he could remember from start to finish. Beethoven¡¯s Moonlight Sonata.

    For a brief quarter of an hour, every set of lungs in the room was emptied as everyone breathed out, closed their eyes and let themselves become absorbed in the music of this fantastic new instrument.

    Of course, the piano wasn¡¯t anything ¡®new¡¯, at least not to James. To everyone else in the room, it was a brilliant and revolutionary new instrument they¡¯d never heard anything like before. James also didn¡¯t believe his playing was particularly good enough to warrant such a quiet moment of introspection by all the attendants of his banquet.

    In fact, it was barely passable on earth, but it was also the only song he¡¯d ever bothered to learn completely, and the only piece he had actually practised enough not to entirely screw up. As such, for the debut of the piano in this world, the first song to ever be played on it, was a poor re-enactment of Moonlight Sonata.

    When he finally finished his butchery of this classical piece, the entire hall awoke and gave polite applause and the occasional ¡®well done¡¯, ¡®masterful¡¯ and ¡®here here¡¯. Which for a crowd as proud and distinguished as these guests, was the same as a frenzied and violent cheer at a rock concert.

    The moment James stood to return to his boisterous drinking, people started to come up and bid for the piano. James couldn¡¯t help but give a wry smile and waved them away saying they could order one through the guild at a later date.

    He then also considered for a moment and gave Jasmine the order to create a music program for the University and to manufacture some instruments for it.

    That wasn¡¯t the only thing James did that night. He also made a few new friends, added accounts for another 30 new factions from nearly every nation in the continent and bumped knees with a good deal of the more influential people of Atsunari.

    He politely declined most talk regarding his guild and instead chose to discuss war stories, array patterns and artefact forging. One of the people he rather liked was a gentleman by the name of Clay from the United Islands who claimed to be a dignitary seeking aid from the mainland nations.

    According to him, he¡¯d travelled damn near the entire continent looking for help because the United Islands was under siege from both sides. The bandits regularly raided from the west, killing, raping, enslaving and looting everything they could. While the Tilion Unity, which was apparently an assorted government of sentient bug people, did much the same thing in the south as the pirates and bandits did in the west. Only they generally ate their victims at some point or another.

    James didn¡¯t particularly care about that. Instead, he was more interested in the man¡¯s stories of his travels. He told tales of marching through the canyon of death in Chor. Slaying a Palace Realm fire bear with his bare hands in the Black Lands and even James¡¯ favourite which was a story of how he led a tower realm pirate captain into the lair of a sea leviathan and made his escape by digging his way out from the insides of the beast with a rusty sword.

    James, of course, believed not a word of it, but he loved the stories nonetheless.

    By the time the Sun¡¯s rose, James found himself climbing out of a tree near the monolith plaza that was surrounded by twenty empty assorted bottles of hard liquor. After a brief moment of being hungover, his breathing technique kicked in, and his body rapidly started flushing the alcohol from his system.

    After a quick look around he saw 4 other people still sleeping up in the tree. One of them was Emily, who looked a little worse for wear while sleeping hung over a branch like a wet sheet. Goliath and Jessy were also both wedged between branches higher up and at the top was Lucas, who appeared to be half naked and hanging off a branch by what little was left of his modesty, or rather, his robe.

    After a quick recollection of the night¡¯s events, James quietly backed away from the tree and then sped off into the distance like a flash of lightning. The next to awaken was Emily and Goliath, who very much did the exact same thing. Emily at least had the courtesy to blush after remembering the night¡¯s events.

    Finally, as Jessy awoke and started to descend from the tree, a rock shot through the air like a bullet and snapped the branch Lucas was hanging from. About the same time Jessy reached the ground, Lucas¡¯ face also reached it. They then shared a very awkward moment and an equally awkward look before Jessy gave a dry cough and sprinted from the plaza at full speed.

    On the roof of the nearby Guildhall James and Emily were laughing their asses off as Lucas just stood there befuddled and scratching the back of his head. Everyone silently agreed in their minds not to discuss the happenings of the age old truth or dare game they¡¯d spent the wee hours of the morning playing.

    Some things are better left unspoken.

 Chapter 36: Spirit Aura

    With the day of the Brotherhood auction finally complete, life in Tech City returned as close as it could to normal. The city and guild had a huge influx of new residents, guild and clan offices, money and resources.

    A few factions tried to use their newly acquired equipment to infiltrate and capture members of the Brotherhood only to quickly discover that nothing they brought from the guild could operate within 10 kilometres of the city walls.

    What they also didn¡¯t know, was that every piece of equipment sold by the Brotherhood was tracked and monitored by Jasmine. Not only that, the self-detonation from the tamper-proof system could be set off remotely by Jasmine.

    Many of the factions that had designs on using this equipment to finally abduct a core member of the Brotherhood were pressured to admit defeat and all agreed between each other that the Dark Brotherhood only sold them because they had some kind of array pattern in the city that deactivated these artefacts.

    That was, unfortunately, the best theory they could come up with. They neither understood or could even imagine the power of the technology James had at his fingertips. They also never got a chance to find out because every time they tried to pry something open and inspect its insides, it would erupt and leave nothing but a 10 or 12 meter crater in its wake.

    Jasmine reported 42 incidents in the first 24 hours since the auction. They even had a few of those incidents in the confines of the city, which stirred up the populace quite a bit after one of them was inside a tavern and took a dozen of its patrons in the implosion.

    With a new day on the rise, James reordered his priorities again. He then went for a visit to the university and sat through the entire basics course. When he returned home, he left everything in the capable hands of Jasmine and Jessy, then sat down and meditated on everything he forgot after leaving high school.

    Not only him, but Gold James apparently got blasted with the implant as well. The two of them often had arguments and discussions regarding things as they both sat and meditated on the intricacies of triangles, ¦Ð, basic physics, chemistry and damn near everything else.

    To the great surprise of them both, they realised that when they were in joint meditation as they often were at this time, their understanding was twice as fast. They often found themselves meditating on the exact same parts at the same time.

    At one point they tried to segregate the parts they were learning only to suddenly both be muttering about chemical bonds. They¡¯d then have a half hour argument about who was meant to be doing what and then eventually both give up and agree that they clearly shared the same brain and even though they had two active consciousness¡¯s, they were clearly still the same person and sharing the same thoughts.

    Even though that was the case, it didn¡¯t stop them from trying to train the brain to think in parallel. Although they had no results at the end of the week, Gold James refused to give up. This meant that Gold James would periodically ask what James was thinking about throughout the day to see if they were thinking the same thing.

    If they shared the thoughts, which they almost always were, then he¡¯d try and start thinking about something else. James lost count of the number of times he was suddenly and randomly thinking about lighting something on fire or boobs.

    Once that was finished, he went back to the University and sat through a number of other refresher courses and even tried to stomach a few more advanced courses that he¡¯d never considered before. He then spent another two weeks sitting in a meditation chamber sorting through all the crap in his head.

    By the time he came out again, the city had been through another renovation with all the leased land in the central district filled with guildhalls, clan mansions (guildhalls with living space) and from a multitude of other factions moving into Tech City. The Arena had also apparently been finished, and the Mysterious Stranger had reappeared to finally challenge James.

    Hearing that James was in closed door cultivation, she simply said ¡°1 month¡± and left again. According to Jasmine, the stranger left the city, and even she had trouble tracking her after that. In other words, the moment she entered a forested area Jasmine lost sight of her.

    Other news he received on his emergence from his meditation chamber was that Perlious finally made a move to try and break into the HQ building only to be captured and imprisoned. Word from Hastoel was that the General demanded his release.

    Being in charge at the time, Jasmine did what she thought James would do and hacked the man¡¯s hand off and sent it with a ransom note back to the General. Since then there was no word from any Hastoelians regarding the matter.

    James admitted that would probably be his first course of action. If the General hadn¡¯t replied by now, it meant he was probably preparing to march over here and storm the city. With that thought in mind, James set in motion the reinforcement of the city¡¯s defences.

    Starting with the instant rebuilding arrays, followed by a deflector array and the production of Mk III and Mk V Rail guns. The MK IV was a personal hand held rail gun, and James didn¡¯t see any need to start mass production on them for the moment. By the same notion, he issued the production order of the Devastator Cannon which was basically just a huge Arc Cannon that was specifically designed to fire a Spirit Bomb warhead at supersonic speeds.

    They picked up quite numerous interesting little arrays and catalyst recipes from the Founder¡¯s Cave that limited the possibility of the ammunition suddenly exploding when fired. The trade-off was that for the same effects they had to use a larger delivery system. Which meant the layered ammo they fired from the Devastator was almost a metre in diameter, which compared to the palm-sized cube James used in the Endless Forest, was huge.

    The bonus to that however, was that the things were fucking heavy, which meant they could be fired from the city to damn near anywhere in the entire Katsu province without air drag slowing their ammunition to the speed of a sickly dog.

    In order to set the thing up without the sudden accidental decimation of the entire city, they decided to once again rebuild the Spire. It soon reached a kilometre into the air which was almost twice the height of the world trade centre.

    Strangely, it was just as sturdy and rock solid as if it were a one story building on the ground. If anything, with the more advanced arrays holding it up ... and together, it was even more solid. It also had such an unimaginable pressure on the top floor that even if one of the ammo bombs went off on the roof, it would be like pouring a cup of water into a bathtub.

    When James first saw this huge new Spire standing in the middle of the city, he and Skay had a short discussion. Skay readily admitted that it would be catastrophic if the main, secondary and tertiary support arrays were to ever simultaneously fail.

    The combined pressure from the top hundred floors would not only flatten the city like a pancake, but it would be the same as 30 megatons instantly colliding with the face of the planet.

    The impact alone would decimate the entire Empire. Following that would be the persistent earthquakes that would plague the continent for days. Irreparable damage would be done to the tectonic plate and could actually result in a fracture of the continent as a whole.

    Not only that, but the impact would most likely set off the super reactor (because a reactor they couldn¡¯t even measure wasn¡¯t already crazy enough) that was housed below the tower.

    Then, not only would it be a 30 megaton impact, but also the detonation of an uncalculatable super reactor and a dozen cube reactors on top of that. Skay wouldn¡¯t say what he thought the result of that explosion would be, but he did mumble something about ¡®how the dinosaurs died¡¯.

    Doomsday sort of stuff.

    Being the kind of person he is. James freely began to advertise all this information. He even vamped it up a bit and declared that if the tower ever fell, the continent would join it. Most people took it for a hoax and a scare tactic. This didn¡¯t stop all the people in power from keeping a wary eye on the horizon and an ear to the ground praying that it was all talk.

    -War Room-

    After this short week catching up on the city and watching the spire be rebuilt, James joined Goliath in what they referred to as the War Room. Naturally, it was an underground bunker outfitted with all the highest tech and out of this world crap they could stuff inside of it. James had Jasmine designing this thing ever since Artimus first visited his office and started putting thoughts of war in his head.

    On the mention of that fact, Artimus had apparently been in contact demanding a meeting with James and saying something about agreeing to the deal. James decided he¡¯d just let Artimus keep sweating for a little bit. Whether Artimus liked it or not, a war that would shake the continent was coming and he could either jump on board with the Dark Brotherhood or hope to ride it out in his tiny little Empire.

    Now that James thought about it. The amount of space that the Jetsu mountain range covered was actually many times larger, because it was all stuffed into that strange spatial pocket. That meant regarding relative space within the borders of an empire, Yori was one of the biggest. Still not reaching the size of the three great nations, but definitely close.

    Pushing those thoughts aside, James wondered around the war room. It actually had shit all in it apart from a huge table nearly ten meters in diameter. Covering the table was an unnaturally perfect but slightly blurry 3D resemblance of the entire Atsunari continent, with national borders, notable landmarks and cities.

    Most of it looked slightly fuzzy and out of sync except for the Yori Empire and a few hundred kilometres of its three surrounding nations. A few glaring problems with the representation were the areas that looked all pixelated and faded into black. The Jetsu Mountain Range for one. These places pot marked the map, but the most glaring area was the place referred to as the black lands.

    The entire black lands were ... black. Jasmine literally couldn¡¯t see anything there which left James wondering just what the hell kind of place it was. The next largest area was the Jetsu mountains followed by increasingly smaller areas scattered all over the place.

    After a quick look at the map, James made a pinching motion with both hands towards the Yori Empire then spread his hands apart. Following this motion, nothing happened. James then did it a few more times then stopped mid-motion with a twitching eyebrow.

    ¡°Jasmine, what¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°Hello James. How are you?¡±

    The workout James¡¯ eyebrow got from interacting with Jasmine was enough that he was pretty sure those few muscles that made the twitching motion were the most powerful muscles in his body. With eyebrow working into a furry, James crossed his arms and stared up at the ceiling.

    ¡°Jasmine, I¡¯m not starting a polite conversation. Why aren¡¯t the hand movements working?¡±

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry James. I¡¯m just sooo overworked right now. Maybe if I could possibly redevelop a newer core hardware platform, I could keep up with all the work you have me doing.¡±

    James smelled a rat the moment he heard this. He had checked in with Skay after the last upgrade and was assured by him that Jasmine now had enough processing power to run everything she¡¯d already been doing a million times over. He even let slip that she didn¡¯t even need the last upgrade.

    Seeing James silently staring at the roof, or supposedly her, with a frown on his face, Jasmine couldn¡¯t help but give an embarrassed cough. ¡°Ahem ... Can¡¯t blame a girl for trying.¡±

    With that said, the projected map suddenly enlarged in onto the Empire and the few hundred surrounding kilometres that Jasmine had mapped out in full detail using drones. Odd areas soon began to light up all over the place with various colours depicting unmined resources in the Empire.

    Quite a few had the seal of the Brotherhood marked on them depicting that the land had already been bought up by Jessy and the area was ready to be cleaned out by the Brotherhood.

    James continued to ignore the sudden good behaviour of the map interface and continued to stare at the ceiling with a frown. ¡°Jasmine.¡±

    ¡°...¡±

    ¡°Jasmine!¡±

    ¡°...¡±

    ¡°Jasmine God Damn It! You answer me right now!¡±

    ¡°Yes, Guildmaster James.¡±

    ¡°What did you do?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t understand the...¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t you play dumb with me Jasmine! You tell me this instant!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not fair! Everyone else gets to play with cool toys! I wanted one for myself!¡±

    James pinched the bridge of his nose to fend off an incoming headache and then let out a long sigh. ¡°Where is it?¡±

    ¡°Promise you won¡¯t get mad?¡±

    James felt his finger twitching, getting ready to sprint to the reactor and set it off. The only thing preventing this was the fact that he¡¯d most likely be engulfed in the pending spirit explosion holocaust. He placed both hands over his face and groaned into them.

    ¡°It¡¯s in the hanger isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t even have any weapons on it yet!¡±

    Hearing the yet declaration James and Goliath shared a look and then sprinted out of the War Room.

    -HQ Hanger-

    James stood frozen in the hanger staring wide-eyed with shock written on his face. Stood next to him was Goliath and on the other side Skay. Skay seemed to be the only one still cognizant as he watched over his masterpiece with a dreamy grin and chin cupped in hand.

    ¡°Magnificent isn¡¯t it?¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow then started doing its thing and his face slowly developed into a scowl. ¡°What the hell is that thing?¡±

    Skay patted his chest proudly, with a twinkle in his eye and a face filled with pride he smiled broadly and declared; ¡°That my boy, is dominance.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a fucking spaceship isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not a fucking space ship. It¡¯s a true Dropship. That piddling little Velocity thing could hardly be considered more than a cargo plane. You know it¡¯d take us more than 2 hours to fly from this continent to the next closest one and more than 8 to get to the centre of the next continent. With this, we could fly around the world in three days. If you fail to comprehend the magnitude of that statement allow me to simplify. This thing is twice as fast as the velocity.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s also 8 times as big. It must be nearly 2 kilometres long.¡±

    ¡°2.2 to be exact. Not only that, it¡¯s nearly 600 metres in width and houses 31 decks from a hanger bay big enough to fit three velocities side by side and a launch deck capable of dropping 8,000 combatants in groups of 200. That¡¯s just the beginning. It can be run almost entirely by Jasmine and can operate with only a skeleton crew. Even though I say that it has the room to house pretty much the entire 8,000 people required for a full drop.

    ¡°Eventually I plan to have Mk V Rail Guns mounted on this beast along with a Devastator, maybe even two of those, then there¡¯s the array powered missiles I¡¯ve been working on along with the pulse cannon and something special I¡¯m sure you¡¯re going to love. I guess also ... it¡¯s capable of breaking the atmosphere and maintaining space operations for a few days.¡±

    James just let out another long sigh as he watched hundreds if not thousands of drones buzzing around a huge exoskeleton of a ship and welding materials in places or running LS3 cables housed in some type of protective rubber Skay cooked up in the lab.

    Sparks flew like rain and materials of all kinds were being constantly dragged over by the drone army. It resembled fly¡¯s picking a corpse to pieces in reverse.

    James now realised where all that processing power of Jasmines was going. It wasn¡¯t because she had to control so many drones, no that was easy. She had nearly 5,000 drones flitting about in the empire, endless forest and other places all at once. No, the processing power was going into computing the design for this monstrosity.

    James could only let out another sigh and then scowled. ¡°How long do you expect to be working on this project?¡±

    Skay scratched his chin and readjusted his glasses. ¡°Hmm, well ... shouldn¡¯t be more than a month or two I suppose. Then it¡¯ll just be a year or two for Jasmine to finish construction and maybe a few months added here or there if we hit any roadblocks that need testing and re-engineering.¡±

    James accepted that for the moment, he couldn¡¯t do anything about the old madman¡¯s desire to build a fucking space ship and that Jasmine no doubt wanted this more than anybody. Considering his options and his care factor, James just let out a grunt then turned to leave the hanger.

    ¡°Fine, but Jasmine, you¡¯re to limit your attention on this project. No more than half your processing power. If this project limits your ability to perform your other duties, then I¡¯m going to come down here with a couple gravity bombs, and you can consider the project cancelled. Is that understood?¡±

    ¡°Certainly James.¡± Replied a cheerful sounding Jasmine.

    -Tech City University-

    James once more returned to the University. Every month the University hosted one of Tech City¡¯s three challenges. The Science Fair. The whole idea of this challenge was to give academics and scholars a chance to share their knowledge or breakthroughs with their peers.

    The rules of the fair were simple. A person or team had half an hour to introduce an interesting idea or project and describe how they planned to implement it. Their idea or project could incorporate anything from arrays and alchemy to basic physics and chemistry. It could span every field from farming to industry and then all the way on to commercial or even just entertainment.

    The whole idea was to encourage people to creatively learn more about their world. At least, on the surface it was. James instead had more nefarious reasons for the science fair and looked out solely for powerful minds that he could rope into his guild.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    Skay was stretched thin, and if James could conjure up some at least slightly capable scientists, then his guild would rocket forwards.

    He¡¯d held this competition just before the Auction and found a few worthy candidates. The best part was that they willingly jumped at the chance to join the guild after he started listing all the things they could study once they joined.

    In saying that though ... it wasn¡¯t like they were anything special. They only came up with a few clever ways to use basic arrays that hadn¡¯t been thought of in the lab. In saying that, it shouldn¡¯t go without mentioning that Skay had leapt over huge amounts of research on his path. He simply didn¡¯t have the time to run all the tests that he could in all the thousands of variations that he could.

    This was the whole reason James had the idea of starting a science division.

    It was now a month later though, and James was fairly certain that there should be some better results. First of all, the number of people to pass basic testing from the elementary courses had quadrupled.

    There were now hundreds of people that had managed to wrap their heads around a grade 10 education. To have achieved that in only the few months the courses had been available, with this world¡¯s prior poor ... or rather entire lack of scientific knowledge and theory, was actually quite remarkable.

    It was obvious that this could only be attributed to the nature of the implant, but by the same notion, the majority of people had taken 3 months just to complete the first part. That went to show that the few hundred that had already finished were something like the cream of the crop. Not to mention that most of them had actually only studied the 4 elementary implants over the period of 1 or 2 months.

    In a theatre of the University, James and the reluctant to waste time on this Skay, sat overlooking an empty stage. One by one a person or group of people would march out onto the stage, usually with some kind of experiment, and try to convince James and Skay that they did something interesting.

    Skay looked ready to fall asleep, and James looked like he was already asleep, as yet another group of three walked onto the stage pushing a cart. This trio was much more interesting than the last few, being made up entirely of young scholarly types who couldn¡¯t be much older than James. That meant they were either quite advanced in their cultivation and had stepped into True Spirit in their teens or early twenties, or they were just very young and had brilliant minds.

    Either way, both scenarios granted them a glance from James and meant they would be recruited into the guild. Seeing the disinterested looks of the pair in the audience seats, the girl from the trio just shared a look with the two boys like it was to be expected and started unpacking equipment from the cart and setting up what appeared to be an array pattern without saying a thing.

    It was one of the most complex and convoluted arrays James had ever seen and had patterns that neither Skay or James remembered ever seeing before. If anything, it actually looked more along the lines of volume formulas, mass and density calculations, molecular bonding diagrams and what James was pretty sure were the atomic makeup of certain materials from the periodic table.

    Lore patterns replaced numbers and names and support patterns formed geometric equations and molecular bonds. The foundation patterns did what they always did and powered everything.

    They then placed a single copper coin in the centre of the array and the three of them jointly channelled spirit energy into three separate parts of the array. They also each had a different state of matter as their element. Water, Wind and Earth. Or rather, liquid, gas and solid.

    Seeing this, James finally became interested and leant forwards in his chair to observe more closely. After a while, the array still failed to activate, and James nudged Skay and nodded.

    The duo then walked up to the stage and observed the array pattern. By now they¡¯d somewhat guessed what the trio was trying to prove with this experiment and using everything they could remember from their own array research they looked over their patterns.

    James finally broke the silence of the array hall. ¡°Is this the first time you¡¯ve run this experiment?¡±

    The focused and concentrating trio paused for a moment until the girl, who now clearly was the lead in this project replied. ¡°No, we managed to make a gold coin in the University laboratories. It takes a long time to charge the array though.¡±

    She then pulled a coin from her pocket and handed it to James. The coin looked gold in every way until James applied some spirit energy and twisted it in half. It then revealed itself to still be a copper coin plated in gold. James peered closely at the coin then flicked it to Skay, who flipped down his spider eyes and began to flick through his 15 different lenses.

    When he was done, he tossed the coin aside and smiled. ¡°Let¡¯s have a crack then shall we boy?¡± Skay then moved forwards and pushed one of the boys out of the way. James also moved forwards and pushed the girl and the other boy away.

    The moment he placed his hands on the two circles they¡¯d been feeding into he realised what the problem was. ¡°I think I know what the issue is old goat. There¡¯s an imbalance. They probably only fluked their first success.¡±

    With that said, he flipped out his black pad and took a picture of the array the trio had painstakingly drawn. After a brief chat with Jasmine, his black-pad flashed a few times. He then pulled Skay over and they spent a few minutes pointing at bits and mumbling to each other.

    The trio, who weren¡¯t sure what to make of this mess their project had become got another shock when a drone came flying in through the doors with a bag filled with tins of paint.

    James then touched the array pattern on the floor again and it suddenly dissolved into thin air. A projection was then made from his black pad with different parts in different colours, and he and Skay retreated back to the seats.

    The trio stared in amazement at the array pattern on the floor. It was definitely their array pattern, but at the same time, it wasn¡¯t. It now had some extra parts they weren¡¯t entirely sure about and was missing some old parts. It also now had three circles on the outmost edge connected only by a single line to the main array formation.

    As he sat down, James explained for them. ¡°If your theories are correct, then you¡¯ve discovered something even we never imagined trying. Not just one thing either. If I had to guess it would be at least three. You may, in fact, have changed the very nature of our array pattern research. Now, what I want from you is simple. Re-paint your pattern, and try again. Use the correct colour paint to the corresponding colour of the pattern.¡±

    Without asking questions, the trio then dove into the task at hand. James didn¡¯t actually have to alter their array pattern or help them out with powerful catalysts. He could tell at a glance that what they¡¯ve achieved with this experiment was revolutionary. But the best part about science, is seeing the results of your work yourself.

    After a much shorter time than when they¡¯d had to paint the array from memory, the trio finished and started pumping in spirit energy. Very quickly a reaction could be seen, and the array lit up like a Christmas Tree. A sudden influx of primal spirit energy surged into the theatre and filled the array pattern to bursting.

    Seeing the array mysteriously fuelling itself, the young trio stepped back and watched their hard work pumping away. Very slowly, the coin began to heat up and vibrate. It soon became red hot and started jumping about inside the array pattern.

    The moment it began to move more than a few inches from the centre of the array the array sputtered and died. James returned to the stage and twisted the gold coin into two revealing only a slither of copper still remaining in the centre.

    James congratulated the trio, and after some more pleasantries, they were invited to join him later to discuss their research.

    From then on the rest of the day was rather boring and the group that changed copper into gold was announced the winners. They were then given 100,000 gold, got a pat on the back from James and the science fair was once again finished for another month.

    -The Lab-

    The moment Skay and James escaped the university they raced back to the lab and began experimenting with arrays again, much like they had done when they first discovered them. They had just discovered one of the most crucial moments in array pattern history ... for them anyway.

    The experiment to turn a copper coin into gold may sound extraordinary, but that wasn¡¯t the true treasure they¡¯d managed to scrape up from this experiment. Instead, it was the notion that they could create their own lore, support and foundation patterns.

    The notion never occurred to them because they¡¯d always presumed it was some kind of twisted ancient language and operated based on some system left in place by Ancient cultivators. Instead, it wasn¡¯t a matter of some system left by cultivators but was a law of the universe created from the interaction of dark matter ... or rather spirit energy with structured spirit energy in set patterns.

    Coming to this conclusion not only helped them discover a means to create their own array patterns based on their science, but also gave them a glimpse into why and how a person or thing collected and cultivated spirit energy.

    The reason the state of mind was so important to first begin gathering spirit energy, was that it caused your brain to send signals in set patterns. It was essentially like creating the simplest and most primal of array patterns by forcing your neurons to restructure when entering meditation.

    In much the same way, certain materials could draw in spirit energy and, for lack of a better word, cultivate a certain way of interacting with spirit energy. Skay and James weren¡¯t sure if it was an atomic structure or molecular structure or even something they still couldn¡¯t quite detect, but they were now certain that was the secret of spirit energy.

    They still had no guesses as to why there were different forms of refined energy, but they were still new to all this and were well aware they had to take baby steps before they could run.

    While pouring over old array patterns, they began to see connections with their own scientific jargon. They still weren¡¯t certain about lore patterns. After some testing, they found that they could use any language to write their law patterns provided they knew what the lore meant when they wrote it.

    They then began to suspect that merely the intent when writing lore was enough. To test that theory, they drew an entire pattern, and instead of actually writing any lore in words or characters, they simply made a series of dots or dashes and thought about what that should represent in this array as they painted it.

    They quickly found that even though it worked, the array was a lot weaker than if they had used a language they knew the perfect meaning of instead of just an intention. Nonetheless, this was also a remarkable discovery because it meant that it wasn¡¯t just the interaction of spirit energy with the character but the interaction between the spirit energy and the intention.

    When they discussed this issue, James suddenly thought back to when he¡¯d been interacting with the storage ring and the spirit jade. That was all done entirely with his intent and his spirit aura. After a few more experiments they found that when releasing their spirit aura filled with their intent while they drew array lore, the array became more responsive. It could determine what it was supposed to be doing faster and reacted quickly when it needed to change stages from say charging to expelling or attraction to gathering.

    This opened up a whole new world of research and answered a great many questions. This whole time they¡¯d believed spirit energy was a cause and effect system similar to standard science. They now realised it was more complicated than that.

    Spirit Aura was the key they¡¯d had all along but never bothered to look into. It was something James had longed for as a barrier realm but never had the time or inclination to investigate once he actually had it. With that thought in mind, he and Skay began a barrage of experiments to investigate the phenomena.

    The first thing they agreed on was that spirit aura was a form of intention that affected the nature of spirit energy and not only could it be left behind inside lore patterns but also influenced your own spirit energy control.

    They also theorised that it wasn¡¯t only limited to controlling your own spirit energy but free spirit energy in your surroundings. It was also the reason why refined spirit energy was so special. It¡¯s because refined spirit energy was infused with your spirit aura. Or so they guessed.

    How spirit aura was connected to your true spirit, they weren¡¯t yet certain, but the fact that you needed a true spirit to control it made it obvious this step was necessary. After some more testing, they found that people who had condensed a true spirit but hadn¡¯t yet broken through the barrier could still manifest an aura.

    After even more testing, it was discovered that using spirit aura was mentally tiring and the mad duo both agreed that your spirit aura was a reflection of your personal willpower and mental acuity. The more willpower, conviction and sharpness of the mind you had, the more control over your spirit aura you could exhibit.

    It was proved that when a person released their spirit aura wilfully into their surroundings without a purpose, it essentially froze any free spirit energy in the area. Initially, this wasn¡¯t a strong enough influence to completely freeze the spirit particles but instead only slowed them down. If a strong enough Pressure were to influence particles within the range of someone¡¯s aura, then those particles would still move.

    This was tested by setting up some test rooms with arrays built into the walls that worked in the reverse of a gathering array. The rooms would then be filled to a set level of spirit energy concentration based on average saturation levels, and then they would have people enter the room and release their spirit aura.

    Without any purpose, simply releasing your aura stopped the motion of spirit particles. A True Spirit realm cultivator could reduce particle movement enough to restrain a commoner and slow a barrier realm. A palace realm was a step above, able to freeze a barrier realm and slightly restraining a true spirit.

    This of course was entirely dependent on the other parties own spirit aura power and control. They already guessed that the level of control a person had was dependent on willpower and after more testing, in what they began calling the clean rooms, they believed that a person¡¯s aura strength was not only dependent on willpower, but something entirely different from anything they¡¯d ever witnessed. James was of the opinion it was most likely similar to muscle strength or reflexes and required continuous training to improve.

    Perhaps people really did have a soul, and the spirit aura was this thing called a soul that was undetectable.

    Saying that though, in this world even if they couldn¡¯t detect it, they could measure the effect it had on the world around it. They pulled out the floor of the clean room and set up a series of scales that measured the pressure created when particles bonded with free spirit energy were forced into the ground.

    This allowed them to accurately measure the strength of a person¡¯s aura and somewhat measure their control. At the True Spirit realm, it was markedly harder to control than you might think. Not in the sense that you couldn¡¯t will it to materialise and then will it Pressure everything downwards, but rather in the sense that you couldn¡¯t accurately direct it.

    You could control the direction your aura pressured spirit particles to move and even control the strength of it. The problem lay in controlling it to be directional or targeted instead of omnidirectional.

    James could intuitively tell how far from his body he could materialise his aura to affect free energy. The problem was that whenever he tried to direct his aura to a specific area, it would always fully release with his body at the centre. He knew that it should be possible to only have it work in a cube area a meter in front of him, but he just couldn¡¯t get it to cooperate that way.

    It acted like an amorphous drop of water with a high surface tension. When he tried to split, move or reshape it, the blob would only respond slowly and then very minutely. He was of the opinion this was going to be like breathing techniques, and he was going to have to train it constantly before he could properly coordinate it.

    Luckily for him, when he released it and focused enough, it would remain released around him but wouldn¡¯t effect spirit particles at all. Instead, it became somewhat of a third eye that had x-ray vision. It became a form of extra-sensory perception that painted an image of his surroundings based on free spirit energy in the area.

    When he started to use it like this, he quickly began to notice little things he hadn¡¯t picked up on in his testing. For starters, whenever someone was in the range of his aura he could tell even more easily how powerful their cultivation was instead of only knowing from a glance that they were in a certain realm.

    Not only that, but he began to ¡®see¡¯ or rather, ¡®feel¡¯, just how much unrefined spirit energy permeated everything. Every form of matter and energy was filled with spirit energy. Not just things like the earth or the air but even the photons of sunlight had spirit energy attached to it.

    The only downside to this experience was that it gave him a mind-numbing headache. During the course of their research, they glanced back through everything they¡¯d managed to collect on cultivation and found numerous references discussing ¡®soul pressure¡¯, or ¡®divine will¡¯ and other things that sounded similar to this phenomenon.

    When they¡¯d seen things like this before, they¡¯d not paid much attention to it because they had no reference to understand it. Now that they had discovered some of the intricacies of their aura, they finally grasped what these things were talking about.

    According to some of the literature they¡¯d scrounged up over the past few months, Soul Pressure was the act of influencing the world around you with the power of your soul. Unfortunately, they couldn¡¯t find anything discussing the state of mind that they could reach which created the inner eye, extra perception things James could now experience.

    The few references they had found only referred to more nonsense about souls. James was of the opinion that this was all hogwash and that they simply didn¡¯t have the means to understand what exactly this was yet. Skay remained unusually silent on his thoughts regarding discussions of such a nonsensical thing as the soul.

    Regardless of the thoughts they each had on the matter, the both loved the idea of the soul pressure and soul sense.

    Skay, mostly because it gave him a more in-depth view of the spirit energy world and James because he could now see behind locked doors ... also because he believed that this was the missing link in their artefact workmanship. He believed the ¡®forging with the soul¡¯ that the Gau Founder¡¯s notes referenced was actually talking about using Soul Pressure to implant your will into the artefact you were forging in much the same way as writing array lore infused with will, this should supposedly help the artefact influence spirit energy.

    Another week passed as they did this testing. It had now been a month since the auction. It was also time for the Gau clan to send their first batch of disciples for training with the Brotherhood.

    -Endless Forest - Boot Camp-

    The boot camp was a horrid place. At least, that¡¯s what anyone that had ever had to suffer through it would tell you. Boot Camp was James¡¯ special way of welcoming new members to the guild and was also used by the two generals of Star City and Tech City for training their security Pressures.

    It was a little camp positioned far out in the middle of the forest. James had discussed this with the Dryad and she readily showed him to a sparse area of forest that was riddled with true spirit level spirit animals. They were far less intelligent than spirit beasts but had the same level of spirit energy. They just hadn¡¯t managed to condense a beast core yet.

    The camp was designed by James to drill Barrier and True Spirit cultivators into disciplined fighting machines. They didn¡¯t bother with Palace Realm cultivators because normally they were limited by their cultivation methods being so crap. In other words, they were usually crotchety old bastards.

    That wasn¡¯t to say that Palace Realm cultivators weren¡¯t free to join the boot camp, it just meant that it wasn¡¯t exactly designed for them. If it were designed for them, then they would probably die from stubbornness during their training.

    The boot camp had been running since Star City was constructed and had 4 drill instructors that were the first survivors of the camp. Normally James and Goliath didn¡¯t attend the boot camp to instruct, but they made an exception today because of the ten Gau Clan disciples that they promised the clan they would give 24 hours of training to.

    Normally a person had to go through a week, and if James hadn¡¯t been so pressed for time before now, they would be taking at least a month. Regardless of that, he decided that if he was going to train these disciples for a day, then it was going to be done here.

    The beauty of the boot camp was a special little wristband made of strange minerals and covered with arrays. This was what James called the Mortal Coil. Usually, once a person had spirit energy they needed less sleep and rarely needed to eat. Because of that, it made it difficult to create stressful survival situations.

    That was until he found some interesting arrays in the collection sent to him from Rex. One of them created the sensation of starvation. At first it isn¡¯t that bad, until a few hours in and it¡¯s started to kick in. The longer you were affected, the more hungry you would get.

    By the same token, he had another array that made a person feel tired and exhausted. These were the arrays that were on the Mortal Coil. These two arrays would feed the two greatest needs a human being had to ensure their survival. To eat and sleep. It also created a situation in which these people had to focus their minds against the ever present nagging of need and had to control their urges.

    Joining the students from the Sword Hall was Grace. James had a special Mortal Coil made up for her that amplified the effects tenfold. Not only that, but he also gave her a little black box about the size of a fist with a devil carved onto the side and told her to keep it safe after giving her a little leather pocket pouch.

    This black box was just as sinister as it looked. This was something he and Skay cooked up in the lab after the big discoveries made from the transmutation array. The moment Grace attached the pouch with the little box she realised what it does.

    For an area of 2 metres around her, primal spirit pressure suddenly disappeared. More accurately it was pushed away. This little box acted as a barrier that prevented her from drawing in primal energy to replenish her refined energy.

    James¡¯ customary smile of the devil appeared, and he started filling everyone in on today¡¯s training. ¡°First of all, no one is to remove your Mortal Coil. This artefact is designed to stimulate your survival instincts and distract the mind. It will force you to push your limits of self-control. I will know if anyone removes it and that will be the last time you train on my time.

    ¡°You will receive instruction in combat from method and practice to thought and action. Because we only have 24 hours, your instruction time will be shorter than most, but I expect each of you to complete the same amount of progress I would see from trainees that normally spend a week here.¡±

    James and Goliath then took turns teaching combat tactics for both single fights and warfare. They then had their youngest drill instructor, who was still in the barrier realm, come and beat up all the true spirit realm disciples from the Gau Clan.

    James personally took some pleasure in pressuring Grace to admit defeat. She knew very well that with the limiter on her hip, she wouldn¡¯t last the rest of the day if she allowed James to draw her into a drawn out battle. Which was exactly what he¡¯d planned to do.

    He made a point of showing that she chose to retreat instead of fight a war of attrition she knew she couldn¡¯t win. He didn¡¯t state it in a goading fashion, but rather in an attempt to reinforce smart battle tactics. Grace was well aware that was why he pointed it out, but it still rubbed her the wrong way.

    The day continued on until night, and then everyone got split into groups and dropped a hundred kilometres away in the forest. Each group had an observer from the boot camp flying about on an Air Board yelling loudly at them on what not to do when in enemy territory.

    The drill instructors always got a kick out of very loudly reminding them that silence is one of the most important parts of moving around in dangerous places.

    While this was going on, Skay was doing absolutely nothing to help the top craftsmen of the Gau Clan. Instead, he¡¯d chosen to sit them all down, pump about a quarter of everything they had on crafting, alchemy and arrays into their heads with an implant then said they could ask questions next time and kicked them all out.

    Although it wasn¡¯t the 24 hours of sharing information they¡¯d wanted, it was still a great deal of interesting and useful information. Especially the array patterns. Getting a direct implant on some of the Brotherhoods arrays was like finding an endless pot of gold. Memorising them was one of the hardest parts of array patterns.

    Little did they know that Skay was busily researching array mechanics magnitudes ahead of what they just got a glimpse of.

    Eventually, the next day came and Gau clan met back at their mansion to discuss their experiences which apparently varied. Everyone from the Sword Hall now firmly believed that James was the incarnation of evil. Grace had only confirmed her opinion of the boy after their jaunt in the forest, in which James liberally sprayed something labelled ¡®Allure¡¯ onto her which attracted a horde of beasts that chased her the entire way back to the camp.

 Chapter 37: Forging 101

    With the discovery of soul Pressure and soul sense, James now had a whole new element to consider in regards to his cultivation training. With that in mind, he once again secluded himself away in the HQ building and spent the next month focused on understanding it more, finding a way to train and focus it and discovering how it tied into spirit energy.

    After meticulous experiments and training, he concluded that he could only touch the tip of the iceberg in regards to spirit aura. He went back to the beginning and started trying to understand what he could of it.

    First of all, he knew that it must be how the mind accurately controls refined spirit energy inside and outside of the body. It didn¡¯t seem to have any problems controlling it inside the body, presumably because the soul, or whatever, had some attachment to the body that James couldn¡¯t fully understand.

    The problem came from controlling refined energy outside the body. After doing a few tests, James discovered that once refined energy left the body, it became slightly volatile and eventually seemed to break down and return to primal spirit energy after a while.

    The time it took to decompose was dependent on the amount of energy, and also it¡¯s purity. He hadn¡¯t really gotten much into the purity of spirit energy because he¡¯d not heard much about it. From what he understood though, spirit energy had three vectors.

    The first was quantity, which varied mostly based on which realm you were in. The mind, or perhaps the soul as James was now calling it, was limited in how much it could safely maintain control over in the spirit realm.

    The second was element or affinity. Again, this was determined by intent, which for a commoner or barrier realm unlocking an element is basically the same as Soul Pressure. Elements also had a number of other conditions like the number, the understanding and modifiers like abstract elements which often screwed up all the previous rules.

    The third was quality. He touched on the topic of spirit energy quality as a barrier realm cultivator. In that case, it was because of the breathing technique they¡¯d developed back then. At the time, purifying spirit energy mostly only increased the chances of them breaking their barrier.

    When they broke through to True Spirit, their average spirit energy quality was higher than everyone else¡¯s. James never considered this until he began utilising the soul sense and could feel the difference between his energy and other practitioners.

    After more testing, he determined that the increase in quality gave them a huge edge over competition. Not only did it increase the time that his energy could remain under his control once it left his body, but also increased it¡¯s effect on matter and energy when it came in contact with it. As well as his ability to control it.

    As an example, if he had 100 particles of standard refined fire spirit energy, it could warm up a potato. If he had 100 particles of purified spirit energy, it could roast the potato. If it were purified even more, then 100 fire particles would be enough to turn the potato into dust.

    Once he knew that, he set out to consciously purify his spirit energy to the highest possible quality he could. The only problem was that it was a slow and tedious process, and while he was focused on it, his rise in energy quantity stagnated.

    It was a trade-off between reaching higher levels faster and having a shit load more spirit energy or progressing much more slowly and having less spirit energy that was more powerful. After considering his options, he naturally chose long term investment. After all, he was probably going to live for thousands of years. Especially if he had any say in the matter.

    Once James realised that it was the unconscious use of Soul Pressure that controlled spirit energy, he began to try and consciously use it when he practised martial techniques. He found that when he was consciously trying to affect his refined spirit energy with Soul Pressure, it was remarkably easier to control.

    This proved to James that refined spirit energy was already filled with Soul Pressure. He just wished he could maintain that kind of control over his Soul Pressure when it was trying to influence his surroundings and not spirit energy that had already been refined by it.

    The second thing he touched on was his limitations with Soul Pressure and Soul Sense at its present level. His soul sense reached dozens of meters out from his body but the further from him it reached, the blurrier it seemed and the less he could understand from it.

    Right next to his body he could sense quality, quantity and element in an uncanny manner like some kind of psychic, which he guessed he probably was in a way.

    At the limit of his sense, which was about 50 or so metres from his body, he could only generalise the sense. He could tell if spirit energy was refined but not its nature, he could tell the general quantity of spirit energy in the area, but could only pinpoint a person¡¯s realm and not how much energy they actually had, and he couldn¡¯t tell the quality at all.

    Regardless, it still acted perfectly fine as a third eye at that distance, and he could clearly see things that far away in his mind as if he was only standing a meter away.

    Again, he felt like he should be able to focus his sense onto a single point but whenever he tried it only slightly increased his visibility at that location. It felt like his Sense and Pressure were rigid, stiff and weak. Like a muscle that sat trapped inside a cast for a year.

    The limitation on his soul Pressure when just trying to affect free energy was even greater. It only had a range of about 10 metres from his body. Luckily, although it had much shorter range, it¡¯s strength didn¡¯t reduce with distance and instead remained uniform across the entire area.

    After measuring it, they determined it was like applying gravity to everything in the area. Once they¡¯d worked it out, they figured he was applying about 5m/s<sup>2</sup> to his surroundings. Not only that, but he could apply it in in whatever direction he wanted. If he tried to focus it on one small area, then it became about 7m/s<sup>2</sup> in that area and reduced slowly moving out from that point but remained the same total overall.

    The more something fought against this Pressure, the more energy it consumed. After some more calculations, they worked out that his Pressure could apply about 30,000 newtons in total before a similar thing to spirit energy depletion kicked in. That meant that he could stop 6 tonnes moving at 1m/s, or alternatively, he could freeze a mortal in his tracks and slow down a barrier realm to a crawl.

    They determined that if they could focus that energy into a single point the size of a needle tip, then it would be the equivalent of about 1,500m/s<sup>2</sup>. That would be enough to instantly stop 30 tonnes. Not only that but it could stop a projectile fired from an Arc Cannon and then send it back at three times the speed.

    Two issues remained with soul Pressure. Even if he could focus it down to a speck with 1,500m/s<sup>2, </sup>it would instantly use the 30,000 newtons of Pressure available to him the moment it touched something more than 20kg. The second problem was that even just releasing soul Pressure freely in that manner required an immense amount of effort and James was flat out maintaining it for more than a few minutes.

    The third issue was that trying to focus it and control it increased the level of difficulty by a square function. In other words, if the level of effort used to just maintain his Pressure at full power was quantifiably 6, then controlling it into a single area at the same time was 36.

    He wasn¡¯t exactly sure how to train the power and control of his soul Pressure yet, but he was hoping that it would be like lifting weights.

    Finally, he ran some tests to determine if a person¡¯s spirit energy or cultivation realm affected the level of soul Pressure. After bringing in an endless stream of guinea pigs, he came to realise that almost no one in this backwards empire actually understood their spirit aura and outside of a few select groups it was mostly overlooked.

    He also came to realise that soul Pressure was an entirely separate form of cultivation which helped influence spirit cultivation and not the other way around.

    After believing he had a slightly better understanding of the mysteries of the spirit aura, or soul as he¡¯d begun calling it, James started devising new cultivation methods for both his spirit and soul cultivation. He couldn¡¯t do much about the meditation technique. That was now basically ingrained, and there was hardly anything he could or wanted to do to change that.

    His breathing technique only had the minor alteration of adding in the constant use of soul Pressure. Although he wasn¡¯t sure what to expect when he started trying to consciously increase the soul Pressure exerted on refined spirit energy inside his body, he quickly discovered it did wonders.

    The only problem was that it didn¡¯t work unless he was consciously doing it. He then suddenly discovered something he fully didn¡¯t expect when Gold James woke up from his endless meditation and decided to try and play with Soul Pressure too.

    They quickly discovered that Gold James had his own Soul Pressure which was identical in every way to James¡¯. James then also quickly discovered that he had absolutely no control over Gold James¡¯ use of his Soul Pressure. They could both operate their soul Pressure together and double their output, but it didn¡¯t combine into one and rather just stacked.

    Interestingly enough, although they had their own separate soul Pressure, they shared their soul sense.

    After the brief intermission created by this tomfoolery by Gold James, James got back to work on his cultivation methods. Having discovered Gold James had Soul Pressure as well, meant that Gold James, who was always meditating and focused on the breathing technique anyway, got to consciously apply Pressure to it while he meditated.

    The next thing was martial techniques. This was the easiest part because it was just a matter of consciously controlling the spirit energy he released with Pressure instead of just sort of thinking about what he wanted it to do and willing it.

    Seeing as Soul Pressure was essentially his willpower anyway, the only real difference between the two was the realisation that how much effort he put into willing the spirit energy into doing something greatly affected his control over it.

    At first, this was slightly difficult, but he very quickly began improving after he mentally made the decision to try it. He believed that training like this could also help to improve his control of his Soul Pressure outside of his body.

    Finally, he got to his Soul Pressure¡¯s strength. To train its strength, he found the densest and heaviest material he could and created a weight training room. He then made sure to take an hour or two and visited this room every day to try and lift some of the weights using only his soul Pressure.

    Very slowly, he managed to see some small amount of progress. Mostly in that he gained another 20 newtons of force to his total spirit Pressure after a month of training.

    In order to train soul control, he would actively maintain his soul sense for as long and as often as he possibly could. He also began trying to focus his Soul Sense on specific things within its scope of vision. This one progressed only slightly faster than the Soul Pressure.

    At first, his soul sense could be maintained for barely a few minutes before he started getting backlash effects and was forced to stop. While he was actively using it and trying to focus it on things a good distance away then the time he could maintain it halved.

    After a month of solid training, minutes became hours and not only that but the distance his sense covered increased by a full 20 meters.

    -The Arena-

    It had now been two months since the Auction, and The Mysterious Stranger once again appeared in the arena and challenged James. James felt that even though the stranger had been giving them a run for their money up until now, that he could take her on.

    Mostly because of the training he¡¯d been doing with Soul Pressure. But also because for a few months, the only people he couldn¡¯t best in sparring was Skay and Exsue.

    James and the Challenger met in the arena at high noon. The three suns sat high above them like grand curators of the world and spread their light across everything. The sky was clear and blue, and the crowds marched in and gathered in the arena.

    With the new renovations to the arena, it was likely that even if Tower Realms went all out in the True Spirit Arena, then the protective arrays for the audience would remain intact. James was pretty sure he could probably set off a gravity bomb in here, and the audience could all just sit there and watch.

    Standing up on James¡¯ usual perch was the 4 Sins that took an ass whooping the last time the challenger showed up. Exsue was the only one that probably could have still come out victorious, but that would have come at a significant price. She was well aware that obliterating half the population of the city that had been sitting in the crowd that day would most assuredly have put her on James¡¯ bad side.

    Standing at one end of the arena was the Challenger in her customary black robes with her face shielded by a hood and a sword at her hip. Standing opposite to her was James, in his light blue robes with the Guild Seal on his chest and a long silver sword at his hip.

    He also wore a ring on his hand. The ring was his aura splitting artefact, or rather now more appropriately named a Soul Pressure diverter. After some testing, James understood that this array pattern created a null area around him that freed spirit energy from the effects of other people¡¯s Soul Pressure.

    When testing, he discovered that deploying his own soul Pressure with the intention of eliminating someone else¡¯s would create an area where the two overlapped and James¡¯ Soul Pressure would counteract the opponents for whatever amount of Pressure it could apply per square meter.

    If the person had 200 newtons more Pressure than James did, then it meant that the spirit particles in the area their soul Pressure¡¯s overlapped would have 200 newtons of Pressure applied to them by the other person.

    This ring seemed to create a very small concentrated field for about a meter around James¡¯ body that did that to the exact amount necessary to eliminate any Pressure influence not his own. Unfortunately, in James¡¯ opinion, it didn¡¯t manage to mask him from the view of Soul Sense and instead made it even easier to see him.

    As the two competitors stared at each other, James couldn¡¯t shake the feeling that he¡¯d seen those eyes somewhere before. Those clear blue eyes. He was certain he¡¯d seen them.

    Suddenly, James got a strange sensation. His Soul Sense reacted, and he realised he could feel the challenger trying to scan him with their Soul Sense. From what he could tell, they didn¡¯t seem to be able to tell that he¡¯d been busily scanning them since they¡¯d walked into the arena.

    He thought back to the experiments he¡¯d been doing over the past week and realised he¡¯d missed something crucial. He never realised it because he¡¯d been too busy considering how to implement Soul Pressure into his training and combat.

    Soul Pressure, when it was creating zero pressure on the surroundings, acted like some kind of ESP third eye. What he didn¡¯t fully realise was that he¡¯d never once been able to scan Skay. That old freak probably had Soul Pressure as powerful as Ruff¡¯s. He didn¡¯t realise he couldn¡¯t scan Skay, not because he hadn¡¯t tried but because every time he did, it just looked like he was scanning a mortal.

    James had assumed this was because Skay didn¡¯t really use spirit energy at all and the only reason he could confirm Skay was a True Spirit practitioner was that strange feeling like he ¡®just knew¡¯ when he looked at him.

    He then suddenly understood something. ¡®If soul Pressure is meant to be a reflection of your will, then I can influence other people¡¯s soul sense with my own¡¯. That said, he began to try and focus his soul sense to shield himself from being scanned.

    At first, he still felt like the challenger was able to scan him, albeit they couldn¡¯t see much because the two were separated by a good 50 metres between them, but he felt it nonetheless. Gold James then decided to chip in, and suddenly the pervasive sense of being looked at under a microscope was replaced with the feeling that someone was trying to scan him but only saw a blur.

    Moments later he saw the challenger¡¯s eyes suddenly widen in shock. James only smiled like a demon and gave a nod to the bell boy. The ¡®ding¡¯ of the arena bell sounded out, and the crowd roared and cheered.

    James and the challenger then made the exact same motion. They dropped into a combat stance with their hand on their sheathed sword. Seeing her every move suddenly being copied, the challenger once more got another shock.

    James started pumping lightning energy into his mind to increase his perception time and reflexes. He figured that he would try and play with this person for a bit. He suddenly realised something else strange with his Soul Pressure.

    When he was consciously pouring it into his mind along with lightning energy, he felt a drastic increase in his perception time and his processing speed. The world around him slowed even further, and he watched on as actions of the crowd, like clapping, which should only take a fraction of a second, dragged out into nearly 5 seconds.

    The world became slow motion around him. James now understood how Palace Realm Practitioners could be so fast and process the ridiculous speeds they could move at and perceive. It was Soul Pressure.

    James then returned his focus onto the challenger, just in time to see her making the first movements of launching one of her wind blade attacks by drawing her sword.

    James¡¯ devilish smile grew more sinister and with the assistance of his lightning energy, he managed to launch a simultaneous wind blade. The two blades clashed in the middle of the arena and surprisingly James¡¯ won out and continued on after slicing through the challenger¡¯s.

    Seeing that moment of shock and surprise in her eyes made James¡¯ day. He then quickly saw those eyes ignite with what James could only describe as ire.

    She shot to the left while launching consecutive wind blades only to be perfectly mirrored by James. She then tried closing the distance in an attempt to reduce his reaction speeds. Instead, she only managed to increase his reaction speed because she was far enough into his Soul Sense field that he could mirror her every action with his eyes closed.

    It did manage to score her a short moment though when she was close enough that James¡¯ Soul Sense could scan her properly and he finally saw her face ... and everything else obviously, but it was her face that gave him a shock.

    After recovering from his shock, he grew slightly more interested in playing mirror. He wanted to enrage this person to their limits. He also wanted them to know that he knew and began to ask questions.

    ¡°How did you get here cellulite girl?¡±

    Hearing this provocative question, the challenger froze for a moment, and the flames of rage in her eyes only grew more intense. James sensed her body filling to the brim with wind and lightning energy as she tried to speed up faster and catch him out in their game of mirror.

    She dodged left and right while launching lightning bolts and wind blades everywhere, only to have them all meet an exact and slightly stronger duplicate sent from James.

    She then tried to change tact and chose instead to simply go into close quarters and cut him to pieces. She rapidly launched forwards, and James finally had no choice but to retaliate. He didn¡¯t care that he¡¯d lost the game of mirror. He was busy trying to figure out how this person was here at all.

    Seeing James finally raising his guard and taking the fight more seriously, the Challenger raised her sword, and in the same motions she first used with Goliath, she made a sudden huge increase in lightning energy and her body vanished and reappeared to James¡¯ right like a ghost.

    To everyone¡¯s shock and surprise, James simply stopped dead on the spot and then swung his sword directly forwards. A loud clang rang out in the arena, and the figure of the challenger phased into existence in front of James while holding their sword defensively and trying to push back James¡¯ sword. She then released another strange spirit energy, and her sword started forcing James¡¯ back.

    James leant forwards slightly while all 6 of his spirit energies suddenly flooded his body and created more pressure on his sword causing it to slowly sink towards the challenger¡¯s head. He stared directly into her eyes and spoke again. ¡°How did you get here Kelly?¡±

    Realising the jig was up. Kelly, the challenger, diverted her sword to the side and then jumped backwards from James. She then launched a wind blade off, and the crisp ¡®ding¡¯ of the arena bell sounded out.

    The crowds were decidedly upset with this battle. It was very much not to their expectations. In order to quell the crowds, James ordered Goliath and Jessy to put on a show for them and then beckoned Kelly to follow him.

    -Guild HQ-

    Sitting at the round table in the HQ office was a girl with long wavy black hair and smooth defined features. Her skin was ghastly pale as if she¡¯d lived her whole life in a dark room. She had thin red lips and defined cheekbones making her all the more ghost like.

    She was garbed in her black travelling leathers which she wore under her robe, and her long straight hair fell around her face and neck down past her shoulders, parted only slightly in front of her face in a very antisocial emo manner. On her hip was her sword and scabbard and in a makeshift holster on her thigh was what looked like a poor attempt at a pistol. Her arm had the tattoo of a triangle equally cut apart into 3 sections. Each one housing a different symbol in it.

    She was a thin looking girl with a chest as flat as a board and a firm perky bum.

    As she sipped her tea, the core members of the Brotherhood sat surrounding the table while looking at James. The first to speak was Exsue who seemed rather upset that James seemed to actually know this woman. She was now regretting that she hadn¡¯t vaporised the woman and the people watching in the stadiums be damned.

    It was bad enough he came to this place with Jessy ¡®the hussy¡¯. She stared fixedly at the girl then at James and then back and forth a few more times before pointedly asking. ¡°Who¡¯s this bitch?!¡±

    James smiled as he imagined the fallout of these two women meeting each other. Exsue was systematically insane and seemed to be excitably jealous of anyone who had a relationship with James. Especially if they¡¯d had any history in the ¡®sack¡¯.

    The girl named Kelly was the definition of lazy. She did the absolute minimum required to achieve her goals. Which was a huge waste, because James was convinced she could pick up just about anything she put her mind to.

    He was rather surprised she¡¯d actually achieved as much as she did in this world. Perhaps the only reason he could think of was her desire to not be hassled ... ever. Which was why James suspected if Exsue started getting in her face, Kelly was probably going to try and strangle her to death.

    It¡¯ll be like a lazy cat meeting an excitable dog ... and the cat got petted by the owner, but the dog didn¡¯t. What could go wrong, right?

    Seeing Exsue already making assumptions and getting bushy tailed, James finally chose to disclose his relationship with the stranger. ¡°Everyone meet Kelly, she¡¯s ... uhh, let¡¯s call her a past acquaintance. She and I both started our electrical apprenticeships together in Australia on Earth. I haven¡¯t seen her since I left that dump though. She¡¯s probably the laziest person and...¡±

    After glancing at Skay momentarily, he continued on. ¡° ... the second most brilliant mind I¡¯ve ever met. She actually had such a strong handle on electromagnetism I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if that¡¯s her main element after sloth.¡±

    Hearing the proclamation that this sickly looking woman had the sloth element, everyone except Skay was suddenly surprised. James and Skay could, of course, both sense it with their Soul Sense. Because they¡¯d still been exploring it, they hadn¡¯t mentioned it to the others yet.

    This led to a lengthy explanation on what they understood about it and how it worked. Apparently, either Exsue was putting on an act of astonishment and knew about it all along, or she truly didn¡¯t know. James was inclined to believe she had been keeping a lot of things from him but chose to ignore that for now. He was certain that he could trust her enough that she wouldn¡¯t keep it from him without a good reason.

    With this short introduction, James felt the sudden surge of Jessy and Fatty¡¯s soul sense expanding out to cover the room and beyond. Goliath and Harvy both agreed they couldn¡¯t do it, and although Exsue said she couldn¡¯t do it, James had a sneaking suspicion that she was just too powerful for him to detect.

    Skay finally got fed up and slapped a hand onto the table. ¡°Who cares if they can see her elements boy? We know, and that¡¯s enough. More importantly than that, I predicted that it was possible but never did I imagine we¡¯d track someone down so quickly.¡±

    Skay¡¯s eye then became fanatical as he flipped open his black-pad and looked straight at her. ¡°You must be from one of the other labs right?¡±

    Jessy finally couldn¡¯t wait patiently anymore either and shot to her feet. ¡°Who cares about that shit! If you¡¯re from earth, how did you even get here?!¡±

    Skay just brushed his hand through the air as if it was a matter of course. ¡°Do you not comprehend quantum entanglement? Whatever one particle does is matched by an equal reaction in its pair.¡±

    Hearing this nonchalant reply, Jessy slammed a hand onto the table. ¡°What does that even mean you old fuck?¡±

    The new girl Kelly finally chimed in and added to the discussion. ¡°It means, that the gateway was opened from a reaction between the anomaly and the entangled electrons. In other words, gateway opens in the sea lab, gateway opens in the other 412 places on earth connected by electron pairs. For a simple 2 bit whore, it would probably be easier if I just told you what you¡¯re really asking. Yes, there are other portals to earth, but they¡¯ve all closed. Probably the only one that can go back is the one you came through.¡±

    Skay visibly jerked hearing someone else voicing his own thoughts. He gave Kelly a strange look and then continued on questioning her. ¡°Girl, what lab are you from?¡±

    Kelly didn¡¯t even register the old man and instead looked at James. ¡°Beach Boy. Looks like you somehow managed to drag your ass through to this side. God really does have a cruel sense of humour to make me suffer two lifetimes with you in the both of them.¡±

    James smiled like the devil as he leant back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. ¡°Good to see you too Kelly. I see that even spirit energy can¡¯t fix that fat ass of yours. By the way, if you¡¯re planning to go back, then you¡¯re going to want to pack a radiation suit, you know ... with the nuclear holocaust and all.¡±

    Kelly seemed to take a wide-eyed moment to register the mention of a holocaust then just as quickly it looked like she¡¯d already processed and moved on. ¡°I see, well that will no doubt disappoint some people. So, would you care to fill me in on everything you¡¯ve created here?¡±

    James jumped up from his chair with a bright smile. ¡°Sure, why don¡¯t we take a walk around the city first. I¡¯ll show you what we¡¯ve done with the place.¡±

    Allowing Kelly to broach no argument, he simply stood up and walked out of the office. No one else was sure what they should be doing about the new girl and decided to leave it up to James. The only exception being Exsue who ran out and clung to James¡¯ side while biting his arm and demanding a detailed history of his relationship with the new girl.

    James did as he always did and completely ignored her. After a short trip along the monorail system, which by the way Kelly showed no enthusiasm for, or even slightly acknowledged, they arrived at Monolith plaza. James hadn¡¯t even bothered to point at anything and explain how it got there or how they built it. Instead, he spent the short trip over here making jokes at Kelly¡¯s expense.

    Kelly watched on in a very bored and uninterested manner as James strolled up and placed a hand on the monolith. Moments later Heavenly Law descended onto Kelly and then just as quickly disappeared. It wasn¡¯t uncommon to see Heavenly Law popping up in the city, so hardly anyone paid much attention to it.

    James then turned back from the monolith with a solemn frown and marched back up to Kelly. ¡°So who sent you?¡±Stolen story; please report.

    Kelly was still in a moment of shock after realising she¡¯d somehow managed to escape the binding oath she¡¯d been under. She then let out a long breath and looked back at James with an equally solemn look. Seeing the way these two were acting, Exsue for once didn¡¯t leap in to try and steal James¡¯ attention. Besides, she was rather curious just what was going on as well.

    ¡°A Dark Guild that picked me up in Lanthoe. They¡¯re a little bit more under the radar than you though, no flashy city takeovers and certainly not selling weapons at auction to try and encourage wars.¡±

    James cupped his chin and started walking back in the direction of headquarters. Seeing him just pacing off in thought, Kelly chased after him to catch up. As he paced, James started asking more questions. ¡°How tightly binding was your oath and how much information have you had to give them?¡±

    Kelly gave him a look like he was an idiot then huffed. ¡°I haven¡¯t given them shit. Unfortunately for them, I unlocked a rare spirit energy, and I had no idea how I did it, so the oath we made wasn¡¯t for me to help develop their guild but instead to loyally serve them. It wasn¡¯t too bad at first, I had to sleep with some pigs and do some menial labour, but I was also heavily encouraged to practice cultivation. I quickly began to develop my own means of cultivating.¡±

    James mind was running at 120% trying to piece everything together. ¡°What meditation techniques did you learn?¡±

    Kelly just chuckled and gave him a sideways glance. ¡°I used them all. They had about two for every element, and I memorised them all. It didn¡¯t take long to discover how to unlock more elements until I bottomed out at the 4 I¡¯ve got. Sloth, Lightning, Magnetism, Wind.¡±

    James then scratched his head in thought. ¡°How did you learn about the uses of your Pressure?¡±

    ¡°Soul Pressure? Oh, you mean the Spirit? They just call it Spirit in the ancient scrolls I read. This Dark Guild has some really old shit stashed away in their headquarters that none of them have touched since god knows how long ago. I found this scroll that talked about how warriors see through an ¡®inner eye¡¯ using the power of their True Spirit. That was called Scrying with the True Spirit. The other thing with the Pressure was like ¡®Pressure your will onto the laws of the heavens¡¯ or some shit. They called that Spirit Influence.¡±

    Scrying and Spirit Influence. These were the ancient terms for Soul Sense and Soul Pressure. James rather liked the Scrying term and decided to refer to it as Scrying. He wasn¡¯t a fan of Spirit Influence and chose instead to just call it Spirit Pressure. He then decided to refer to the area these strange mental phenomena covered as his Scying field and Spirit field.

    After that brief mental distraction, he returned to the present in time to where Kelly was talking about how most the palace realms and tower realms she¡¯d met could use Spirit Pressure but seemed to have no knowledge regarding Scrying.

    James then continued on in his questioning. ¡°So, why are you in my city and why haven¡¯t you been building things for them like we have?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m here because they needed someone who could test your combat capabilities. They know the Sins have multiple elements and are damn near undefeatable in the True Spirit Realm. So they needed someone that could accurately push them and hopefully defeat them so they could devise ways to capture you. I was the only Spirit Realm cultivator in the guild they believed had that potential.

    ¡°And the reason why I haven¡¯t been building bombs and weapons is that as far as their concerned, I can¡¯t. I twisted the truth and said I was a homeless bum on my world. The few things I have managed to throw together by myself aren¡¯t anything near as impressive as yours. The most powerful thing I could concoct was gun powder, which is where this came from.¡±

    Saying as much, she un-holstered the makeshift pistol on her thigh.

    James gave her a strange look. ¡°How the fuck do you know how to make gunpowder?¡±

    ¡°Read it in a book when I was twelve.¡±

    ¡°Even here, you¡¯re still a freak amongst freaks.¡±

    They then continued to discuss everything each other had been up to since they¡¯d arrived. Once they weren¡¯t talking about anything important anymore, Exsue reminded them that she was there by starting a fight with Kelly when she tried to discover just what these two had shared together in the past. James chose to ignore it entirely and simply left them arguing in the middle of the city.

    That night an undercover cell from this Dark Guild, apparently calling themselves the Shadow Men, was suddenly dragged into security custody where James had a great deal of fun re-inventing water torture.

    I say re-inventing because apparently breathing was also less important when you had spirit energy. Thanks to that, waterboarding could no longer kill someone, but they still couldn¡¯t eliminate the age old primal instinct of panic and fear when water started filling their lungs.

    It became somewhat of a sick past time for the next week or so as James wandered down to the dungeons and started teaching his security personnel all about it and trying to perfect just the right amounts of water to keep someone in a constant state of feeling like they¡¯re about to drown but not quite.

    If he just submerged them in water then after the brief initial panic they started breathing water. No, instead he needed to maintain that middle point where they¡¯re lungs were slowly filling with water only for him to use his water affinity to force it all back out and the process to continue on endlessly.

    By the end of the week, it wasn¡¯t a matter of whether or not the infiltrators had broken and revealed everything they knew, it was a matter of whether or not James, or some of the city guards, were bored.

    To say it was a cruel, violent and brutal past time wouldn¡¯t be a lie. But by the same token, no one was going to die ... probably.

    This then became a very dark and cruel practice in Tech City, and the general underground element of the city all agreed it was best to avoid pissing off the security and stick to the usual bribing and extortion. Everyone was also fully aware that the Dark Brotherhood had eyes everywhere in the city and as long as you weren¡¯t trying to subvert the guild, you could just about get away with anything as long as the security forces didn¡¯t catch you in the act.

    It wasn¡¯t unusual for murder, robbery and extortion to take place in the city on a daily basis. Now that the city had been standing for a few months, most people had become accustomed to that status quo, and the underground element knew not to take it too far.

    James didn¡¯t particularly care about the commoner¡¯s point of view in regards to allowing all this crime to happen. From his perspective, it simply reinforced the natural law of this world in which the strong reign supreme. He did his due diligence by allowing everyone to start cultivating for 10 copper coins, which was pretty much a steal.

    Not only that, but he¡¯d begun selling the star point breathing technique to the masses. It was no longer a matter of never having a chance to cultivate spirit power in tech city, but a matter of how much effort you put into it.

    He also didn¡¯t particularly like the idea of some people being more talented at it or having a better affinity. None of that crap mattered in his opinion. If you couldn¡¯t advance, it wasn¡¯t a matter of aptitude but a matter of effort.

    -Guild HQ-

    James sat at his round table, customarily drinking tea and waiting. It wasn¡¯t long until the dignified personage of Artimus entered the room and sat down. Unlike the last time he came to visit, he didn¡¯t have his dragon guards escorting him, and he didn¡¯t appear to be acting as aloof.

    Instead, he appeared to be slightly irked with James about something. James didn¡¯t have to guess for long.

    Artimus marched up to the table and slapped a hand down infused with his spirit energy. For the first time, James got a bit of a shock when he observed the Emperor with his Scrying. He wasn¡¯t sure what it was, but Artimus clearly didn¡¯t have one of the four standard elements. Instead, his spirit energy felt the same as the natural energy that piggybacked off metals.

    Artimus also got a bit of a shock when his spirit infused palm didn¡¯t even budge the table let alone turn it to dust like he¡¯d been expecting it to. He forged on with an angered expression regardless and tried to hide the brief pause in his words when he had gotten that surprise.

    ¡°James you little... ¡®thwack¡¯ ... punk! I¡¯m the god damn Emperor. You can¡¯t just push me to the side and then summon me at your whim! And what the hell are you thinking?! War of the Worlds? Are you trying to start a war across the entire continent?!¡±

    James smiled and placed his tea down as one of his hands lovingly ran over his indestructible round table.

    ¡°Well, it was actually an idea I got from our last little chat. You wanted to start a war and were willing to pay a hefty price. Which no doubt is the reason you¡¯re now here. I took that thought and went to the next step. Consider for a moment what¡¯s going to happen after the War of the Worlds tournament.

    ¡°Someone out there is going to suddenly have the backing of my guild for a short period of time. Everyone knows by now that we have the power to kill Tower Realm cultivators using artefacts instead of cultivation. From what I understand, most countries in this continent only have palace realm cultivators. If I had to guess ... everyone who manages to ascend higher than that generally escape the continent to Gastalous.

    ¡°This means, that by now my guild is one of the strongest powers in the entire continent. I¡¯m sure I¡¯ll be targeted by a few people eventually, but that probably won¡¯t be until after everyone finally realises how powerful my guilds become, and by then...¡±

    James¡¯ smile became darker, and the light in the room seemed to fade slightly as he finished his sentence and laughed madly. ¡° ... it¡¯s going to be too late to stop me. hehehahaHAHA!¡±

    Seeing the madness in James¡¯ eyes, Artimus stepped back from the table slightly as if he¡¯d just dirtied himself by being too close to James. His face went through a series of expressions until it settled on a solemn frown.

    ¡°What exactly do you plan to get out of all this?¡±

    James gave a cough of embarrassment at his sudden outburst then continued on after some tea. ¡°Ahem! Well, the same thing I¡¯ve always wanted Arty. I want information. You see, when everyone finally realises that my guild can supply them with the means to start taking ground in battle, then they¡¯re going to pay out the ass end to get it.

    ¡°Empires and nations across the continent are going to fall all over themselves in an effort to get my support. In exchange, all I will ask for is all the information they have regarding everything. I want information. Arrays, Alchemy, Forging, Cultivation, Martial Techniques, Material Properties. I want all of it, and in order to either defend themselves or attack others, everyone will be willing to give it to me.

    ¡°I guess I also I want something to entertain me while I¡¯m trapped here. I could probably already leave for the Gastalous continent but I won¡¯t. From the brief reports I¡¯ve received from Jasmine, the Gastalous continent has a spirit energy saturation at least a hundred times better than the average saturation of Atsunari.

    ¡°That means people there have been able to cultivate a hundred times faster than here. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if the average cultivation of the entire continent is tower realm or above. So I¡¯m in no rush to go there just yet.¡±

    Emperor Artimus let out a long sigh and then sat down at the round table. ¡°Boy, I don¡¯t think you realise just what you¡¯re getting yourself into here. It¡¯s true that many cultivators that have reached the Core Realm go to other continents, but just as many have stayed here. They hide away inside their clan or sect until they¡¯re needed in times of emergency. These people are usually referred to as Dao Protectors.

    ¡°If you break the balance of the continent and start creating wars, the Core Protectors will rise forth and stop you. They are generations older even than I am and have watched over the balance of the continent for thousands of years. The Core realm isn¡¯t anything like the realms you¡¯ve experienced so far.

    ¡°The step from the peak of the Tower realm to the base of the Core Realm is as big as every realm of cultivation done before it combined. Core Realm cultivators truly can split oceans and crumble mountains and your little toys will be useless against them.¡±

    James sat in silence for a moment as he considered this notion. He then suddenly clicked his fingers and smiled. ¡°That¡¯s what feels so different about your spirit energy. You¡¯re half a step into the Core Realm, aren¡¯t you? In this supposed massive step between the Tower Realm and the Core Realm.¡±

    To say Artimus was surprised would be an understatement. To be so easily seen through he couldn¡¯t help but feel that something was amiss. His eyes then suddenly bulged out from his head, and he stared at James in shock. ¡°Scryer!¡±

    James cocked his head to the side in a questioning manner and couldn¡¯t help but feel he¡¯d suddenly given something away he shouldn¡¯t have. ¡°Yes, I can ... scry.¡±

    Artimus stood up from his seat and started pacing about while muttering. James felt that Artimus was taking this a little too seriously. After all, can¡¯t everyone learn to Scry? Thinking this, he said as much.

    ¡°Why are you so shocked? Can¡¯t everybody Scry? It¡¯s just a matter of releasing your Spirit Field and reducing your Pressure to zero.¡±

    Artimus, who was in the midst of raving to himself spun and stared at James. He then frowned and slapped a hand on the table, this time with enough Pressure for it to actually shake a little. ¡°Don¡¯t be a fool child! Scrying and Spirit Pressure are two entirely separate things. Scryers are as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t see how. It seemed pretty easy for most of my core members. It was strange that a few of them couldn¡¯t do it, but I thought that was simply a lack of comprehension.¡±

    ¡°Comprehension my ass! You don¡¯t seem to realise just how rare a gift you¡¯ve got! In my entire lifetime, I¡¯ve only met 1 other scryer, and that old bastard was on his death bed!¡±

    Finally, Artimus had enough. He eyed James suspiciously, gave a harrumph and then finished what he came here to discuss. ¡°I accept your proposal. You will outfit my nation and start a war between the three great nations. In exchange, you will have the right to peruse the knowledge of my clan housed in the Dragon Vault. However, only you may enter the vault and no one else. You can only take out what you manage to learn yourself while in there and nothing else.¡±

    James thought about it for a brief moment then gave a nod of the head. ¡°Fine, I accept your terms, but I want to visit the vault before the war starts.¡±

    Finished their discussion Artimus turned and walked out. Just as he was leaving, he glanced back and left some words of advice for James. ¡°Boy, I would be careful about Scrying people so freely in the future. I can sense it now that I know what this feeling is and it makes me uncomfortable. Many people will be less forgiving than I am. Especially people more powerful.¡±

    James just smiled politely and dropped his Scrying Field. Because he could only use it for a few hours at a time anyway, James wasn¡¯t too worried about leaving it off. Regardless of the Emperors warning, he planned to continue using it as much as possible. In his opinion that would be the only way he could train it properly.

    -Hall of Forging-

    When James had rebuilt Tech City from the ground up, all the major faction at the time were relocated to their own little private skyscraper in the central district. The Gau Clan was favoured rather well in this little move because James had even gone a step further and completely rebuilt their Hall of Forging and Sword Hall underground.

    The Sword Hall was basically just an arena and a handful of dojos and meditation chambers. The Hall of Forging, on the other hand, was 8 underground layers of workshops and forges all outfitted with proper ventilation and array heated furnaces. It had anvils with arrays carved into them for reinforcement and basic tools forged from sturdy spirit materials.

    The entire set up was modernised somewhat but still kept that dwarfish underground forge feeling.

    James had finally come down here to study forging with Song. For a rare change Skay willingly joined him this time. James had expected a shit fight like he always got when he dragged Skay away from his research but apparently, the understanding of forging with Spirit Pressure was just as interesting to him as it was to James.

    At first, Song was more than happy to tutor them. That was until he began to question his own sufficiency and skill level after only a week had passed and the Duo had already managed to excel at everything he threw at them. By the second week, he was depressed by the speed of their growth and by the third he was suicidal.

    Over the course of the week, James and Skay had learned a great deal about the intricacies of forging. First and foremost they discovered the intricacies of Willpower.

    When forging, there are three major steps. The first is the conditioning.

    Before they can even shape or cut the material they need to condition it by applying spirit energy to it. Most forge masters have either fire or earth element because those are the elements that best suit conditioning metals and solid substances but it¡¯s not impossible to be of another element.

    The whole idea of conditioning a material is to remove impurities. This is also where the use of Spirit Pressure comes in. By applying spirit energy to the material, either your own which is better because it¡¯s more direct and easy to control, or from another source like storage gems or a spirit beast core, you are actively interfering with the free spirit energy that is inside the material.

    Normally a material will absorb primal spirit energy from the world and then ¡®refine¡¯ it. This matter of refining is vastly different from the refining done by normal cultivators. When a person refines spirit energy, they¡¯re essentially imprinting it with their own will as it changes states to an element.

    When natural materials refine energy, they are creating refined spirit energy without a will. Which is what has been referred as free energy. Naturally, free energy also includes primal energy which has no element or will.

    Free energy is unique in that it generally interacts in a special manner with refined energy from a person. In the case of the Lightning seeking spirit stone, the free energy attaches to the atoms of the material and acts as an instantaneous pathway from anyone point to another.

    In the case of black-iron, it interacts especially well with lightning spirit energy and amplifies the normal properties of electrons flowing through a substance to create a magnetic field. Not only that, but it also increased the sensitivity of electrons in the material to be more easily excited by magnetic fields.

    Most of this information was disseminated from Song and what they observed with their Scrying. After the incident with Artimus, James had decided to keep hidden the fact that everyone that had come from Earth seemed to be a Scryer and instead let Song believe that the two of them were just prodigies in conditioning.

    When spirit Pressure was applied to the material, it wasn¡¯t a matter of simply applying Pressure to everything in range but required controlling the Pressure to only effect a certain type of energy. In the case of conditioning, it was only free energy particles that weren¡¯t naturally formed by the spirit material.

    During this conditioning, they were also taught to remove normal impurities from a material. This didn¡¯t concern the duo too much though because Jasmine had the means to purify a material to 99% and higher. Unfortunately, she couldn¡¯t purify the free energy of a material which meant that this step was still important.

    This conditioning was all to purify the material to some extent. The more you could purify it the more powerful its effects would be. On that note though, it wasn¡¯t just the purity that effected a materials effectiveness. The general amount of free spirit energy attached to the material affected things as well.

    To take black-iron as a good example again, if you had two blocks with the exact same amount of black-iron in each one, and the exact same purity regarding matter, they still might have different levels of effectiveness. Instead, the amount and purity of free energy in the material would be the contributing factor.

    This was why people preferred to get their hands on Spirit Essences. These mostly only occurred in natural ore deposits. In nature, they more often than not show up as the purest parts of a material. This is because of the quantity and quality of refined free energy in the area pressures out impurities. Amusingly, the more pure a section of ore becomes, the more primal spirit energy it can convert into refined free energy.

    The first material they were given to condition was just regular metal iron. James was rather interested when he gave the iron a closer inspection with Scrying and discovered that even mortal materials like iron had its own kind of refined free energy that it created when primal energy interacted with it.

    The reaction and creation were obviously very slow, but it still existed. Seeing this, James began to inspect everything he got close to and began to notice almost everything had a different and unique kind of free energy pervading it.

    Things that got mixed together, like steel, often had many different energies that all interacted differently with each other. For the first time, James actually closely inspected the air around him and found hundreds of different and very weak energies. Some of them were residue from other people using spirit energy and some of them were from naturally created free energies.

    Anyway, the conditioning step was the most important. When he tried his first attempt at conditioning, he found it quite easy. Although he couldn¡¯t control the area that his spirit Pressure exerted itself very well yet, he could control what it affected rather easily when he was Scrying.

    It was simply a matter of willing every free energy particle away from him except for the iron energy particles. Once he could do that, he used his earth element and fire element simultaneously and excited the free energy in the iron. When it was white hot, he applied his spirit Pressure and slowly ramped it up bit by bit.

    By the time he was done, hundreds of little specks had passed through the other side of the white hot metal. After a brief inspection, he found that there was some impurities he hadn¡¯t moved at all and a huge number of tiny impurities that had only moved slightly.

    When asking Song about this, he received a strange look. Song nonetheless went on to explain the theory behind it as being a fusion between two or more energies. When energies have been compressed together for long enough, they often form a bond and become nearly inseparable. Unless you can pump in enough spirit energy to excite them fully, and enough spirit Pressure to separate them, then they will stay that way forever.

    It was also apparently the bane of all great smiths, and the purity they could get material too often reflected their level as a forge master. At which point Song bragged on his ability to get material to almost 92% purity. According to him, the last 10% is always the most difficult.

    Hearing him say this, James and Skay both shared a look. Skay then asked the question they had on their minds. ¡°How do you know? Or rather, how do you measure purity?¡±

    Song just grinned and led them over to a bench with a strange magnifying glass just hovering over the top of it. ¡°This here is an artefact produced from a very rare crystal called ¡®San¡¯s Third Eye¡¯ that allows a person to see spirit energy to the 100th degree. It¡¯s not the most accurate piece of equipment, but it¡¯s the most accurate you can get in the Yori Empire.¡±

    James and Skay shared a look with each other, and both made a mental note to track down more of this stuff later. It wasn¡¯t so much of an issue now that they had Scrying but it could possibly change everything for Jasmine. If they could find a way to engineer it, they may be able to give Jasmine the ability to accurately scan areas with higher concentrations of spirit energy.

    Not just that, but it may also increase the likelihood of her being able to properly forge Artefacts. At present, she used Earth technology for forging. Which meant that she mostly increased the purity of a substance to its highest degree and not it¡¯s energy.

    Even though she could melt stuff down and purify it, there was still free energy that didn¡¯t belong to the material fused with it in places or just stuck to it in others. She couldn¡¯t control spirit energy all that well, and even with the ability to control arrays, she didn¡¯t have the potential to use Spirit Pressure, because she didn¡¯t have a spirit ... or willpower, or whatever it was that cultivators had.

    Moving on, the next step depended mostly on how you wanted your artefact to react to spirit energy. In the case of their first project, Song had them trying to use their iron to create a flame sword for fire affinity cultivators. This meant they wanted it to amplify the effects of fire spirit energy.

    To do this, they had to go through a process called fusion. Using iron as the base, they then had to add two other materials. The first was something called fire seed and was a seed from a plant called the fire lily. They had to crush this into dust and then purify it in a similar manner to how they purified the iron.

    The second material was the shell of a creature that resembled a beetle called the lava bug. When they purified this, they had to try and keep only the refined energy in the shell that had fire retardant properties. James found that instead of using fire, it was actually easier to excite this free energy with water energy.

    These two materials were then ground into dust and added to the molten iron. Then came the tricky part of fusion. Just mixing them together, similar to how Jasmine does when creating a similar artefact, would drastically reduce the Artefacts powers. They needed to use their spirit Pressure to fuse the energies together to create a hybrid of fire, fire retardance, and iron.

    This process was incredibly difficult and required days of pouring in water, fire and earth energy and trying to centre his spirit Pressure on the mixture. By the end of a week, they¡¯d finally managed to fuse the three together with only about 70% of the free energy not fully fusing. They then had to go through the process of purifying the new hybrid material again to remove the leftover dust, which now had little to no energy left in it.

    Once again, they had a pure bar of iron that had three different naturally occurring energies inside it. The fire energy from the seeds amplified and affected spirit energy that passed into the blade, the iron acted as an intermediary and the base of the blade and the beetle shell prevented the blade from weakening due to heat and also had the added bonus of making the iron more sturdy.

    Although this stuff had the same atomic structure and molecular makeup of normal iron, it had properties that far exceeded it.

    The third step in the process was shaping the blade. This was the easiest step and required no spirit energy and soul Pressure unless you count the spirit energy used to swing the hammer like a giant.

    Once they were done with that, they moved onto the fourth step. This wasn¡¯t done for every artefact, but artefact creation was closely tied in with array patterns. This step was called ¡®ruin carving¡¯ and was essentially just carving or painting ruins on the sword blade or the hilt.

    The final step was called the ¡®baptism¡¯, and according to Song, it was the most important part of any forging process. He described it as forcing a part of your spirit into the weapon.

    This was done by focusing your spirit Pressure onto the artefact and then trying to split some off from your control and give it to the weapon.

    It all sounded like hogwash to James, but Song insisted that it was possible and that they had to at least try it. James sat cross-legged in a room for almost a week with his Scrying field focused onto the sword and trying to separate a piece of his spirit Pressure into the sword.

    At first, he sensed nothing and felt nothing apart from the exhaustion that came every few hours. Eventually though, he began to sense what felt like a little piece of his spirit Pressure very slowly disappearing. The more he focused on that feeling, the faster it became. By the end of the week, it was truly noticeable, and his average Pressure had dropped back by nearly 25,000 newtons every time he sat and focused his spirit. Then on the 6th day, he felt a tugging, and suddenly the entirety of his 30,000 newtons disappeared in an instant.

    In his scrying field, he actually witnessed ... something ... leaving his body and entering the sword. He couldn¡¯t explain what it was because the scrying field was more an inner eye and wasn¡¯t as much an actual visual thing. If he had to describe it, it was a form of energy, but it definitely wasn¡¯t spirit energy or any other energy he¡¯d ever noticed before.

    Before he could finish his thoughts on the matter, a huge wave of nausea and exhaustion hit him and he passed out. About a day later he woke up in the clan mansion and was led back to the Hall of Forging. After some brief testing, he discovered his Spirit Pressure was already slowly recovering by itself. When he asked Song what happened, he just smiled and muttered something about the first time is always the roughest.

    James then got an opportunity to inspect his sword. It was rather rough workmanship, but according to Song hardly anyone could have done better on their first attempt at forging. He even praised it as one of the best first-time artefacts he¡¯d ever seen.

    When James poured some spirit energy into the sword, he felt the sword react and burst into flames. After some playing, he discovered that it would react to any spirit energy. If he used fire, the flame would be more focused and hotter. If he used water, the sword created a stream of superheated steam.

    Earth energy made the sword heavier and more sturdy while the flame was only dim but still plenty hot enough. Wind energy made it lighter, increased the sharpness of the blade and seemed to fuel the fire making it more wild. The Lightning energy created fire and lightning arcs that ran all along the metal, and Plasma energy started causing the sword to melt.

    He quickly put an end to that though. Clearly, the heat resistance from the free energy of those beetles shells wasn¡¯t quite able to match the heat of the sun.

    He then played with the use of multiple energies at a time and created a whirlwind of steam and fire or a flaming sword that turned the earth to magma. Not only did he find it amplifying the effects of his spirit energy but even when controlling it to launch a wind blade or shoot lightning, it gave him greater precision and power.

    Now that he was done playing with spirit energy he instead focused his scrying field onto it. He immediately sensed that strange energy again, and after some introspection and observation, he determined that was a spirit.

    When he discussed the experience with Song, the old man nodded sagely. ¡°Your sword does have its own spirit now. The spirit best reflects the thoughts you had when you created it. You don¡¯t need to worry, it hasn¡¯t permanently damaged your True Spirit, and it¡¯s not a part of you anymore, but rather it¡¯s become its own spirit now.

    ¡°It¡¯s still young and really only assists the use of the weapon but the more the sword is used, the more the spirit will grow. Eventually, in perhaps a few tens of thousands of years it will gain sentience, but until then it is more like an animal that will grow and learn from its users. It mostly makes the weapon more responsive and allows it to aid in the manipulation of energy, but later it can affect the very nature of the weapon.¡±

    James mind was shocked into a momentary daze. ¡®Holy shit! A living sword! That¡¯s out of this world.¡¯

    Song took back the sword then gave it a brief look over, tested it a few times and then had a look at it through the San¡¯s Eye. He then did the same thing with Skay¡¯s sword when he finally finished his baptism. This was the moment Song reached suicidal.

    He was already depressed that the duo had managed to complete everything they had in a matter of three weeks. Normally, disciples of the Hall spent months or even years on their first spirit artefact, and they rarely came out half as good as these two swords.

    Not to mention that the duo even managed to create a poor quality spirit. It¡¯s called poor quality only because it was still young and weak and its aptitude for learning was slow. The name undermines the achievement though. The fact they imparted a spirit onto the sword at all was miraculous.

    When he held it, he could feel the responsiveness of the spirit and had to admit that he probably couldn¡¯t have created a stronger spirit when he was at True Spirit Realm without endangering his cultivation.

    Seeing that the swords passed, the duo then spent the last week touching on other subjects that Song could teach them, from how certain free energies interacted and other methods and secrets to the art of forging. By the end of the final week, he¡¯d been sucked dry of almost everything but his own personal secrets in the art of forging.

    -The Forge-

    James and Skay then returned to the Lab and had a forging area constructed. They filled it with everything they could think of. The very next thing they did was post a job request on the job board. It advertised the need for material refiners. Detailed the requirements and the general process of the job and had a fat reward.

    They then set up a factory in town which used refined spirit energy from arrays, which James and Skay now both understood was actually Free energy and was actually closer to natural energy than it was to a cultivators spirit energy.

    These array¡¯s then pumped specific energies into specific materials, and a bunch of true spirit realms then had to go through the process of trying to purify it. Generally, everything that came out of this factory had an energy purity of 70 or 80%. It then got smelted by Jasmine and came out with material purities in the high 90s. This meant the majority of their stocks had 90% or better material purity and 70-80% energy purity.

    Just by doing this, the general integrity and spirit reaction of all of their artefacts doubled.

    This wasn¡¯t the only thing that suddenly changed. James and Skay managed to get some San¡¯s Eye crystals imported and then realised that almost everything they¡¯d been getting shipped by account holders had been of shit quality. Not regarding material quality obviously but in terms of spirit quality.

    James then came to realise that most bulk sale markets didn¡¯t advertise spirit quality because hardly anyone was a real forge master and mostly used this stuff to try and mass produce goods similar to what the Brotherhood had been doing.

    The whole storehouse then got revamped and split into 4 major sections. One was incoming goods which hadn¡¯t been processed at all. One was processed goods, where everything was ordered by material type, name and then spirit quality. The third storehouse was processed goods going on sale, and the final storehouse was miscellaneous that they didn¡¯t know what they were going to do with yet.

    After about a week, James¡¯ Spirit Pressure had been restored and actually increased by a few hundred Newtons. More importantly than that, he found that his control had increased dramatically. He could now reduce the area of Pressure by nearly half of its original area.

    This meant that he could almost double the Pressure he created in half the area of before. That meant that anywhere within 20 metres of his body he could create a Pressure of nearly 240kg per metre in a radius of 10 metres.

    Not only that, but he could somewhat slightly change the shape of his Spirit Field. When he then tested his Scrying field, he discovered no such dramatic changes had carried over. Only some improvement from his constantly surveilling his artefact during creation was noticeable. Clearly, the two things were separate powers of his True Spirit.

    With the thought of getting more control over his Spirit Pressure and one day creating a body armour from it, he once more focused his attentions on forging. With the assistance of modern technology, he could now create a sword with perfect dimensions.

    The problem still lay in the fact that fusion and conditioning often changed the saturation of free energy in the material. It would create areas of higher free energy levels and inversely create areas with less. This was the most pressing issue he faced, and it dramatically affected the performance of the finished product.

    The array parts were easy. He didn¡¯t even have to do those, because Jasmine could do them with an accuracy down to micro-millimetres. In the same notion, the shaping was easy because that too could be done by Jasmine.

    The baptism was still incredibly difficult and time-consuming but the more he practised doing it, the easier it became.

    The level of concentration and effort required seemed to be directly linked to the type, quality and quantity of free energy an artefact possessed upon completion. By the same token, the more difficult it was to baptise, the greater the gains James got from it.

    After a month of being locked away in the forge, James came out feeling great. Not only had his control of his Spirit Pressure doubled in accuracy and malleability of the field, but all the time spent using his Scrying to investigate materials for flaws had increased its control and range as well.

    He could now sense up to 100 metres away, and his vision was perfect quality for almost 60 metres of that. Not only that but his Spirit Pressure could expand to 12 metres and had a total Pressure of nearly 40,000 newtons.

    His control had also decreased the accuracy of his field to only 4 metres radius, and at his maximum level of focus, he could produce nearly 40m/s<sup>2</sup>in that zone, which he found rather strange because mathematically speaking he should have been capable of producing damn near 250m/s<sup>2</sup>.

    He could now also maintain his full undivided focus for nearly 10 minutes, which was a plus side. That meant that when he focused on the smallest area he could, he could stop nearly 1 tonne moving at 40m/s instantly. That was enough to crush a mortal to death and at least severely injure a barrier realm.

    This could injure a True Spirit Realm practitioner, but their Spirit Pressure would automatically protect them from the full effects. That then revealed the biggest problem, which was that it would almost instantly reduce his Spirit Pressure to 0 and he¡¯d suffer from energy depletion.

    The safest limit for him was to always have about 5,000 newtons. After that, depletion effects started to kick in, and it would limit his ability to perform. When conditioning he would normally maintain about 5m/s<sup>2</sup> of acceleration to his 50m<sup>2</sup> area. If he also controlled his focus to only affect the impurities, then he could maintain about 10 minutes of that before reaching depletion stage.

    The more impurities he Pressured out, the more he increased his acceleration Pressure. By the time he did his last few conditioning sessions on a material, he would be using his full acceleration on the out of place free energy and only for brief moments of about 10 or 20 seconds.

    Luckily, Spirit Pressure seemed to be tenacious. The more often it was used, the faster it regenerated. By the end of his month secluded in the forge, he could fully replenish his spirit Pressure from nothing in a matter of hours instead of days.

 Chapter 38: Pinocchio becomes a real boy.

    -Tech City-

    Having spent the last two months sequestered away from the world doing forging, James returned to surface only to find that the city seemed to have once again started slowly expanding. With the restoration of the monolith, the city limits had been restored to tens of kilometres as opposed to its previous few kilometres.

    Thanks to that, the outskirts of the city now had people buying up land and building homes and businesses. Golden grain was once again filling fields off into the distance for as far as the eye could see and the small townships scattered kilometres away, to oversee the grain fields, had been rebuilt.

    It seemed that since the last auction, the release of a public meditation technique and breathing technique that left others in the dust, and the more than impressive living arrangements, hundreds of thousands of commoners had started flocking to the city from all over. Even from places as far as Pomit in the far south-east and Sargie in the far north-west.

    The total population of the city now numbered just short of 800,000 and not a single one of those residents was a mortal ... at least not any longer. Every last one, from children to old men, was at least in the barrier realm thanks to the meditation technique being sold in the university.

    Because of that huge influx, the city as it had been, became called the inner city. Thanks to the increasing population and the return of the safety zone provided by the monolith, Jessy made some changes to the city. She demolished everything in the farmer¡¯s district and had it split in half with one part becoming the new university spanning kilometres across and the other part becoming industrial estate.

    James could find no fault with this and honestly admitted, that at this point he didn¡¯t really care what happened to the city. He¡¯d said that in a moment of distracted concentration when he¡¯d been conditioning something and Jessy and Jasmine had taken it as him giving them absolute freedom to do whatever the hell they wanted with it.

    Thanks to that, the commercial district now had an underground which was entirely policed and operated by the Brotherhood. It became the premiere black market in the empire and even started stealing black market trade from outside of the empire.

    The university was now huge in comparison to its previous self. The most interesting thing about the university was that people who came here and lectured or studied did so entirely freely and without paying a cent. This was because they paid for the knowledge by getting the implant and all the classrooms and lecture halls were entirely run by like-minded individuals who loved knowledge.

    The most popular place in the university was the biggest lecture stage that was open air. It had thousands of stone seats surrounding it, and everyday people would go there and debate on different topics. It was quite common to see budding apprentice forge masters and alchemists sharing experiences.

    The Gau clan made quite a name for themselves when Song came to the university and started preaching on artefact creation. Their fame as forge masters became well known in the city after that and they often went to the University and gave speeches to help recruit talented forge master apprentices.

    Similarly, a new sect that came from the Sanhong City, based in the same named region, which called themselves the Potion Daoist¡¯s, started giving lectures at the University which created an onslaught of talented and experienced masters in their trades coming to the University to lecture and recruit talents.

    It became such a ¡®thing¡¯ that the stage had to be booked in advance, and another stage was created with the same setup. To limit the amount of pestering students got from factions trying to suck them in, recruiting on the campus became forbidden with the exception of one week every three months.

    That became recruitment week and was actually an idea Gary had come up with in order to give students more freedom and to prevent people using the debating stage just to talk about how amazing their guild is and that sort of shit.

    Still, once they¡¯d started, they quite enjoyed it, and it then became professional courtesy not to try and sell your guild while at the university and to focus only on knowledge, which being the aged professionals they were, was very much up the alleys of the old monsters that visited to give lectures.

    There were also a number teams that were running projects that the Brotherhood invested money into. Not only that, many guilds started research teams and began to back research teams that managed to finish some of the basics courses and had begun a project for the science fair.

    The payout for the science fair was quite sizable, and if the backing guild were lucky, they would have sowed good fortune with a promising researcher and possibly drawn that person into their guild. It didn¡¯t always work, but many young researchers and scholars agreed to concede the payout to a faction if they backed them financially during their research.

    As much interest as the university was generating, the arenas created more. They now had 40 odd arenas of all different sizes in the Spirit District. The largest was the old arena retrofitted to fit nearly 300,000 spectators, and with a combat area sized at 200 metres in length and 150 in width.

    This arena was designed for the tower realm cultivators and team matches. The rest were all smaller, and the majority of them were only a few dozen metres in diameter and were underground arenas. This was because of the huge influx of barrier realm cultivators that wanted to try their luck in an arena. If they did well enough, they could make a name for themselves and win a shit load of money while doing it.

    Not only was there more arenas in the Spirit District but it seemed the idea from the University had found its way here. Powerful cultivators would often speak on the Martial Dao and martial techniques, and it became a place where people freely traded information regarding what they¡¯d achieved or discovered.

    This sort of trait definitely wasn¡¯t common in the cultivation world because people generally kept such things to themselves lest someone get the upper hand over them, but most of these people were only common mortals a few months ago, and they all felt some kind of sickening comradery.

    At least it was sickening to James. He often had people grovelling and thanking him like he¡¯d saved their life because he was selling a meditation technique for a pittance to the mortals, but in reality, it wasn¡¯t for them. It was entirely for him.

    As could be seen by his guild now having nearly 1000 members. That made it only slightly smaller than the Gau Clan had been when he first came to this world. Hell, even the two sects the Shield Maidens and the Sword Masters didn¡¯t have that many disciples.

    Well, they didn¡¯t before. Now, with the huge influx of cultivators, all the guilds and clans had recently been getting huge numbers of fresh-faced barrier realms rocking up on their doorstep looking to join a powerful faction in order to learn their techniques and have an opportunity to use their resources.

    By the same token, a great many people had chosen to remain as a free cultivator and find their own way. The problem with this was that you would often miss things that an experienced cultivator could teach you, as was demonstrated by James¡¯ total lack of understanding towards his Spirit Pressure.

    As James surveyed the city, he noticed that outside each of the city gates to each district small towns had started forming. He imagined what this place would be like with this level of growth in another 50 years. It was already nearly half the population of the capital city Yansho.

    Thanks to the array powered construction of Tech City, it actually took up only a sixth of the total area Yansho city did. From what he¡¯d heard though, Yansho city had been buying designs from them for housing skyscrapers and was trying to even that margin.

    Finished his brief moment of inspecting the city, James returned to the HQ building. Apparently, there was someone of slight importance who was very eager to meet with him.

    -James¡¯ Office-

    As James entered his office, he saw a man dressed in a very regal and posh looking military uniform. Something he¡¯d expect to see Napoleon wearing in a history book or something. On his hip sat an old warn scimitar.

    When James scanned the man, he detected a powerful fire energy. It had obviously been purified quite a bit. Not to mention he sensed the man¡¯s Spirit Pressure was at least twice as powerful as his own. He could intuitively tell by the man¡¯s lack of ability to fully reign in his spirit pressure that his control was probably even worse than James¡¯ had been when he first started testing it.

    That created a strange perpetual pressure around the man. It wasn¡¯t much to James as a cultivator, and especially not as a cultivator with fairly controlled and powerful spirit pressure of his own, but the man no doubt flattened roses and grass simply by walking past them.

    That wasn¡¯t the only thing James felt in his brief scan, he also discovered that the scimitar on the man¡¯s hip was clearly made by a forge master proficient in creating spirit artefacts. It had also obviously existed for a long time, because he felt it reacting just from his brief scrying of it and it was a powerful spirit, at least by the standards James had to judge it by. Which would probably be considered low.

    After a momentary scanning of his guest, James sat at the opposite side of the table and eyed him over. The man had a bushy waxed moustache and a thick head of waxed back orange hair. His eyes were clear and sharp, and he carried himself with a dignified upper-class air, with straight back and looking down his nose at the world.

    The last thing James could tell, without even scanning the man, was that he had just recently stepped into the tower realm. He still had the fresh ¡®new realm¡¯ smell about him, just like a new car keeps it¡¯s smell for a few weeks until you spill your coffee in it ... or something.

    James already had some idea who this fellow was, but decided that he would play it by ear anyway. He¡¯d somewhat gotten into the habit of running with things lately, and it was a rare moment when he felt something was beyond his control anymore.

    He gave a polite smile and poured himself some tea. ¡°I¡¯m James, what can I do for you?¡±

    In a no-nonsense tone, the man gave a grunt, made a show of looking James over and then stared him straight in the eye. ¡°You have my son, and I demand his release!¡±

    James tapped his fingers on the table and leant back in his chair while looking at the man. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t do that. You see, if your son is the man I think he is, then we¡¯re expecting a ransom. Otherwise, he¡¯ll be executed for colluding to bring harm to my guild.¡±

    ¡°Humph! What nonsense! My son would have no such intentions!¡±

    James leant back further and gave a sigh. He then looked at the ceiling and spoke to Jasmine. ¡°Jasmine, playback the evidence on Perlious Latsoe.¡±

    ¡°Certainly James.¡±

    Jasmine then began playing back footage and voice recordings of everything incriminating that Perlious had ever done inside the Yori Empire. By the time it was finished, General Latsoe was shaking with fury and his already poorly controlled spirit pressure was threatening to surge forth like his rage.

    James, who had been busy with something on his pad through this short routine, finally looked up and eyed the General then began reading from the pad.

    ¡°So it looks like we have your son on at least 3 counts of attempted subterfuge, 2 counts of murder, 4 counts of subverting justice, 2 counts of conspiracy to commit murder, 4 counts of conspiracy to abduct, 1 count of littering and at least a dozen counts of public urination. Not only that, but it would appear we could also charge you with subterfuge and conspiracy to murder and abduct. I probably shouldn¡¯t even let you leave my city, let alone allow you to take your son.¡±

    ¡°Would you dare?! I¡¯m the General in charge of the entire northern border of Hastoel. If you were to try anything against me, this empire would gladly hand you over to the Hastoel Government. Don¡¯t think you¡¯re protected just because you live in a different nation!¡±

    James gave a flippant smile then stood up and looked down at this General Latsoe character. ¡°I don¡¯t particularly care what you think. If the empire is so willing to just hand me over, then we wouldn¡¯t be having this conversation because you¡¯d have had me expedited along with your son 2 months ago when he was captured.

    ¡°No, I think you¡¯re here to try and threaten and bluster because you¡¯ve already tried to pressure old Arty and he¡¯s told you to blow it out your ass. Most likely, your ruling class probably passed on trying to march an army in here and taking my city.

    ¡°If I had to guess, they¡¯re already well aware it would be considered a hostile action by the other two nations and then Hastoel would be like a paper boat resisting the ever continuous tides of the ocean. So if I¡¯m not wrong, you¡¯re either here to bluster and threaten me and hope I¡¯ll roll over and capitulate, or you¡¯re here to assassinate me in my own home.¡±

    The moment he finished pondering on his conspiracy, Latsoe was standing and had a hand on the table to flip it. He very quickly discovered a slight problem however, when regardless of how much force he used, the table remained stationary and unbudging.

    By this point, James was already reaching for his lightning shoes in preparation to escape. The ever present sniper fired his Arc Cannon, and the sound speed projectile blew the window open. For the first time, thanks to the huge boost he got from both his scrying and his spirit pressure, James actually witnessed the slug rapidly move through the air towards Latsoe¡¯s head.

    To his even greater shock, he witnessed something otherworldly, as Latsoe¡¯s Scimitar glowed brightly and as if without even realising it himself, Latsoe had drawn it and sliced that sound speed projectile in half.

    Just as James¡¯ boots fired up to launch him out of the room, the Scimitar was slicing through the air, and a violent burst of flame followed behind it, beginning to fill the room. Making it worse was that the first slice cutting the slug in two had created its own sonic boom which was sucking the flame from the scimitar outwards and feeding it.

    Even for James, all of this seemed to be happening too fast. James also came to realise why the General¡¯s spirit pressure seemed unsteady and barely restrained. James had thought it was from a lack of control, but he now understood that it was because the General was constantly using it to increase his speed and perception.

    This entire scenario happened in the time span of a second, which was fast even by James¡¯ standards. Seeing the imminent sound wave and the closely following flame wave, James maximised his spirit pressure and lightning energy internally and focused it on his speed and perception.

    Normally, when controlling his spirit pressure or spirit energy inside of his own body, he felt little to no resistance and had superior control. He now realised that was because he¡¯d never really pushed it to its limit, as he was in this split second life or death moment.

    As it ramped up, the world slowed even further and the visible sonic air pulse was already less than a metre away from James. He felt his control over his internal energies slipping from the sheer level of power he had to use to achieve these speeds and before the chance slipped by, he ran!

    His lightning and wind energies poured into his lightning shoes, and for the first time, he watched as lightning spirit energy got sucked up by the free energies of the materials and arrays his shoes were made from. Then a massive wave of lightning energy was returned to his legs, spurring them on to even faster speeds.

    With the assistance of his spirit pressure willing his spirit energies to move through his meridians faster and willing his body to react quicker, James reached the sound barrier for the first time. Less than a step behind him was the sound wave created from Latsoe¡¯s scimitar, and a step behind that was the wave of fire being pulled along and fuelled by the sonic pulse.

    James reached the door, and for a brief moment, he felt himself pushing against something like a sheet or plastic wrap. The harder he willed his body to move the thicker and thicker the sheet became, until finally the barrier snapped like a twig and his body looked like it had disappeared.

    Following the disappearance of James through his office door was the flame wave, barrelling out and lighting anything in the room and corridor outside that was flammable on fire. An alarm rang out in the building, and the General let out a dissatisfied grunt. He then started running after James in pursuit.

    James felt the skin of his body burning from the air friction, and his eyes felt like they were about to be pushed back into his brain. Probably the only thing keeping him alive was the inordinate amount of spirit energy and pressure he was using.

    He now realised he¡¯d grown far too cocky and had vastly underestimated the power a tower realm practitioner had at their fingertips. He knew that if he timed it right, and caught them by surprise, he could just set off a bomb and run, letting them be engulfed in the aftermath.

    The problem was that he had no spirit bombs when he walked into his office and he never suspected General Latsoe would actually dare lash out at him on his own territory. In his mind, it was completely irrational, but then, people do irrational things for the ones they love.

    By the time James was a hundred metres away, Latsoe was just rushing out of the office in the wake of the fire. Seeing James just reaching the end of the corridor, he swung his scimitar, and a godly firestorm exploded from the edge.

    James glanced back to see it rushing towards him, and without a second thought, he launched himself at the nearby window. His soft squishy body, already starting to show tears and burns on his skin, then had the pleasure of being filled with shards of glass. What little remaining energy and pressure he had, was then used to break his fall moments before he hit the ground and lapsed into unconsciousness.

    This whole scene covered the span of perhaps less than 3 or 4 seconds. In order to survive just those few seconds, James had used everything he had in his tank and then some. His audacity at thinking he could talk down to a Tower Realm standing only a few metres away had almost cost him his life.

    Luckily for him, Jasmine¡¯s intuition was on point, and drones had been circling the building the moment James walked into that office. Before he even broke through the window on the second story, drones were rushing to catch him.

    The moment he hit the ground, he was lifted into the air again as Jasmine persevered to get him as far from this psycho as she could, as fast as she could. When General Latsoe reached the broken window seconds after James¡¯ escape, he found him already another 200 metres from the building being evacuated by a horde of drones.

    Seeing his chance to kill the captor of his son slipping away, Latsoe only grew more enraged and leapt from the window. Fire energy swirled around him like a tempest, and he rocketed through the air at amazing speeds.

    Combat drones then arrived on the scene only to be blown out of the air before they could fire, or have their Arc Cannon slugs impact a solid wall of fire turning them into a hot spray of instant molten iron. Without the speed of sound pushing them forwards the molten iron simply hit the Generals skin and then slid off like water droplets not even leaving a red mark.

    The further they moved from the HQ building, the closer the general got. The two hundred metre gap became 100, which then became 50. By that point, Latsoe was throwing fireballs like confetti, and the horde of drones surrounding and protecting James dropped like flies.

    Almost 2 minutes had passed until finally Latsoe had closed the distance to 25 metres and sent out a wall of flame hoping to turn the drone horde and James into ashes in one go. Before the wall of flames could contact James, the newer model combat drones blew past at supersonic speeds creating a jet stream that sucked the fire along with it.

    Intercepted by the Mark IV drone, Latsoe was forced to back off for a brief moment giving Jasmine enough time to get some more distance with James¡¯ unconscious body. In the same moment, she was already moving her most powerful arsenal into position. The newer combat drones were more than just fast.

    In less than a second, they¡¯d surrounded Latsoe and did some strange transformer thing, revealing a laminated cube in their core. Each cube then lit up like a torch in the night and strange array patterns projected out from their surface creating odd patterns in the air.

    Each of these projected arrays then seemed to solidify slightly, and an opaque force field flickered to life. The drones quickly shot around Latsoe, who seemed to be far more focused on catching up to James, and then began to move in towards him.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    Before he realised what was happening, Latsoe suddenly collided with a remarkably soft, rubbery, transparent surface. After glancing around, he finally noticed the 20 drones all positioned around him in formation. Unfortunately for him, he never got the chance to try and break out from the force field they¡¯d created because in a split second their cores became blindingly bright and an oppressive force suddenly filled the insides of the barrier.

    Each of these drones had just set their little mini-reactors to self-destruct and created a contained mass implosion within the barrier. More or less, they just suicide bombed the shit out of the General like Muslim extremists.

    -The Lab-

    Once more, James awoke in the lab as fit as a fiddle and without the slightest break, scratch or bruise. And once more, he simply dumped Exsue onto the floor as he got up. Walking out from the room, with Exsue once again piggybacking off him and biting his shoulder.

    As if D¨¦j¨¤ vu, he then fought to push Exsue off of himself and arrived in the main area of the lab to see Skay having an argument with a group of people on the Screen.

    James let out a long sigh and then decided to just turn around and leave. As he stepped into the elevator and hit a series of buttons, he tapped his ear piece.

    ¡°Jasmine, replay the events after I passed out.¡±

    Without a word, a screen appeared on the wall of the elevator showing the full 4 minutes from the moment he launched out the window to the sudden disappearance of General Latsoe and the 20 drones that had surrounded him.

    James then let out another sigh. ¡°Jasmine. You can build your army.¡±

    ¡°James, are you certain you¡¯re okay? You¡¯ve been non-responsive for nearly 10 days and appear to now be acting out of character.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m fine Jasmine. Gear up the factory for full-scale war production, you can begin building your droid army, full outfit of our defensive and offensive technology. I want you to double your efforts on all array and spirit material research, even if it means you need to build yourself another computer. We have 7 months until the War of the Worlds.¡±

    ¡®ding¡¯

    James stepped out onto the top floor and then entered his meditation chamber. As he sat down, he gave one last instruction to Jasmine. ¡°Jasmine, I¡¯m going into a closed-door session. No one is to disturb me.¡±

    James then removed his earpiece for the first time since he got it, and sat down in the centre of the spartan room. James¡¯ meditation chamber was an entirely empty room no more than 5 metres in length and width. It had a single plain red rug made of soft fur and apart from that was completely white.

    As James sat into his meditation posture, he reviewed his short contribution to the battle with Latsoe. It had been a long time since James lost a fight, which was most assuredly exactly what happened with Latsoe. Being completely honest with himself, James accepted that he was never a contender to be part of that fight anyway.

    Without Jasmine, he was certain he would now be dead. His spirit energy control and spirit pressure execution were both sloppy in the face of the sudden assault, and he readily recognised that his first instinct was to run from someone more powerful than himself.

    Before, he was well and truly proud of his cultivation and everything he¡¯d achieved here. Now, he was ashamed of himself for becoming so pig headed. Normally his pride was somewhat twisted from standard expectations.

    Before he came here and started his guild, he prided himself on his character and his ability to adapt quickly while remaining level-headed. Before he became a cultivator, he didn¡¯t care about winning or losing a single battle. Instead, his pride was focused on his ability to play the long game and survive any situation.

    He prided himself on his endless persistence in the face of greater odds, and he prided himself on knowing when to fight, and when to survive. Now that he felt ashamed at being so easily trampled, James realised he¡¯d been doing a number of things, that on Earth, would be out of character for him.

    For one, the city. He¡¯d never once cared about the woe and misfortune of others, and before coming here, he¡¯d never have felt proud about wasting his own time helping people that couldn¡¯t help themselves.

    He defended his actions here as being for the future of the guild. But the truth was he was too busy basking in his own ego at everything he¡¯d achieved with the city, to recognise he was slowly moving from someone who only needed his own approval, to someone that lived for the approval of others.

    It certainly wasn¡¯t as serious as becoming some grossly cheerful hippy that had an ego based entirely around seeking the attention of others, it wasn¡¯t as bad as James felt it was, but it was nonetheless evident.

    If James hadn¡¯t been so full of himself, he would have long since put in countermeasures to deal with Latsoe. But he didn¡¯t, because he felt he could survive anything. It was true that he survived, but it wasn¡¯t under his own power, he instead was rescued from the brink of death ... by a talking machine no less.

    James began to think about everything else he¡¯d done since coming here. He soon began to realise, that thanks to the technological advantage they had over others, he¡¯d become far too relaxed and lost sight of himself in the centre of a maelstrom of madness.

    James spent weeks meditating on how much his personality had changed. Some things he liked, for example, he no longer froze as much as he did before, he thought this to be positive. Inversely, he no longer assessed situations as fully as he once would have. He missed things he normally wouldn¡¯t miss and made mistakes he would never have made before.

    By the end of the few weeks, James left his meditation chambers with a renewed vigour. He excepted that some things will always change, even himself, but the thing that wouldn¡¯t change was his core values, the things about himself he had the most pride in.

    Strangely, during this whole time in meditation, his greatest breakthroughs in his re-evaluation of himself all came from Gold James. Goldy, being the condensed conscious spirit embodiment of his pride, knew the things James had always prided himself on better than even James did. Which technically isn¡¯t a correct sentence because after all, they¡¯re both James.

    When he emerged from meditation, he found a sleeping Exsue curled up on the floor outside his door sleeping like a cat. He gave a soft smile. Patted her head lightly then started walking out as he put his earpiece back in.

    Before he¡¯d even managed to reach the door, a body was glued to his back, making sniffing sounds and licking his neck. ¡°You smell different today JayJay. Just like you did the first time I sensed you come through the portal.¡±

    James, for the first time in ... well, forever, stopped in his tracks and then reached back a hand and patted Exsue¡¯s blue hair. ¡°It¡¯s good to see you too Exsue.¡±

    Exsue, for a brief moment, wasn¡¯t sure what to do. James had never openly shown any form of affection towards her without her forcing it before. She started hyperventilating, and her pupils dilated like she¡¯d just ingested some psychedelic drug.

    As James reached the door to his room, Exsue fell onto the floor and started twisting around and moaning like some pervert. James could only chuckle wryly at this sight then turned and left as Exsue started bucking up and down while very inappropriately manhandling herself.

    James tapped his earpiece as he closed the door to his bedroom and the writhing moaning Exsue on the floor. He then started preparing some tea as he spoke to Jasmine. ¡°Jasmine, did you complete your new computer?¡±

    ¡°Hello James, welcome back. Yes, only a few days ago Skay and I successfully completed our first entirely spirit and array based computer. Although we say that ... I am weary of copying my core program onto it. This machine is beyond everything we envisioned or believed possible, and it runs in a manner not entirely conventional to standard computers.¡±

    James poured some tea and then started to pace around his round table and his office. ¡°How so? Don¡¯t all computers just operate on zeros and ones?¡±

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not just a matter of its code, it¡¯s rather a matter of hardware. Perhaps, you would be better off examining this prototype yourself. Even I can¡¯t fully understand it. Dr Skay kept many of its details hidden from me.¡±

    James quirked his eyebrow. Firstly, everything Jasmine just said, but more importantly, there was a chip in his table. It was a tiny little gauge no bigger than a speck of sand, but to James¡¯ hawk-like Scrying perception, even a single grain of sand cannot go unseen. Or rather, in this case, the lack of a grain.

    James brushed his hand over the mark and then contrary to what one might expect, he ignored it and moved on to the lab.

    -Level 9-

    Level 9 of the lab was below the spirit reactor and was recently excavated for the sole purpose of building Jasmine¡¯s new computer. Contrary to the rows of processors and storage devices James had been expecting, he instead found a single large white room stretching to nearly 500 metres in every direction.

    On the floors, walls and roof were hundreds of intricate arrays beyond even James¡¯ comprehension. Each one spanned tens of metres and overlapped and intersected with tens of other arrays all combining together to create a single large array pattern that covered every inch of free space.

    James felt quite a strange energy as he entered the room and after momentarily Scrying he realised that the entire room was saturated in it. As he walked in, he saw Skay busily painting a pattern and he suddenly sensed a part of Skay¡¯s spirit enter the lore pattern he¡¯d been inscribing. This wasn¡¯t like when you gave an artefact a spirit, but rather forcing your will and intent onto the array, to allow it to operate more smoothly and in a certain manner.

    James had to take a double look at Skay when he approached. He looked younger than ever, and if you were to meet him now, you would think the old man wasn¡¯t more than 40, which was a vast comparison to the aged and wrinkled 70 odd he looked when they first came here.

    James could only assume the old madman had some breakthroughs in his cultivation to so drastically affect his visible age. Then on second thought, he realised that the outwards appearance of most cultivators was a reflection of their mental self-imagine, so perhaps it was just because he felt younger again that his body responded by making him look younger.

    As Skay finished up the pattern he was working on, he turned and spotted James. ¡°Bout time you got your ass into gear boy. While you¡¯ve been having an internal crisis and moping around in your room for the last few weeks, we¡¯ve been making breakthroughs that would put the greatest minds of earth to shame. Now come on. You¡¯ll want to see this.¡±

    Finished his brief greeting, he marched over to a single pedestal in the centre of the room. Then looked at James. ¡°I¡¯m going to need the guild seal.¡±

    James cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. The duo then had a brief conversation with facial expressions and James then willed his seal from his spirit realm. Moments later, the blood red seal sat floating magically over the pedestal.

    Skay then looked at the roof. ¡°Jasmine, get the members to meet us down here now.¡±

    James finally couldn¡¯t contain his curiosity. ¡°What¡¯s going on Old Madman?¡±

    Skay gave a knowing smile and chuckled. ¡°The future is what¡¯s going on boy. I¡¯m about to play God! HAHAHA!¡±

    James couldn¡¯t help but give a wry smile at seeing the Old Madman was still just as mad as before. In a matter of minutes the other members of the core had arrived and in one way or another showed their concern at James¡¯ wellbeing.

    They then just as quickly acted like nothing had ever happened and Skay smiled brightly as he began to explain.

    ¡°What we¡¯re about to do may very well be on par with the absurdities of the Ancient One¡¯s monolith patterns. This here is something I¡¯ve had rattling around in my head since long before I ever came to this world and is the amalgamation of years of dedicated research before I ever even came here. Today, with the help of this world¡¯s crooked natural laws, my chance has finally come.¡±

    Skay then gripped his fist tightly as he had a quiet moment staring off into space. He then let out a long sigh. ¡°Your task¡¯s here are very simple. Each of you will position yourselves in these specific areas.¡±

    Skay pointed to six circles surrounding the pedestal. James gave the Old Madman a strange look. ¡°Why are their only six circles? We have seven people here.¡±

    Skay smiled brightly and gave James a hard stare. ¡°That¡¯s easy boy, someone is going to have to control this reaction from the pedestal. Naturally, as the creator and the only one that understands what he¡¯s bloody well doing, that will be me.¡±

    Then before further argument could be broached on the subject, Skay started pushing people into position. As he was being pushed onto his circle, James clicked his earpiece to get a hold of Jasmine. To his shock and surprise, all that came back was static and very faint sounds.

    He focused his energy and pressure into his ears, and slowly he began to hear Jasmine¡¯s voice in patchy broken words. ¡°Jame ... crsshhk ... the ... crsshhk ... must sto ... crshhk.¡± James was starting to get a strange vibe about all this, but he couldn¡¯t place a finger on what was going on.

    When it finally clicked, it was too late. With everyone in position, Skay clapped his hands together and then placed them on the pedestal. One by one, arrays began to light up in sequence, starting from the central pedestal where Skay was standing.

    When James finally realised something was dreadfully wrong with this scenario, the circle he was standing in had lit up. A powerful array field shimmered to life around him trapping him in his circle. Seeing everyone was trapped, Skay¡¯s smile became grim. He took one final look around at his workmanship and then walked up to James.

    ¡°Boy ... James. You¡¯d best take care of my little girl.¡± He said with a solemn face. With that, the arrays began to brighten as they pulled in more and more power from the Spirit Reactor. The room began to buzz with a strange vibration, and everything started to grow fuzzy and indistinct.

    James suddenly felt the array around him drawing out spirit pressure from his body. It had the same sensation as when he was imparting a soul onto an artefact. He started trying to fight it only to hear Skay¡¯s voice echo out in the chamber.

    ¡°You mustn¡¯t fight it! Without your assistance, this will never work. I am going to die here anyway, and there is nothing you can do to change that. Stop fucking around being so indecisive and fucking ... RELEASE!¡±

    His voice slowly built up to a crescendo until the word release was yelled out at the top of his lungs. James felt a wave of nausea hit him, and suddenly a compelling feeling beyond his control simply pushed him to release his spirit pressure at its utmost maximum.

    Not only James, but the other 5 sins also felt the compulsion beyond their control and simultaneously they released the full effort of their combined spirit power. A strange thing then happened as more arrays lit up and for a brief moment their minds were connected to Skay¡¯s.

    James felt his grief and his happiness and years of piled up regret and sadness. He then began to see brief moments of Skay¡¯s past.

    When he first met his wife, when they married, when he found out she was pregnant. James felt the happiness and joy of these times. He felt what it was like to truly and without reservation love someone.

    He then saw the moment of the child¡¯s birth. He felt the fear and hopelessness when Skay¡¯s wife went into labour and started having complications, the anger and regret of his powerlessness when his wife died and only moments later, his child.

    He felt the complex emotions of that instant moment where everything flooded in at once. The grief, the fear, the inadequacy of his ability to foresee these events and stop them. He then felt that moment when the pride of a man who believed he was the smartest on the planet, snapped in twain like a brittle twig.

    He felt that moment when Skay realised that no matter how powerful his mind was, no matter how much he¡¯d known. He could never have saved his wife and child. He then felt the burning hatred towards the world, the endless disgust at the fate of all creatures, and then finally, he felt the desire.

    It started as a spark of madness, an idea beyond the scope of anything ever envisioned. He was going to save his daughter at any costs. He locked away the corpse of his dead child and spent years scanning her brain into the computer. Scanning his, hers and his wife¡¯s DNA into the machines he¡¯d created.

    He never stopped marching forwards, to the single goal. That endless dream. As the spark of his madness progressed into a flame, his desire to resurrect his daughter grew without limit. Every failure only led to further attempts. He couldn¡¯t resurrect the body, it was simply impossible, even for him.

    So he did the next best thing. He created Jasmine¡¯s mind. At first, it was just another program that took the scans of Skay¡¯s dead daughter and then slowly created its own mind and developed its own personality. The technology of earth was powerful, but to create something that could mimic something so close to life it was flawless, he needed more.

    Then a day came on earth when he discovered he was going to die. He was unreconciled. He refused to accept that his life¡¯s ambition, his one true goal for living, would end with him. He then was introduced to the Spatial Anomaly, and he saw a chance. Although it was a long shot, he began making plans to try and blow open the spatial anomaly.

    He was aware that space and time were intrinsically linked. If he could tear open a moment in space-time, perhaps he could go back. Perhaps, he could find an opportunity to prevent the disaster that befell him.

    Then the holocaust happened. That was why he was so much more concerned with the disappearance of the anomaly when they first met. If the anomaly had still been operational, he¡¯d thought he would have the chance to return in time. Even if he couldn¡¯t, he was going to die either way.

    Then, they came here. At first, he was enraged at the sudden change, more so than that, he¡¯d lost his chance to save his daughter. With a great deal of luck, Jasmine came with him, buried away in the Ocean Lab¡¯s computer systems and lucky enough to be sucked through into this universe. James then had the strange experience of feeling what Skay felt when they first met.

    He saw memories of them working together on everything, and he felt something that could only be described as respect and comradery. From everything he¡¯d seen up until now, James had never felt Skay give anything or one, respect. James felt Skay¡¯s exuberance at meeting James after they¡¯d been here for a while and worked together for a while.

    He felt the bond of friendship, if it could be called that, the two of them shared. Then he finally saw Skay painting this lab, and he felt that unreserved hope, that single-minded wish. Skay always knew that Jasmine would never quite reach the stage of being truly granted a second chance at life.

    Although she had been with Skay for many years, learning and adjusting and growing, that was only programming. Skay knew that no amount of programming could ever truly become life. Skay himself hated to admit it, because as far as he¡¯d always been concerned, human life was only electrical impulses in an unusual median and stuffed into a head cavity.

    That was until he came here, and for the first time, he experienced that moment of realisation that true life had something even he couldn¡¯t explain. The moment when he fused with his true spirit, he knew there was something intrinsic to human life that Jasmine could never achieve on her own. Then when they granted an artefact a soul, Skay realised that his chance had come.

    Finally. He could grant Jasmine a soul, make her a real person ... or at least, the soul of a real person. When he came here, he was still dying. Even after reaching so far in his cultivation he could feel himself slowly being eaten away from the insides. Spirit energy helped to extend his life, and he promised himself that no matter what, he would achieve his dream before he died.

    James returned to reality as the last of his spirit pressure was drawn out into the array. That moment of connection with Skay was a side effect of the array system allowing him to multiply his spirit pressure control to profound levels and to borrow the power of his comrades.

    James fell to his knees on the verge of passing out from pressure depletion. In his final lucid moments, he looked up at Skay who stood in the centre of the array fields with his arms in the air and the first genuine smile on his face James had ever seen.

    Tears fell from his eyes like a river, but he smiled nonetheless. At that moment, James witnessed his first true glimpse at what he¡¯d been calling a soul. Skay¡¯s body began to rapidly age and wither. In moments, like paper in a fire, his body blackened and then blew away like ashes.

    Although it looked like nothing was there, James could see in his Scrying field the ethereal true spirit apparition of Skay, still standing in the same position. Reality then began to fracture and bend, as his vision blurred and darkened, Skay¡¯s spirit apparition was disintegrated before his eyes, and all of the pressure energy released from him and his cohorts piled on top of the formless mass of pressure that was once Skay.

    Finally, James couldn¡¯t force himself to stay lucid, and with a blinding flash from the array¡¯s, James lost consciousness.

    When he awoke, he was still laying on the floor of the 9th level. What was once a pristine room in perfect condition was now riddled with cracks and fissures. The array¡¯s had half disintegrated, and the room was filled with an eerie mist.

    James pushed himself up to his feet and started to take account of the situation. Returning to his norm, his face was expressionless and without emotion. Although on the outside he maintained a stone cold expression, his insides were rolling over themselves, and his stomach was trying to force itself up through his throat.

    His feet stepped forward dazedly until he stood on the spot Skay had been. He then searched everywhere hoping everything he¡¯d seen in that last moment had simply been a mesmerising hallucination brought on by pressure depletion.

    ¡°Old Madman!¡± James called out. He heard the groans of his companions being awakened by his calling and released his scrying field. He searched everywhere for that sensation he felt when Skay was blocking him but found nothing. He then searched again looking for the unique energy of Skay¡¯s spirit pressure still finding nothing.

    He called again and started walking through the misty room but still found nothing. He then ran around the room again and then he employed all of his spirit energy and sprinted around the room. He then ran back and found his companions mostly up and began questioning.

    ¡°Where¡¯s Skay?¡±

    He ran up to Exsue and shook her while repeating the question. ¡°Where¡¯s Skay?!¡±

    Before he realised it, his emotionless face was gone, and it had warped into desperation and fear. Exsue, whom was the most experienced of everyone, seemed just as lost about what happened here as the others. Apart from James, everyone had passed out before that final crushing moment.

    James tapped his earpiece. ¡°Jasmine! ... Jasmine answer me damn it!¡±

    Despite his calls, nothing changed. Just as James was becoming frantic, he heard the sobs of a woman. He glanced around and saw his other 5 companions all standing there looking at the devastation of the room and started whipping his head around.

    The soft sobbing continued, but James still couldn¡¯t find its source. Just when he was starting to think he was going mad and having a mental break, he thought back to his recent time in meditation.

    This wasn¡¯t how he should be acting right now. The first concern in an emergency situation is to assess the risk to his personal safety. He took another glance around and found that the room was already starting to show signs of structural failure.

    Putting that crying sound to the back of his mind, he ushered everyone into the elevator and heard the resounding ¡®bang¡¯ of the roof and walls starting to cave in as they shot upwards to the top floor.

    -James¡¯ Office-

    Everyone sat at the round table and stared off into space somewhat dazedly. This was the first death of a core member they¡¯d experienced. Kelly, the newest, was the least affected, but in the month or two she¡¯d been a part of this group she¡¯d gotten along rather well with Skay, both being stupidly smart and having similar interests in science, they had worked on quite a few things while James had been soul searching.

    The next least affected was Exsue, who made no bones about only caring about James. Nonetheless, it was clear she was upset because James was upset and James was upset because Skay was gone. That meant that, somehow, indirectly, she was upset about Skay¡¯s death too. In a twisted Exsue way.

    On the opposite end of the scale, James and Harvy were taking Skay¡¯s death the hardest. Harvy, because Skay was his evil master, and James because Skay was his friend. Although they weren¡¯t bosom buddies, and they didn¡¯t have anything close to a normal friendship, they were probably the closest to an actual friend either of the two of them had ever had.

    While James filled everyone in on what he¡¯d witnessed at the end of Skay¡¯s array ritual, his eyebrow started to twitch. Finally, he slapped a hand on the bench and shot to his feet. ¡°Where in the hell is that infernal sobbing coming from!¡±

    Everyone at the table just gave him a strange look, like he¡¯d gone mad. As James was looking around like a paranoid schizophrenic, Gold James started yelling in his spirit realm.

    ~You heard him you noisy bitch! Shut up! I can¡¯t concentrate on meditation with you fucking crying away back there!~

    James¡¯ eyes lit up, and his face then went through some strange expressions. He then slowly sat back at the table. Just as Exsue was about to ask what was wrong, James lifted a finger to silence her and closed his eyes as his focus returned to his Spirit Realm.

    When Spirit James opened his eyes and parted his lightning nucleus like a curtain. He stepped out to find Gold James standing on his rock with his hands on his hips and yelling at the water down below. Spirit James looked down at his clear liquid sea and saw another person at the bottom of his ocean.

    This person was curled into the foetal position at the bottom of the sea while sobbing and sniffling. James¡¯ metaphorical heart tightened in his Spirit chest, and he slowly descended into his sea.

    When he reached the person, he was stunned to see it was quite clearly Jasmine. Or rather, it was clear to see that it was the spiritual embodiment of Jasmine. She looked younger than she did when she was on the screen as a projection made by a computer. Her image was still unmistakeably the splitting image of how she¡¯d always portrayed herself onscreen though.

    The only difference was that she was a sobbing, crying mess this time. Also, as opposed to normal, right in the centre of her chest was the same blood red guild seal that normally just floated around in James spirit realm. The difference was, it was anchored squarely in the centre of her chest like it was an intrinsic part of her.

    The moment Spirit James set foot on the lake bottom, Jasmine looked up at him with puffy red eyes and her hair swaying in the currents of the liquid ocean. Before James could react, Jasmine had launched herself at him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

    ¡°He¡¯s dead James! Sniff ... my Papa¡¯s dead!¡±

    In a very uncharacteristic moment, Jasmine cried like a real girl. James couldn¡¯t stop his eyes from watering and unconsciously, without thought, he dropped to his knees and pulled Jasmine into a tight hug. With a great deal of effort, he prevented himself from wailing like she did, but no amount of effort stopped his tears from flowing out.

    Out in reality, everyone watched on as James¡¯ face assumed a forlorn, heartbroken expression, and a single tear managed to force its way from the corner of his eye.

 Chapter 39: Merging Spirit Realms

    As the core of the Guild sat in the office, James finally opened his eyes. Unceremoniously wiping away the tear on his cheek, James willed it, and his guild seal appeared floating in front of him. Much to the surprise of the others, not only did the guild seal appear on the round table, so too did the incorporeal, ethereal form of Jasmine appear.

    She sat in a seizer position on the table and wore a flowing silk gown, making her only more enchanting than ever. That is, apart from the obvious signs of crying. James felt the sensation of being scanned and then suddenly realised that Jasmine was using a Scrying field.

    Not only that, just by looking at her ghostly form, James felt the pressure and experienced that strange sensation of knowing. Jasmine was quite clearly a true spirit realm cultivator, and not only that, when he scryed her, he felt the energy of Skay¡¯s greed spirit energy.

    It seemed, not only did Skay sacrifice his soul to grant Jasmine life, he even imparted everything that he had achieved in cultivation. His soul and his spirit.

    Finally, Jasmine stood up and stepped off the table. Without a word, she waved her hand through the air and a projection fell onto the wall from the roof. She then started talking. ¡°James, it appears we have suffered a severe depletion in the cities spirit power grid. Papa ... Dr Skay wired in every reactor in the city to power that array formation, and apart from the super reactor under the tower, the rest are at readable levels of spirit energy saturation. That means they are most likely damaged.¡±

    James sat back into his seat and let out a long sigh. ¡°Jasmine, for a girl who was just granted life and lost her father in the same moment, you don¡¯t need to do this.¡±

    Jasmine turned to James with a serious expression and looked him straight in the eye. ¡°Please, James. I need to distract myself. Feeling things is an unusual experience for me. Before, I thought I had fairly closely approached the level in which I had emotions. But I now realise, when I feel this grief ... that I understood nothing.¡±

    James let out a long sigh and deflated a little in his chair. As the rest of the core members watched on completely stunned by this development, James firmed his expression and sat up. ¡°Very well Jasmine. Get the cities power grid operational. Then I want you to come and see me. I¡¯m planning ... a change of scenery.¡±

    Jasmine gave a nod, and then her body faded and the seal disappeared once more into James¡¯ Spirit Realm.

    Exsue was then the first to figure out what just happened and in an envious fit slapped the table. ¡°That cheating bitch! That conniving old fox! Why does she get to become a part of James! It¡¯s not fair!¡±

    Everyone else then very quickly connected the dots and a ruckus broke out in the office. James waved a hand to silence everyone then stood up. ¡°Yes, Jasmine is a True Spirit realm now and has a soul. I can explain it no more than any of you can. According to her, Skay had clearly been planning this for a long time. He¡¯s set up some device that allows her to remain connected to the network and maintain her original functionality as the guilds AI, but at the same time, she is now intrinsically different.

    ¡°She¡¯s also just lost her father, so give her some time. For now, she will remain within my spirit realm until I feel she¡¯s ready to put up with you miserable lot. She only knows a little bit about what¡¯s going on, and I know less. We¡¯re all in uncharted waters with this whole escapade of that madman¡¯s, which means we¡¯ll be figuring out her situation as it develops.

    ¡°For now, Kelly, the lab is yours. I don¡¯t expect you to become a miracle worker like Skay, but apart from me, you¡¯re probably the only person even half capable of understanding some of his work. Jessy, everyone is going to find out about this one way or another, we may as well let it come from us.

    ¡°If they believe our guild loses value from his death, let them close out their accounts. While you¡¯re at it, get Gary up here to meet me ... in say... 3 hours.

    ¡°Goliath, meet with the Generals and increase security. We¡¯re no doubt going to be getting a few people thinking they¡¯ve got a leg up on us now, so we need to prevent them from stirring up the city for the time being.

    ¡°Fatty, Harvy, Exsue, you three are going on a mission. Take the Ghosts with you and get the ship ready. I¡¯ll brief you in the war room tonight.¡±

    Finished giving orders, James left the office in long purposeful strides. When he left, everyone just shared a strange look and then got to work.

    -James¡¯ Meditation Chamber-

    In his meditation chamber, James sat cross-legged while his focus was on his spirit realm. When he arrived, he saw Gold James getting the shit kicked out him by a furious looking Jasmine. Spirit James didn¡¯t even bother to ask what was going on and simply grabbed Jasmine arm as he flew past, dragging her to the other side of his spirit realm.

    He then waved a hand and created an island in his sea, then with another wave, a table and chairs formed. James sat down across from Jasmine and stared at her for a moment. ¡°Jasmine, how did Skay keep you connected to the system. If you¡¯re now a spirit, and you¡¯re linked to me through the guild seal, I can¡¯t imagine how he did it.¡±

    Jasmine suddenly materialised a cup from her own spirit world then looked expectantly at James. James could only give a chuckle, and with a wave of the hand he created tea from his liquid spirit energy. Jasmine tentatively took a sip and smiled warmly while looking at the cup.

    ¡°So this is what tea tastes like? It¡¯s bitter and disgusting. But it makes me feel so warm inside.¡± After she had shared her thoughts, Jasmine looked up at James again and started to explain. ¡°From what notes I can find left by Papa, the arrays he built served a great many purposes. First, they pulled in a great deal of spirit pressure.

    ¡°Unfortunately, no matter how much of your intent you pour into something, it will never become a truly sentient spirit without time. Spirit pressure may carry intent and will, but it also lacks things that a sentient spirit needs. So as to facilitate that eventuality, Papa ... he ... he had to sacrifice his own soul. With the energy provided by all of you, he could reshape his own soul into a fresh new spirit like a blank slate.

    ¡°Then using the technology we developed for the Implants, he forced every last part of my programming into the spirit using a combination of arrays created from both our worlds scientific aspects, and this world¡¯s Daoist aspects.

    ¡°Unfortunately, no spirit can exist without a vessel. He has notes and tests in which he tried to create a body or use a body to try and fuse the soul and the vessel. Unfortunately, all of those attempts failed. Finally, he found a way. Something that would allow him to anchor my soul.

    ¡°To anchor a free spirit, he had to fuse me with another spirit that already inhabits a body. It had very specific conditions though. Firstly, it had to be a spirit that would willing accept me, it had to be a spirit strong enough to support the fusion, and lastly, I couldn¡¯t be directly fused to it because that would create a subconscious power struggle.

    ¡°Instead, I could only be fused to a part of that spirit. For example, your guild seal is interictally linked to your spirit. It harbours a piece of your spirit that remains connected to you but is not entirely a part of you. This was the median Papa chose.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t choose it because it was the only one, but because he thought you would be able to protect me until I was powerful enough to form a new body myself. The price of this type of magic is steep though. I¡¯ll be like a parasite living off you, if I try to cultivate, I¡¯ll steal primal energy that you¡¯re drawing in.

    ¡°And ... and ... no matter what, you and I will have a little piece of each other in our spirits for the rest of our lifetimes. Even if I manage to cultivate to the point that I can form a new body, our lives will be as one. If you die, I die. If I die, you die.

    While speaking, Jasmine¡¯s tears started to flow. She sniffled and wiped her face then looked at James with a firm resolve. ¡°I promise James. I¡¯ll find a way to fix this!¡±

    James just sat and calmly drank his tea. Finally, he placed the cup on the table and looked Jasmine in the eye with a blank face. ¡°I don¡¯t care about that Jasmine. I can feel it. That ¡®link¡¯. Even though your explanation has cleared up my theory on it. It¡¯s not what I asked you. How are you still connected to the system?¡±

    Jasmine wasn¡¯t sure what to make of James¡¯ ignorance of the situation. He was now going to be stuck with her forever. Every time he cultivated, he would have to cultivate for two people. Not just himself, but her too.

    To top it off, if they ever found a way to reconstitute a body like Exsue had when leaving the monolith, he would have to constantly worry that she may be endangered. He would quite literally be putting his life in her hands.

    James, seeing her confusion, smiled gently, then reached across the table and grabbed her hand. ¡°Jasmine, I don¡¯t care about that situation at the moment. Your father left you in my care and whether I like it or not we¡¯re stuck together. There¡¯s no reason to worry about something we can¡¯t change.

    ¡°Also ... I already have one crazy bitch who has my life in her hands. The only difference is that this one is entirely in my head.¡±

    Hearing James indirectly calling her a crazy bitch with a teasing smile plastered on his face, Jasmine almost couldn¡¯t contain her indignation. She slapped James¡¯ hand away and rose to her feet. With a wave of the hand, a billowing wave of spirit energy materialised out of nowhere. James¡¯ scrying was now an endless habit, and he could sense that this spirit energy wasn¡¯t his.

    Or more accurately, it wasn¡¯t entirely his. When the realisation hit him that a part of his spirit pressure had refined this energy and left his mark on it, he inspected his own. Now that he looked at it, he realised that the very nature of his spirit had changed. Although still a pure spirit, it was now slightly different, like it was the amalgamation of two spirits.

    James now realised just how closely their souls were tied together. Then, with a grin plastered across his face, he waved his hand down in a chopping motion and Jasmines liquid spirit energy split into half and continued on past James.

    Seeing her own spirit energy being controlled, Jasmine then began to Scry James¡¯ spirit realm and discovered the same anomaly he did. Very quickly, a war of spirit energy engulfed James¡¯ spirit realm. As it all mingled in together, their spirits began to undergo a strange type of transformation.

    Normally, the True Spirit in a spirit realm was a blurry phantom of your true appearance. But the more they threw around each other¡¯s spirit energy, the more their spirits began to gain more form and substance. Just the action of believing it was acceptable to use each other¡¯s energy began to create a huge paradigm shift in the duo¡¯s cultivation.

    They didn¡¯t notice it because they were too busy having fun throwing lightning bolts and each other and laughing as they hurtled meteors at poor old Gold James. When they realised that something strange was happening, it was already too late to prevent it.

    They had, in their ignorance, suddenly created and irreversible deviation in standard cultivation practice. They only actually realised because of Gold James, who had been launching balls of fire at Spirit James flying around in the air, while Jasmine tried to pin him down with lightning, suddenly froze in motion.

    James intuitively sensed a difference in his clone and then glanced upwards in the same direction. Spirit James¡¯ mind boggled as he stared up overhead.

    What was normally a perfectly white endless sky, now had a mirroring spirit realm similar to James¡¯. Not only had it suddenly appeared in James¡¯ spirit realm out of nowhere, but it was now rapidly moving towards them. Or rather ... his spirit realm and that spirit realm were rapidly moving towards each other.

    As James stared up in horror at the quickly approaching entire realm of spirit energy about to collide with them, Gold James and Jasmine flew up next to him and stared up as well. James couldn¡¯t help but mutter as he squinted his eyes trying to figure out what the fuck was going on.

    ¡°What the fuck is that? Is that another entire spirit realm? What the fuck is it doing here?¡±

    While also gazing up, Jasmine suddenly closed her eyes, and then just a quickly opened them in shock. She then made a loud ¡®gulp¡¯ attracting the James¡¯ attention. Seeing herself being stared at with suspicion, Jasmine couldn¡¯t help but sheepishly look down at her feet while mumbling something.

    ¡°I ... think ... be ... min ... maybe...¡±

    James quirked an eyebrow then coaxed her to speak a little more loudly. ¡°What was that?¡±

    Jasmine, seeing James staring at her, couldn¡¯t help but gulp again. She then spoke a little louder.

    ¡°It might be mine.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re what?¡±

    ¡°My spirit realm. I think ... it¡¯s my spirit realm.¡±

    Gold James and Spirit James both stared up at the sky with a very quickly enlarging realm. It had dozens of spirit energies rolling about the place like a tempestuous ocean.

    Goldy just pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. ¡°God damn it! It¡¯s just one thing after another with you. First, you conjure me up like a puppet and lock me away to be your cultivating slave, then you bring home some stray made from an old man and computer parts, now spiritual Armageddon. I want a divorce!¡±

    Spirit James could only smile wryly at Gold James¡¯ poor humour. He understood that a shit storm was about to happen. Some type of spiritual calamity that would doubtlessly end in either death or cultivation deviation.

    He let out a long sigh and watched on as first liquid energy rained from the sky. When it made contact, the liquid energy in James¡¯ realm began to bubble violently and rapidly started frothing about. Quickly following that was meteors covered with fire, that collided with his own solid energy blowing each other apart.

    Shortly after, a gaseous nebula fell like a descending mist and James¡¯ wind energy began to kick up gales of wind and tornados started forming everywhere. Bright balls of light and strange shadows fell onto James¡¯ realm and soon other strange elements.

    Some had no visible tell tales of their arrival, magnetism for example. The only reason he knew it was there was because he could sense it. Both because it was energy refined by his spirit pressure and because of his scrying.

    A huge sun descended over the realm and bathed everything in its flaming glory. James felt fire and light energy pouring off this thing. Lightning and plasma fell like rain and clouds filled the skies.

    Along with all these energies was another spirit shaped like Jasmine. The moment it fell from the sky, it shot towards Jasmine, and the two of them merged into a single true spirit.

    Gold James gave a dissatisfied grunt. ¡°Time to get to work.¡±

    When he finished his sentence, another strange abstract energy fell onto realm. It was similar in many ways to his pride energy, in that when it came, it pervaded all the other energy that came before it. Like a disease, it filled everything, dragged it in and controlled it like a sickening pervert controlling puppets on a string.

    Spirit James and Jasmine were just standing in mid-air staring at everything in shock. The beauty of having refined this energy was that it couldn¡¯t harm your own true spirit. James could swim in his plasma tornado, and apart from getting buffeted by the forces a little, he felt only a tingling sensation.

    By the same token, when they were play fighting with spirit energy, it could never truly hurt them, even if they tried. The most they got was knocked around a little. In their spirit realm, they were invincible.

    Gold James on the other hand, looked like he was getting ready for war. He undid his shining gold robe and let it blow away in the wind and dissolved back into spirit energy that filled all the other spirit energy. James¡¯ mind boggled as he watched Gold James in only golden sweat pants, start doing warm-ups.

    ¡°Goldy. What the hell are you doing?¡±

    Gold James just smiled at James. ¡°You know how it is. There can only be one.¡±

    James wasn¡¯t sure what the hell he was talking about until he finally thought back to when he tried to unlock more abstract elements. Pride destroyed them all the moment they entered his spirit realm. Back then, pride never bothered to let those elements try and grow and weeded them out the moment they began generating.

    Things were vastly different now. Jasmine had Skay¡¯s Greed, which had matured quite a bit and was more than just a budding freshly unlocked energy.

    James grabbed Jasmine¡¯s hand and pulled her to the edge of his spirit realm. Jasmine, who was rather new to the cultivating game, wasn¡¯t sure what exactly was happening. ¡°James, what¡¯s going on?¡±

    James smiled wryly as he pulled her outside the general area the spirit energy congregated in. At about 2 hundred metres he stopped. Reconsidered, and then pulled Jasmine out to another kilometre away.

    ¡°It would seem ... we¡¯ve deviated together. Now that our spirit realms are trying to combine, Goldy is going to have to clean house. He¡¯s rather proud of how well he keeps all the spirit energy properly equalised and in line, now though, another boss, who greedily likes to collect every kind of spirit energy, has shown up to take control. Goldy probably isn¡¯t going to let that shit slide I imagine.¡±

    While Jasmine was busily trying to compute that, James turned back and watched the show. Slowly, all the spirit energy that just came from Jasmine¡¯s realm began to swirl together and form into the shape of a huge golem.

    Inside his spirit realm, distance was relative. In a moment he could take a step and cross a billion kilometres or a single metre. That also meant that his scrying field covered everything from the realm where he gathered energy and onwards out into infinitum. He watched on with his scrying as the greed energy sucked in all the energy it had managed to get its hands on, and slowly take the form of Jasmine.

    The spirit energy golem of Jasmine was mashed together with different types of energy all violently colliding and mixing together. Standing where he had been before, Gold James stood with his arms crossed and stared up at the giant golem.

    Meanwhile, he made no such drastic changes to the spirit energy under his control and simply let it revert to how it normally looked. ¡°Greed! You great bloated piece of shit. I already banished you from this realm the last time you were summoned. You should cut your losses and accept that the girl¡¯s mine now too.¡±

    ¡°ROARRR!¡±

    Spirit James standing off in the distance cupped his chin in thought and started muttering. ¡°How odd. I had some strange notion that Greed would be like my pride, and be a clone or something. It doesn¡¯t appear to have any conscious thought at all, though.

    ¡°It¡¯s like it¡¯s just doing what all abstract spirit energy does and eliminating any threats to its ability to rule the spirit energy in the way it¡¯s host desires. If I¡¯m not wrong, this will be a short fight.¡±

    Jasmine gave him a confused look. ¡°What do you mean should be a short fight. It¡¯s my greed isn¡¯t it? Doesn¡¯t that mean it¡¯s capable of using my subconscious control over spirit energy? I hate to tell you this James, but by subconscious understanding and control of my spirit energy most likely dwarfs yours.¡±

    James glanced at her with a smile on his face. ¡°Does it now? Well, how about your understanding of greed? Before you became human, you weren¡¯t truly capable of these sorts of abstract emotions. You said so yourself. How long have you known the feeling of greed, how many times have you experienced the sensation?

    ¡°Not only that but what about lightning? How many times have you witnessed lightning personally? Not through a camera, but been there yourself? What about fire, you can tell it¡¯s hot, and what it¡¯s capable of, but you¡¯ve never been burned, or stood near a warm fire on a cold night. Your understanding is no doubt beyond even the Old Madman¡¯s was, but I doubt your experience could fill half a cup.

    ¡°Also, this is a battle between a sentient spirit with its own willpower, and a spirit energy driven by some primal subconscious command. You may not have realised it just yet, but Goldy and I are technically the same person. Although his spirit pressure is separate from mine, it¡¯s an exact copy. That means any spirit energy refined by ... I suppose our spirit pressure, won¡¯t be able to harm him.¡±

    Jasmine was rather discontent with this answer, mostly because she felt he was like calling her a child, which if you wanted to be technical, was far closer to the truth than she liked. She gave a humph, pouted, and then turned back to the show.

    James floated cross-legged in mid-air and watched on as the greed golem swung a huge palm filled with plasma towards Gold James. Gold James then looked around, and with a single flick of the wrist, a massive burst of liquid energy sprayed up like a geyser.

    From where they sat watching, both James and Jasmine felt a sudden oppressive spirit pressure coalesce onto the water column from Goldy. Moments later that water energy blew a hole through the giant¡¯s palm, down its arm and straight out its back.

    As all that water energy poured out from the back of the golem, it dragged with it any energy it touched. James could sense from his scrying that all the energy touched by Gold James¡¯ geyser and spirit pressure was being refined again.

    This time, when it reformed, it was pervaded with Gold James¡¯ pride energy. For the first time, James actually closely watched this happen and saw his pride energy particles stick to the green particles like tar. In a matter of seconds, those greed energy particles were engulfed in pride particles and absorbed.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    The pride particles then split in half like mitosis and started sticking to the energy particles that once had greed particles attached to them. James was stunned to see this happening. While this battle raged on, he focused onto a part of his spirit realm that was slowly refining primal energy.

    He watched in amazement as primal energy just suddenly appeared in his spirit realm and was then suddenly attacked by a tiny amount of spirit pressure. Presumably, his subconscious¡¯ doing. This spirit pressure very slowly enforced James¡¯ will onto the primal energy particle, and they slowly began to take on characteristics of his elements.

    When this was happening, James suddenly began to have strange thoughts regarding everything he knew about certain energies. All his experience and knowledge of them flashed through his mind as he consciously inspected the process. Even stranger was that it wasn¡¯t only his memories of these things.

    A huge load of information he didn¡¯t think he knew flashed past his mind. It was very methodical and perfectly memorised, which was far different from the rather abstract feeling and emotions that were attached to his own memories.

    He and Jasmine then both looked at each other in shock. Jasmine¡¯s mind was trembling at what she¡¯d just felt, and her voice was hoarse and gasping. ¡°What the fuck was that! I just felt ... so many things, and then this sensation, like my memories weren¡¯t my own.¡±

    James scratched his chin and gave a bashful cough. ¡°Ahem. Well, that may have been me. Probably best if I not dive too far into that in the future. It seems we¡¯re sharing a great deal more than just my soul realm.¡±

    Meanwhile, Gold James was slowly working the greed giant down into a tiny speck. Much to James¡¯ dismay, many of the strange elements that came from Jasmine¡¯s realm were being refined again by their spirit force.

    By the end of the very unfair and one-sided battle, James¡¯ spirit energy had doubled. Not only that, his spirit pressure was more powerful and controllable than ever. It had a strange quality to it now that didn¡¯t make James uncomfortable, but it was strange nonetheless.

    After the fallout of the battle, and despite Gold James¡¯ expectations, a single new element remained. Magnetism. Goldy was the first to admit that if any of those elements should be kept then magnetism would be it. After electron flow, it was probably the thing James understood best.

    Jasmine didn¡¯t particularly care what elements she had. All this was still too new to her, and she was still trying to wrap her head around everything, especially now that feelings and sensations were getting in the way.

    As things calmed down from the battle, James suddenly felt Jasmine scrying. Or more to the point, he saw it in his inner eye. It very much felt like he and Jasmine had somehow become entangled in the exact same scenario that he and Goldy were in.

    They had individual spirit pressures that were a merging and copy of the two. The shared a single spirit realm and its spirit energy. They could all see each other¡¯s scrying.

    Probably the only thing that stopped James from worrying was that they all maintained their individuality. The other thing was, that after some testing, James and Jasmine didn¡¯t seem to be sharing the same thoughts simultaneously like he did with Goldy.

    At least ... not unless they chose to. Which was very much an awkward moment for the pair of them when they tested it. Mostly because Gold James, out of pure spite that he now had to share his spirit realm with some hussy, would purposely focus his mind on something inappropriate so as to distract James¡¯ thoughts in that direction.

    Apart from getting slapped, James also got to witness Jasmine blush for the first time. Which he openly admitted, only in his own mind, that he would probably never forget.

    At last, with everything cooled down after that huge escapade, James returned to his original question, which had started this whole fiasco in the first place. Seated at a new table, with a fresh cup of tea, he asked Jasmine; ¡°How can you connect to the network and control everything while you¡¯re so disconnected from the system?¡±

    Jasmine, in much the same way as before, tried to deflect the topic of conversation. ¡°Like I said before, Skay prepared in advance and built a machine. Do you think, that our cultivation will be simultaneous now?¡±

    James, seeing her awkward effort to deflect, only grew more suspicious. ¡°Jasmine, we only have the one spirit realm now, and a shared willpower. I suspect we may be permanently stuck together. However, as troubling as that is, we can¡¯t change it yet. More importantly, what aren¡¯t you telling me?¡±

    Under the intensifying stare of James, Jasmine began to fidget uncomfortably. Seeing her reluctance to say anything, James suddenly had a thought. He then returned his focus to the real world and discovered something he was afraid to ask questions about.

    In his defence, he¡¯d just had a moment of crisis and spent the last few weeks reaffirming his own pride. He hadn¡¯t spent much time inspecting his body, and certainly never made an effort to scry his body. Under the intense scrutiny of his scrying, James discovered two strange things.

    The first was a series of spirit pressure pulses. They were unerringly accurate and specifically targeted.

    The second thing he discovered was a very out of place, wafer-thin 5mm by 5mm chip right in the middle of his brain. Under his scrutiny, he discovered that this little chip gave off an endless number of different kinds of energy all pulsing at a frequency beyond his ability to comprehend. Not only that, they were so tiny that they were just as hard to recognise as previously mentioned pressure pulses.

    Jasmine, now having a shared scrying vision with James rushed to try and explain. ¡°It¡¯s harmless James. It¡¯s just a little wireless chip created on a molecular level. It¡¯s so minute and harmless you couldn¡¯t even detect it since you woke up after Latsoe¡¯s attack.¡±

    James, who had now returned his focus to his spirit realm, was visibly shaking. ¡°Fuck! That fucking Madman! He¡¯s fucking turned me into some kinda wi-fi cyborg! Piece of shit crazy old goat fucker! He was fucking poking around in my brain?! Motherfucker!¡±

    Jasmine could only cringe and watch James go off into a rant about irrational fears being entirely rational near Skay. Half an hour later, James finally sat down at the table again and his bloodshot spirit eye¡¯s focused in on Jasmine like a hawk eyeing a mouse.

    ¡°How does it work?¡±

    Jasmine, seeing she wasn¡¯t about to get blamed for this debacle, could only sigh in frustration. ¡°Well, it¡¯s a quantum computer of sorts. Papa had the idea of trying to entangle two spirit particles. To say he was successful would be an understatement. Normally, when two ¡®real¡¯ particles are entangled, they respond in an observable manner to any change in their partner. Regardless of distance.

    ¡°He found that if he used enough spirit pressure on two spirit energy particles, then he could force them into an entangled state. He could then separate those two particles using his pressure and then place them in corresponding devices that I need to interact with. For example, he launched some up to the satellite, placed some in the endless forest quantum antennae and left some here in the base.

    ¡°The key difference from normal entanglement and spirit entanglement is that normal entangled particles change state, like rotation speed and direction. Unfortunately, we have no way to measure that with spirit particles. Instead, with spirit particles, we can observe a change in state between different types of energy.

    ¡°Following this line of reasoning, he developed an array pattern that can interact with the old computer systems binary processing capabilities and change the nature of an energy particle. The best part about this is that spirit energy takes up no space. Energy particles aren¡¯t bound by space, and an infinite amount can inhabit the space of a single electron.

    ¡°The only limitation is my ability to focus my scrying field to that level and be able to pick apart the individual particles. This way, by observing the reactions of the particles, I¡¯m then able to influence a similar set on our chip that allows us to instantly send a signal back.¡±

    James wiped his face for a moment and sighed. He then quirked his head as he had a sudden new thought. ¡°How is it that you can still process all that information. You don¡¯t have a body, so it¡¯s not like your processing information with a brain. Your vessel, which is my guild seal, most likely has no such ability. How exactly is it that a soul can exist in an inanimate object and still process so much information.¡±

    Jasmine shook her head at the question. ¡°I¡¯m afraid, even Papa couldn¡¯t answer this question. As a machine made spirit, I still mostly think logically. It actually quite hurts my mind to consider the prospect that I no longer possess any physical form at all. In answer to your next question, yes, I can instantly recognise the patterns and changes of the spirit particles in your head. It¡¯s as easy for me as 1+1 is for you.¡±

    Finally, James stood up and began pacing around in his spirit realm. He hated the thought of having something in his head. While he cupped his chin and his mind raced, he asked Jasmine another question. ¡°Is there any reason why Skay picked that spirit material for the science project he put in my head?¡±

    Jasmine shook her head. ¡°No, he had to remove any foreign spirit pressure from it anyway, so he simply chose something durable, that wouldn¡¯t conduct, and was easy to force spirit particles to attach to.¡±

    James gave a nod and then sat down cross-legged in the middle of his ocean. His mind focused in on the spirit particles on the chip once again. He could tell that these particles were most definitely free particles. The one¡¯s Jasmine was changing, were obviously refined particles.

    James then focused his mind and concentrated all of his willpower. He was about to try something that he¡¯d never even imagined trying before. With his focus directly on the refined spirit particles that were fused to the little chip, he willed those particles to return to his spirit realm.

    In an instant, they returned. In the grand scheme of his spirit realm, a few thousand spirit particles was nothing. Scrying was the only way you¡¯d ever pick them out. Before they had a chance to go and join their brothers in the rest of the spirit realm, James once again focused his will on them.

    Moments later, a relative billion kilometres away from where his energy normally gather, James suddenly reappeared. With a wave of his hand, the normally flat white ground rose up into a wall. James then waved his hand again and those spirit particles he¡¯d just brought back stuck to the imaginary spirit realm surface like gum.

    When he finished, he turned back to see Jasmine and Goldy both staring at the wall. He gave a grin then began to explain. ¡°In the spirit realm, everything is to my whim right? Spirit energy takes on the form I feel most comfortable with it having. The ground opened up into a huge pit when I imagined my water element becoming a calm ocean of clear fluid. If that¡¯s the case, what¡¯s to stop me from imagining other stuff.

    ¡°You can consider this the communication wall. The beauty of it is, you hardly need to focus inside the spirit realm. You can stack infinite quantum entangled particles here and just at a momentary glance be able to tell them apart. If even I¡¯m capable of something like that in my spirit realm, then I¡¯ve no doubt you can.¡±

    When he finished, James gave Jasmine a smile then turned back to his wall. He then focused his mind again and tried something he¡¯d never once tried before. He channelled his spirit pressure into the chip again, then tried to will the free energy particles into his spirit realm. At first, there was a great deal of resistance, but after Goldy and Jasmine were called in as the big guns, the free energy particles got sucked in just like primal energy does.

    The moment the free energy particles appeared in his spirit realm, James sensed that small subconscious force that normally refines primal energy. With his remaining spirit pressure he willed that force not to influence these particles, and like a puff of smoke, it was gone.

    James then sat down on the ground with a long exhale, like he¡¯d just finally relaxed after hours of back breaking labour work. He then glanced over at Jasmine. ¡°Now, take that fucking thing out of my head.¡±

    -James¡¯ Office-

    As James walked out of his room into the office, he saw Gary seated at the round table. He gave him a strange look as he asked him; ¡°What are you doing in here Lackey 1?¡±

    Clearly, James took some form of perverse joy in forgetting Gary¡¯s name. Gary, on the other hand, didn¡¯t seem even slightly phased and simply stood up and gave a bow. ¡°You requested for me to meet you. That was 4 hours ago.¡±

    James cupped his chin and stared at the ceiling for a moment, then with a click of his fingers gave and ¡®ah!¡¯, to signify his sudden remembrance. ¡°Good ... ahh, yes I did call for you ... about ... um ... honestly, I think I forgot why I called you here. Tell you what, just sit there and wait for me to come back. I¡¯m rather busy with something else right now and it¡¯s distracted me.¡±

    James then strolled out of his office, allowing Gary to broach no argument.

    -The Lab-

    In the operating room of the lab, James laid face down on an operating table as Jasmine drilled a hole in his head and removed the chip with a whole bunch of operating arms attached to the ceiling. Much to his dissatisfaction, he discovered that even when his body fell unconscious now, he simply lost that focus and returned to the spirit realm.

    In a way, this was good, because it allowed him to continue cultivating. In the same sense, he hated the feeling of being completely disconnected from his body. Luckily, the surgery was quick, and the moment it was finished, he willed himself back to his bodies focus and started pouring energy into it to clear the effects of the sleeping agent.

    When they were finished, James looked at the little chip in a glass bottle with revulsion. Then with a hand closed around it, he poured in energy from everything he could and turned the glass bottle into liquid and the little chip into dust.

    Once that was done, he called over Kelly, who was busily pouring through Skay¡¯s notes in the lab. To say that sloth is only a representation of being tired and lazy would be wrong. It¡¯s also used to describe idle hands that aren¡¯t doing productive work.

    On the contrary to that, Kelly was incredibly productive, the problem was that she hated to be focused on a single thing. She was far more free flowing and jumped around from project to project with for no rhyme or reason. More often than not, she would end up completing projects that were far from what she originally set out to do.

    And in 9 out of 10 cases, these completed projects were dangerous beyond compare. As the bible says, ¡®idle hands are the devil¡¯s plaything¡¯.

    James then sat down and released the guild seal from his spirit realm, allowing Jasmine to experience the lab first hand for the first time. Unsurprisingly, she didn¡¯t seem particularly impressed. After all, she was still connected to the system and could construct a 3D image of the lab in her head using the surveillance systems.

    As James sat down, he began to flesh out an idea he¡¯d been having. ¡°Jasmine, how far along is your ... Dropship?¡±

    ¡°The drop ship has only just begun James. Regarding designs and planning, it is already mostly finished, in terms of physical construction it has perhaps more than year until completion.¡±

    James cupped his chin and stared at the ceiling. He then stood up and began pacing. ¡°From what I understand, the drop ship was built for war correct? What if we retrofit the design, and build it for something else? Would that be possible?¡±

    Jasmine gave a nod. ¡°Certainly James. For the moment we essentially only have the frame of the ship completed anyway. We can redesign the interior for whatever we want.¡±

    James¡¯ pacing stopped and he then glanced at Jasmine and Kelly. ¡°What if I wanted it to become a mobile Guild HQ? The lab, storage, manufacturing, everything. Do you think that would be possible?¡±

    Jasmine crossed her arms and stared at the ground for a moment as she considered the possibility. Finally she sighed and shook her head. ¡°I¡¯m sorry James. To have the same capabilities of the lab, the ship would need to be almost 3 times as big. Probably more.¡±

    James nodded his head then smiled. ¡°What if, we could get our hands on some of that space stone? Do you think it would be possible to create a similar space bending phenomenon as the Jetsu mountain ranges have? Increase the space inside the hull to 100 times? Do you think that¡¯s possible?¡±

    Kelly, who¡¯d been rather disinterestedly looking at her fingernails, finally perked up at the prospect of playing with space. ¡°You mean to say that there¡¯s something that can do that sort of thing?¡±

    James cupped his chin in thought. ¡°Well, probably not exactly the same way as the Jetsu mountain ranges. Instead, if we could find a way to automate the spirit pressure exerted on the space stone, we may be able to find a way to simply fill space stone with say ... all the automated machinery. Then we just need a way to get resources in and the products out.¡±

    Jasmine finally started to pick up what James was thinking. ¡°Well ... if our theories are correct, then the internal storage space of the space stone is dependent on the free space energy residing in it. If we could find a way to exert enough spirit pressure, and force all the free energy into a smaller area of space stone, we may be able to create a space as big as this lab inside a rock the size of your fist.

    ¡°If we are capable of that, then we could most likely design an array to simply exert pressure on the rock along with the will to absorb everything in a set area. And vice versa, we could set up an array that pulls everything in a certain area of the inner space out into reality.¡±

    James then picked up from this thought. ¡°In addition, we could redesign our factory again. Use the latest research into spirit pressure and arrays that we have. You would be able to keep an eye on everything in the factory with our entangled spirit particles, and if we can find a way to utilise the pressure arrays properly, then it would be possible for you to purify materials to the 80th or 90th percentile.

    ¡°Not just that, but you would most likely be able to create fused particles with different types of free energy, and even ... potentially, you could impart a soul onto something.¡±

    That thought finished in his head, James suddenly had realised something. This whole time he¡¯d been forging things, he never once considered using arrays to help him purify or fuse free energy particles in his materials. Not only that, he¡¯d never considered forcing the free energy particles into a smaller area.

    If he did that, he might be able to both increase the purity of his artefacts and increase the level of free energy they had. It would essentially be the same as creating spirit essence by taking all the energy of a material and densely packing it into a small space.

    James and Jasmine then spent the afternoon filling in Kelly on how forging worked and how spirit pressure was integral to that. They then discussed the other uses of spirit pressure in forging and array patterns. Finally, night came, and James remembered he had a mission to give the others.

    -War Room-

    James walked into the war room and found Exsue, Harvy and Fatty all waiting for him. He walked up to the 3D topographical map of the continent and then focused it in onto the Black Lands.

    ¡°I have a rather important mission for all of you. Fatty, you will be a necessity on this mission. I¡¯ve received reports that there may potentially still be a space stone deposit located in around this area of the Black Lands.¡±

    James then indicated a small area in the Black Lands south of the Hastoel Border. ¡°It¡¯s about 50 km in. From the information we¡¯ve been able to gather, the Black Lands is named as such because it¡¯s internally on fire. Everything that enters becomes black soot. The further into the black lands you walk, the hotter it gets.

    ¡°Luckily for you guys, Jasmine will be sending her latest batch of drones with you. Hopefully, they should be able to prevent the Gunship from being completely incinerated. Your task is to go here and find the space stone deposit. If you can, bring back some samples.

    ¡°Fatty, this is only a theory, but I suspect that scrying will very much give you a similar experience to what you would feel if you applied your pressure directly to a space stone. If it¡¯s anywhere within your scrying field, you should perceive the space stone¡¯s internal space.

    ¡°Harvy, keep a low profile. If you can, keep the bird high to avoid alerting too many people. If someone finds out the gunship has finally left the empire, there will be a frenzy as they try to claim it. If all else fails, just hit the big red button and get your asses back here at maximum speed.¡±

    With that said, the trio left to start their mission.

    <hr>

    To James¡¯ surprise, they¡¯d returned in a matter of hours. Apparently, it didn¡¯t take too long, and the shielding arrays of the gunship managed to withstand the flames by themselves for most of the journey.

    According to Jasmine¡¯s reports when she scanned the ship on landing, the ship was going to need the shielding array repainted, and the spirit reactor replaced.

    When James met the trio in the hanger, he discovered them to be covered from head to toe in black soot. Fatty handed James a little bag, inside of which was about 20 space stones all of different shapes and sizes but none being bigger than an inch in diameter.

    ¡°James, dude. There¡¯s something weird about that place man. It¡¯s like the flames were alive. It¡¯s like they knew why we were there. I¡¯m tellin¡¯ ya man. The flames let us go, because they knew we¡¯d come back. They¡¯re setting a trap or something.¡±

    Hearing Fatty start rambling on about a new conspiracy involving living flames, James just glanced at Exsue and Harvy who both shook their heads and shrugged, indicating that they didn¡¯t see any evidence of the flames showing any sentience to the degree Fatty described.

    James thus promptly ignored Fatty while nodding his head as if he was listening. Meanwhile, he was busy probing the space stones with his scrying field. With Jasmine¡¯s assistance, they determined that these 20 odd stones had about 8000 cubic metres of space. Which is equivalent to about 20m in width, length and height.

    For reference. Their present auto factory took up floor space close to nearly a kilometre in length and width by itself. It then had at least 50 metres of height onto of that. That meant these few stone would fit about 1/20th of their lab as it is now. To increase frustrations on that front, it didn¡¯t include their storehouse underground which was almost double the size of the factory, albeit mostly empty.

    To top it off, James forgot one important thing about the space in the space stone. It had no time. Even if he wanted to build a factory inside it, the factory would never be able to operate.

    It then suddenly hit him. James realised that he was too single-minded. Why the hell did they need a huge factory in the ship? The whole idea of the ship was to have a mobile base so he could explore the continent. All it really needed was a small auto factory area, a forge, meditation rooms, and a small alchemy lab. A huge factory would just be a waste of space.

    With this thought in mind, James revised his plan. Instead of creating a huge factory, he would use the space stone solely for storage. That would be the biggest space waster of a ship that size anyway. They¡¯d then design a far smaller auto factory with very refined forging capabilities.

    It was only going to be used for ship repairs and basic stuff anyway. James planned to increase his own forging skills instead of relying on Jasmine¡¯s factory. With that thought in mind, he returned to the lab and started going through the detail of what he wanted with Jasmine and Kelly.

    Once they were done, it was the next morning, and James returned to his office.

    -James¡¯ Office-

    When James arrived in his office, he found the still very, very patiently waiting Gary, who looked like he was currently sleeping with his eyes open. The giveaway that he was asleep was the drool from his mouth and the soft snoring emitted with every breath he took.

    If James had to guess, he had entered his spirit realm to cultivate and left his eyes open, then feel asleep in that state. James simply shook his head, sat down at the table and kicked Gary in the shins.

    Gary then went through the short moment after being startled awake where you¡¯re shocked, then dazed and confused, then at last realisation dawns. Gary then shot to his feet and gave James a bow.

    James just sighed. He had no idea why Jessy chose this guy, but James was the first to admit that nothing bad had ever happened while he was in charge. Perhaps out of pure luck, perhaps because someone had been watching out for him, or perhaps Gary carried himself the way he did precisely to reduce people¡¯s expectations of him.

    ¡°Gary, I¡¯m going to be taking the core members and leaving this city eventually. This means you will eventually be left to run the guild in my absence and as such, you will need experience. Therefore, as of this moment, you are the Vice Guildmaster of the Dark Brotherhood. You will be taking on the responsibility of the guilds expansion, recruitment and business. Everything that the core members of the guild once handled will hereby be taken on by you.¡±

    With that said, James flicked a little cube over to Gary. As opposed to the normal coms cube that James gave to customers, this one was painted red. Not only that, but it had a great deal more features in it. With this cube, Gary could control almost everything in the guild and city. Jasmine had re-written a new AI to run everything in her stead so as to shirk any responsibility.

    This one wasn¡¯t quite as charming as Jasmine herself had been and was firmly bound by a single rule, obey the guild master. It also enjoyed having to go through the process of committing to a heavenly oath the same as Jasmine did.

    Amusingly, Jasmine had no need to create it. Since becoming a True Spirit in James¡¯ spirit realm, her ability to compute was several magnitudes more powerful than before. Which completely blew away James, seeing as he¡¯d have thought she was piggybacking off his brain or something.

    To his consternation, Jasmine appeared to have no real connection to James¡¯ body at all. The only exception to that being their shared spirit realm. Regardless of that, Jasmine¡¯s comprehension and computing power were now so far beyond anything they could have imagined, it was a certainty that she could have run everything in the city herself and it would be no more difficult than turning on a toaster.

    This brings us back to the new AI. It had no personality whatsoever ... at least, not yet. Apparently, it was like a baby right now and had to slowly adapt and learn. Eventually, one day, it would most likely reach the point that it could become somewhat independent like Jasmine had.

    Gary held the red box in his hand and turned it over a few times. He then pushed the only button on the surface of the box, and a beam of light shot directly into his eyes. The common symptoms of suddenly getting an implant became apparent, and a few minutes later he was awake again.

    James smiled sinisterly and stood up. ¡°There you have it Gary. You are now in control of the city, the guild, and everything that entails. Good luck buddy.¡± He then strolled out of his office whistling proudly and acting as if a huge weight had just been lifted from his shoulders.

    As he left, he had Jasmine allocate as much of the guilds time and resources as she possibly could towards the completion of the new ship.

    James had made this decision after Skay¡¯s death. There were two reasons he¡¯d stayed here for so long and never travelled.

    The first one, was because Skay was perfectly happy staying here. James realised now that Skay cared only about his life¡¯s goal. To achieve that goal, he never had to leave this place. He encouraged the idea of the guild and taking control of the city so that he had a means to get the resources and knowledge he needed to achieve his goals without ever having to leave and lose focus.

    Everything he¡¯d built and experimented with until now had been side projects to further that one eventual end.

    The second reason he¡¯d stayed here so long was that he was a coward. He readily admitted that he was afraid to travel. Gold James seemed to bleed from every orifice when James had eventually admitted this personal fault to himself. Or rather, to Goldy.

    It was as if admitting such a thing had severely damaged his pride. However, it seemed his pride was indestructible, because he suddenly felt proud of himself for being able to admit that flaw and Goldy bounced back better than ever.

    The fear didn¡¯t just come from the potential of being killed. In fact, that was the smallest contributing factor. No, for James that fear was kindled by his once irrational fear of having his mind read. With the discovery of an ability to reduce that likelihood to close to zero, he now had nothing else holding him back.

    James knew, long before they even left the Gau Clan, that he would have to travel this world and explore. He knew that the key to becoming a powerful cultivator, and to survival, all came from experience. Without ever leaving the city, he knew he¡¯d never gain that experience. He¡¯d never be able to properly forge himself.

    His lack of self-control and experience was plainly evident when James allowed himself to be consumed by his ego and arrogance. Pride and arrogance are separated by a very thin grey area, and for a time, James had stepped into that grey area, nearly costing him his life.

    With this comprehension of himself, James was now certain of what he planned to do. He would cut loose the guild to expand freely, which was something he¡¯d been limiting until now. He¡¯d place Gary at the head of the snake, and let him manage everything.

    Then like a no-good spoilt child, he¡¯d run off gallivanting around the country, only to return when he needed money and supplies. All the while, Gary would be stuck here in Tech City, and would suffer the endless torment of running a business.

    To be fair though, Gary had it pretty easy. Mostly, he would just be a placeholder for the core members, and the AI would basically do all the work for him.

    Nonetheless. This meant James was preparing to cut his ties to this place, and truly start his adventure.

 Chapter 40: Off to the Capital

    With all responsibility to the guild well and truly shirked, James now had the free time to ... well if being honest, not much changed for the first few weeks. For starters, James had long since shirked his responsibility to the city. He had given all of those duties to other people, namely Jessy and Jasmine.

    It also didn¡¯t help that he was still affected by Skay¡¯s death. The first few weeks were spent flipping between brainstorming for his future flying Headquarters and meditating alone. By meditating alone, it would be more accurate to say he was shutting himself away and moping.

    This quickly changed when every time he locked himself in meditation, Jasmine would try and introduce him to a new aspect of her connection to technology. At first, she shared memories with him. Which more or less was just a huge dump of data.

    The worst part of it all was that he was too curious to not try it. It started out as her sharing the system that her mind used to process all the information from the energy particles trapped in their spirit realm. Although Jasmine claimed it was only a small amount of information, James felt his head swelling when he consciously accepted the memory sharing.

    He very quickly discovered, that although he could understand it all, he couldn¡¯t execute it to even a thousandth of the degree that Jasmine could. He was severely limited by his fleshy human brain. Which Jasmine clearly didn¡¯t have.

    James, being the stubborn fool he was, refused to let that stop him. This then resulted in him getting endless nosebleeds and going into states of confusion. He didn¡¯t give up, but he started moping again. This led to Jasmine giving him another huge data dump of everything she had recorded about array patterns.

    It turned out, that was even worse. Sharing memories was similar to receiving an implant. He could get all the data and stuff it into his head. The problem lied in properly understanding and memorising it all. Otherwise, it would just be forgotten again, and like mist in the wind, disappear.

    From there, Jasmine would always entice James with something else when he fell back into moping, and every time he would fall for it. After about 6 weeks, he was already simultaneously attempting to control drones through the network, memorise all the array formulas they he had in his head and trying to remember all the different types of herbs and plants Skay had stored away in Jasmine¡¯s databanks.

    Finally, he got the message. The last time James had ever opened himself up to feeling anything for another person, let alone comradery and friendship, he lost everything. This created a strange reaction to his fear of being alone.

    He didn¡¯t hate being alone, but rather, hated the idea of being alone forever. However, he could never open up enough to create anything more than a superficial relationship with anyone.

    This wasn¡¯t the case with Skay. Whether he accepted it or not, he¡¯d come to rely a great deal on Skay over the past few months. He opened up quite a bit while he was here, and very quickly, that ended in disaster. Perhaps Jasmine, who spent her entire life closed off to everyone and only discovered what an emotion really felt like when Skay sacrificed his soul to give her life, understood somewhat James¡¯ mental condition.

    Although their two situations were vastly different in many ways, it could be rationalised that they were similar in some. James, who was closing himself off again, had failed to realise just how much Jasmine must be hurting, especially having the first emotion she ever felt be grief and sadness.

    He only realised it at the end of these few weeks, when even Jasmine had stopped her efforts as much to distract him, and grown somewhat despondent herself. Not only Jasmine, but James¡¯ poor mood had been affecting everyone. Exsue most of all, was upset at James being upset, and had many times stomped her foot while cursing that she hadn¡¯t dropped a lightning bolt on Skay back when they first came through the Gate Way.

    Seeing this rapidly declining mindset of his core members, James called an emergency council.

    -James Office-

    Seated at their round table, seven people and a spirit body, sat drinking tea. Now that Skay was gone, the core of the guild had lost a member. Harvy, who had basically always been considered a part of the core membership, filled the seventh spot again, as a placeholder until they found a new greed.

    Jasmine floated in place, apparently drinking spirit tea, because her teacup was as ghostly and ethereal as her body.

    Eventually, James broke the silence. ¡°We¡¯re going on a road trip.¡±

    Everyone shared strange expressions, and James spoke again before the chance to question him came. ¡°I don¡¯t care what you¡¯re all doing. Or what you¡¯ve been doing the past few weeks. Apart from the lab, none of you should have any duties to fulfil now. That said, it¡¯s time for us to leave the city and start gathering experience.¡±

    Goliath nodded his head sternly. Of everyone here, he was probably the least affected by Skay¡¯s death. He¡¯d rarely interacted with him except for testing weapons and equipment. So he didn¡¯t really develop any kind of bond with the man and simply thought him some kind of Mad Old Wizard.

    He was also the one who wanted to go out into the world and test himself the most. There was also another reason which he never mentioned to anyone, but James was fairly certain there was someone he wanted to search for.

    Exsue, who spent millions of years trapped in the monolith, also wanted to get out and see the world again. She also believed that it would help James¡¯ mood if they got out of Tech City for a while.

    The least enthusiastic was Kelly, who hated the idea of leaving the lab where she didn¡¯t actually have to worry about anything and could sleep as much as she wanted and play with whatever she wanted. With the thought of having to go and actually do something, she decided to voice her objection.

    ¡°I can¡¯t go! I have too much to do! You¡¯re ... um ... ship thingy! I¡¯ve still got loads of work to do on that, and it would waste my time if I had to...¡±

    ¡°Denied.¡± James flatly refused.

    Amusingly, the next least enthusiastic was Fatty, who had many theories on what would happen if they left the city for an extended period of time. So far, apart from the endless forest, they¡¯d never left Tech City for more than a day at most.

    ¡°I can¡¯t go! I know that the overlords are out there watching, just waiting for a chance to pounce and take us away. If I have to go outside the city for more than a day, they¡¯ll surely...¡±

    ¡°Denied.¡± James once again flatly refused.

    Seeing no further objections, James smiled like the devil. ¡°Don¡¯t worry Fatty. With us around they¡¯ll probably be less likely to succeed, but if you stay here ... well, let¡¯s just say that a lot of spies from other nations have been slipping into the city lately. I¡¯ve told everyone that you¡¯re our new lead scientist and without the rest of us here, you¡¯ll most likely have disappeared before we even get to our destination. By the time we get back, you may be buried in a dark torture dungeon on the other side of the continent.

    ¡°And you Kelly. Well, you don¡¯t even have to do anything on this trip. You can just idle about and do whatever you like. If you stay here though, I¡¯ll give you very specific instructions for what I expect you to have finished by my return. If even one thing isn¡¯t complete, then I¡¯ll remind you of that time when we were studying for our apprenticeships, and I discovered what a Mega was.¡±

    Hearing this declaration, both Kelly and Fatty gave a shiver like they¡¯d just stepped in a cold puddle, then gulped in unison and nodded obediently. James¡¯ customary sinister smile spread from ear to ear.

    Finally, the ever curious about what James was up to Exsue, asked the question on everyone¡¯s minds. ¡°So, where are we going JayJay?¡±

    ¡°To the capital for starters. I have something to collect from the Dragon Vault. While in the city, you guys can just go about and sightsee or whatever. I don¡¯t really care. Then, we¡¯ll go and do some visiting. I want to explore the capital for a day or two before we leave.

    ¡°Our next adventure will be a return to the Black Lands. We¡¯re going to be harvesting some more space stones. After that, we¡¯re going to Nahtiro. Emily told me there¡¯s an alchemist there that can artificially create Spirit Jade. Unfortunately, he only takes on two apprentices every four years, that timeline will be 3 weeks from now, and most likely, it¡¯s going to be a bloodbath ... in a metaphorical sense.

    ¡°From what Emily¡¯s told me, this person spends a month testing the alchemy potential of his would be apprentices. The best two candidates will be apprenticed to him. This will be the only chance we have to get the formula. Well, unless we just storm the place.

    ¡°Which I doubt will be easy, seeing as he most likely keeps something so valuable with him and we have no way to take down a Tower Realm cultivator without excessive force, and most likely destroying the formula. Meanwhile, you lot, along with the Ghost team, will be infiltrating the three great nations. Your job will be to start a war.

    ¡°That¡¯s my plans. By the time we¡¯ve done all this, we¡¯ll only have a short while until the War of the Worlds, and all of us will be participating. We can¡¯t let these fellows have it easy. We all will be entering the competition as members of the Yori Empire. Any questions?¡±

    For once, the first reasonable question was voiced by Fatty. ¡°If we¡¯re pushing the three nations to go to war with each other, won¡¯t they all hold out until the tournament is over? If Yori wins, then won¡¯t they all decide to focus those war preparations on Yori?¡±

    James devilish smile returned, and he hunched over as a low rumbling chuckle echoed from his chest, and he pawed his hands together in a very maniacal and evil manner. ¡°Why does any country go to war Fatty? Heh heh heh haha haHAHAHA! You¡¯ll know when the time comes. HAHAHA!¡±

    As everyone, except Exsue who seemed to be having a blushing moment like she¡¯d just fallen in love, made disgusted faces like they¡¯d met some creepy pervert, James laughed most heartily and most evilly. He was still occasionally chuckling and rubbing his hands together in that creepy manner as he marched into his room leaving everyone to just sit in the office sharing worried glances.

    Even Jasmine, who could be said to be an occupant of James¡¯ own mind, wasn¡¯t sure what to make of this behaviour. When she returned to his spirit realm and asked Goldy, he smugly patted his chest while gallantly staring off into the distance. ¡°No need to worry Jasmine, sometimes, a man just needs to vent his frustrations on the world.¡±

    <hr>

    A Few days later, a new, slightly larger, modified version of the Velocity took off from Tech City. This Velocity Gunship was outfitted with rooms for the core members to live on the ship. All the space that it normally had in the back had been segregated and reinforced with 9 newly installed refurbished rooms.

    Now that Jasmine was a spirit, and mostly because she was trapped in James¡¯ spirit realm where he could keep an eye on her, he¡¯d given her the go-ahead to begin automating the weapons on the gunship. Much to the displeasure of the gun crew that normally operated the guns that rotated around the outsides of the ship.

    Luckily for them, they were given paid leave in Tech City to live it up like kings until the core members returned. At which point, they would be hired to man much bigger and far more frightening guns on the Mobile Base.

    Jasmine herself admitted that even though quantum entangled spirit particles, hereby referred to solely as Q-energy, transferred information instantly, it seemed to be subject to the surrounding primal/free energy saturation and her own cultivation.

    This meant that if they ever passed through an area very rich in primal energy, she¡¯d get fuzzy broken coms, which would affect the operation of the ship. That was why she insisted that the ship be properly crewed. Which from James¡¯ understanding, was the equivalent of nearly 100 members.

    Unless Jasmine/James were personally on board the ship, preventing interference, then the ship would be captained by Harvy, and crewed by members of the Guild.

    That, however, was far off in the future. This temporary moving base allowed for all the basic amenities. Meditation chambers with adjustable energy and pressure saturation. Well-furnished bedrooms. War-Room, which coincidentally had the round table dragged in here by Harvy. And a few other basic living commodities they¡¯d grown accustomed to.

    As the ship flew out of the city, James stood in the cockpit as Jasmine tried to teach him how to control the guns. Every now and then as they flew along, some poor bastard¡¯s barn would be blown to smithereens or some poor, defenceless, usually harmless creature, grazing in the fields and plains, would suddenly disappear into a flaming crater.

    It wasn¡¯t uncommon for a flock of birds to get a sudden fright when the green blur that was the Velocity shot past at supersonic speed and sucked half their flock through the Jet Turbines. It seemed to add at least 10 minutes to their short journey as Exsue purposely veered off course every now and then.

    James couldn¡¯t get mad at her, after all, he¡¯d just been ¡®accidentally¡¯ obliterating people¡¯s farm animals. Besides, this trip was to let everyone unwind for a bit and relax. If Exsue was relaxed by the sudden murderous suction of the Velocity Engines decimating a flock of cute little birds, who was he to tell her otherwise.

    Besides, he got a few chuckles out of it himself.

    -Yansho City-

    As they flew into the air space near Yansho City, they dropped their speed down to a mellow cruise. Three things stuck out as James surveyed the city ahead of them. The first thing was the flying creatures. There were hundreds of them everywhere, and all of them had someone on their back who was holding a set of reigns.

    This wasn¡¯t that surprising, because a great many visitors to Tech City fly in on birds. They then very quickly discover that Tech City has a clear air zone policy. In other words, only Brotherhood members and the security forces are allowed to fly within the city limits.

    The second thing James noticed was the number of buildings that had been built and were still being built that looked identical to those in Tech City. He remembered a while back that Jasmine had been selling design plans for the high rises. They even went one step further and agreed to sell the array patterns that stabilised the buildings.

    Amusingly, even with the array patterns, not many people knew how to decipher them. They only knew where the pattern had to go on the building. To make it worse, there was hardly anyone on the continent who had the same level of catalyst research as the Brotherhood, so these arrays made by others were weaker.

    They also didn¡¯t have the reactor cubes to power everything, so they instead had to set up a system where people would offload energy into the building. Surprisingly, the use of properly refined spirit energy boosted the efficiency of the arrays, but unfortunately, having so many different types of energy poured into it all day caused the array to weaken and decay faster.

    The third thing that caught James¡¯ eye was the sheer volume this city took up. From a glance at the edge of the city, it spanned onwards to the horizon. Which is saying a god damn lot, seeing as the horizon was a significantly longer distance away than earth¡¯s horizon would be.

    At the low altitude they were flying, he could just see the other side of the city. Which meant the city had to be more than 30 kilometres in radius. After a few more internal calculations, he guessed that the city had to have at least a million residents to be safely protected by the monolith.

    As they slowly flew into the city, a trio of men flying on the backs of Huge Black Hawk beasts flew up alongside the Velocity while yelling something. Exsue made a motion with her fingers, and the voice of the oldest man with white hair and bushy grey eyebrows rang across the bridge.

    ¡°Halt! Halt! You are flying an unregistered artefact! Land now and prepare to be inspected, by order of the Emperor¡¯s Dragon Guard!¡±

    Exsue started making a motion to slightly shift the Velocity over so the man was directly lined up with the Jet Turbine. Seeing Exsue preparing to test the structural integrity of the engines with a bird the size of a small car, James clapped her on the back of the head.

    ¡°Take us down Exsue. No need to start our first day in the capital by making enemies with the local enforcers. I¡¯m sure Artimus has told them to expect us at some point.¡±

    Exsue made a cute pout and then shook her arms a bit. In a matter of minutes, the Velocity curved around in the sky and landed on top of some slum houses on the outskirts of the city, crushing them into debris. James didn¡¯t hear any screaming as he walked down the lowered ramp, so thanked his lucky stars Exsue hadn¡¯t just killed someone.

    He couldn¡¯t help but let out a long sigh.

    Just as he reached the bottom of the ramp, the three Black Hawks landed in the centre of the dirty slum streets. The riders dismounted and approached warily. The lead guard just had the unpleasant experience of almost being sucked into the jet engine, and his displeasure was painted across his aged face.

    Following beside him were two younger guardsmen. One looked stern and disciplined, the other young and fresh faced. James could tell the new recruit was the arrogant type and crossed his fingers hoping the first action he took in the Emperor¡¯s city wasn¡¯t killing a City Guard.

    As the three approached, the other core members joined James at the base of the ramp. Seeing 7 people standing at the base of an unknown flying artefact giving off waves of True Spirit Realm power, the surrounding residents of this slum decided to back far away and observe from a distance.

    The Guard leader stepped up to only a few metres away from James and looked over his crew one by one. He then looked back to James and grunted. ¡°Passports!¡±

    James shared a look with his compatriots. He then glanced suspiciously at the Guard and then at the surroundings. Finally, with a frown, he focused back on the lead Guard. ¡°Passports? Who the fuck has a passport in this day and age? Do you walk around these slums asking residents of the dodgy wooden houses for their passports?¡±

    The Guard was taken aback momentarily. He then frowned slightly and released his Palace Realm pressure. To his great surprise, there was no reaction at all from the 7 people standing on the ramp. Kelly even went so far as to yawn, then with complete disregard turned around and walked back into the ship.

    Exsue then grabbed James¡¯ arm and bit his shoulder. ¡°Don¡¯t take too long Jay Jay! I want to visit the Nexus!¡±

    She then disappeared along the corridor of the ship this ramp extended from. Goliath, in the hope of getting to battle, stuck around and just grunted like a savage. Harvy, being captain of this ship, also chose to stick around.

    Fatty, seeing that there was already enough people for an even battle, chose to withdraw to his room and finish eating ... whatever it was that he could eat.

    Seeing the complete disregard shown for him, and most especially because it was shown right after he¡¯d used his spirit pressure, the guard leader¡¯s face fell into a scowl. Before he even had the chance to make a move, a 3D hologram was projected off the ship between the two parties.

    After a moment, the hologram changed from a fuzzy static into the shape and form of Rex. Seeing Rex suddenly appear out of no-where, the trio of Guards stepped back a moment. However, they didn¡¯t drop into a kneeling bow, because they didn¡¯t trust some strange magic created by the flying artefact.

    Once the hologram solidified somewhat, Rex turned to James with a big grin. ¡°Haha! James you scoundrel! I haven¡¯t spoken to you since I gave you the location of that tower realm lightning beast. Did you have any luck in your attempts to capture it?¡±

    James smiled wryly. ¡°I¡¯m afraid not Rex. The beast we found wasn¡¯t even close to tower realm.¡±

    Rex frowned slightly and scratched the blonde goatee that was now growing on his chin. ¡°Is that so? I¡¯m sorry James. I¡¯ll try and find another one. I had it on good authority that beast was above the palace realm. Tell you what. I¡¯ll start asking around and see if we can find another one.¡±

    James smiled at this reply. Rex was clearly either a very good liar, or he truly didn¡¯t know. Either way, James wasn¡¯t too worried about it. If Rex had been planning to kill him, he¡¯d most likely have made more than one move.

    ¡°It¡¯s fine Rex. I don¡¯t know what realm that beast was in, but it was well beyond tower realm and served my purposes perfectly. That¡¯s not why I called you up though. I¡¯ve got a few Guard¡¯s here that are seeking passports? Are passports even a thing?¡±

    The hologram of Rex turned around and eyed the three Guards. Seeing the leader, Rex smiled. ¡°Oh? Hang Sou? You trying to rough up the rich looking visitors again? I¡¯ll vouch for these fellows. Give them a flight pass and let them into the city.¡±

    Seeing the hologram speaking to them directly, Hang Sou, the leader of the guards, frowned slightly. He then smiled viscously. ¡°I¡¯m afraid that I can¡¯t confirm your identity sir. If you are the young Prince, please forgive me, but simply seeing some apparition created by a strangers artefact isn¡¯t evidence enough.¡±

    He then reached to his hip and drew his sword while speaking to the other two Guards. ¡°Captcha these scum. They dare impersonate the Crown Prince! If they resist, kill them!¡±

    With that said, he launched through the projection of Rex while swinging his sword, fuelled with water spirit energy, directly towards James.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    Rex and James both gave an audible sigh at the same moment. James suddenly blurred and reappeared behind the charging Hang Sou. Rex¡¯s image turned back to see this and sighed again. ¡°I¡¯m sorry James. I still haven¡¯t been able to clean house of those from my brother¡¯s camp. Unfortunately, you may have to kill these fellows. I¡¯ll take responsibility.¡±

    Hearing that directly from Rex, James¡¯ face warped into a twisted smile. Hang Sou spun around and darted back towards James while flipping the top off his canteen. Meanwhile, Goliath had already engaged the arrogant looking fellow and Harvy had led the disciplined bloke away a little.

    As James blurred again and danced around Hang Sou, he spoke with Rex. ¡°It¡¯s fine Rex. We¡¯ll be visiting for a few day¡¯s while I stop in at the dragon vault. We should catch up sometime when I¡¯m done.¡±

    With that, Jasmine closed the connection and the projection of Rex faded away. James then turned his full focus onto Hang Sou. He¡¯d never actually personally fought another Palace Realm cultivator. Normally, he just allowed them to walk into a slug from an arc cannon. He¡¯d killed palace realm spirit beasts, but those creatures were dull and stupid.

    Before now, James was reticent to directly battle a Palace Realm cultivator. But after the strange deviation when he merged spirit realms with Jasmine, he felt he had the qualifications to keep this man at bay if not directly defeat him.

    With that thought in mind, he jumped back a few paces and readied himself by reaching to his back and extracting the now ever present scimitar that had been wielded by Latsoe. The moment it left the sheath it had sat in, a strange vibration spread in the surrounding spirit energy.

    Even other cultivators could feel the sudden strange change in pressure. James swung the scimitar around a few times experimentally, then dropped into a combat stance and beckoned for Hang Sou to attack.

    Seeing a True Spirit Realm pup goading him into battle, Hang Sou could hardly contain his humiliation and rage. He flicked his long thin sword around a few times, and then suddenly launched towards James. James sped up the rotation of his hands of time breathing technique and released wind lightning and fire energies into his body simultaneously.

    With the constant practice in his breathing technique, and the strange deviation created by Jasmine¡¯s introduction to his spirit realm, James had reached the stage that he could maintain 3 elements permanently and up to 5 energies for about half an hour. 4 energies was about 1 hour.

    In this situation though, he planned to test himself. As such, he limited his release of energy. The lightning empowered his mind and sped up his perception and thought processes. The wind reduced his weight and quickened reaction speeds. The fire energy gave him explosive power and heat resistance.

    In addition, Wind and Fire energy was the basis of the Scimitar he now held. The moment Hang Sou launched forwards to strike with his sword, James filled the scimitar with fire and wind. As Hang Sou swung his sword down towards James¡¯ neck, James flicked the scimitar around and created a whirlwind of fire reaching a dozen metres into the air and blocking off any view of him within.

    The moment Hang Sou¡¯s blade touched the edge of the flame whirlwind, James scimitar flicked out from within and deflected it. In the same moment his blade was deflected, Hang Sou had launched a series of water bullets from his canteen.

    A sudden puff of steam spread out from the flaming tornado and covered everything. Visibility dropped to almost nothing and the flame tornado was interrupted and dissipated. When Hang Sou swung his blade again at the location James had been, it passed through nothing but air.

    Then Hang Sou saw James standing a few feet back, surrounded by the mist and steam, smiling like the devil. The whole reason Hang Sou had used this technique was because he could use his spirit energy to detect the interaction between the water particles in the air and any objects moving through it.

    To his great displeasure, James remained invisible within the mist. If anything, the mist seemed to be circling around and hiding him away from sight. The only way something like this was possible was if James also had water element.

    Before he had a chance to wrap his mind around that notion, he felt the strong sense of death and a powerful killing intent descend from behind him. He spun with his sword in a defensive posture, just in time to deflect the lightning fast strike of James¡¯ scimitar.

    With that brief moment of contact, a wave of flames poured out from the scimitar. Hang Sou was forced to use more water from his canteen. As he poured another rain of water bullets into the flame wave, he forced as much water spirit energy through his meridians and into the canteen as he possibly could.

    Slowly, more water seemed to materialise out of nothing and fill the canteen again. Although this seemed useful, the materialisation of spirit energy was incredibly exhaustive on people that didn¡¯t have an artefact that assisted the process and even more so if they didn¡¯t understand how to use their Spirit Pressure to enforce their will on the universe around them.

    In this case, Hang Sou¡¯s canteen was just normal. Although he could sense the sudden fluctuation of killing intent that came from James when he was about to strike, that came from years of subconscious training and being alert. It wasn¡¯t a result of actually understanding anything about Spirit Pressure or Intent.

    James on the other hand, had both an artefact that assisted his materialisation of fire from his energy, and also had a rudimentary understanding of Spirit Pressure. Unfortunately, this was the first time he¡¯d done battle with anyone that had such a honed sense for killing intent, and was at a loss as to what exactly was going on.

    Nonetheless, with the sudden increase of steam and mist in the air, James once again disappeared in a swirling cloud. Using his levitating steps, which was basically making himself light as a feather to eliminate noise, James circled around again.

    Using his Scrying, he saw everything Hang Sou did within the mists. At the same time, he released a steady, controlled spirit pressure into his immediate surroundings that froze Hang Sou¡¯s energy particles and prevented him from using them to detect James¡¯ movements.

    After circling around for a while, James once again attacked. Once more, a split second before the strike had even left the dense mists into Hang Sou¡¯s line of sight, Hang Sou was reacting. James began to realise there was something drastically wrong with this scenario, but no matter how much he Scryed Hang Sou, he couldn¡¯t find any clues as to how he was detecting him.

    James then ramped up his speed to maximum, and like a ghost in the night flittered through the fog. His attacks then began to increase. They rose rapidly from one or two every few seconds to one or two every second and then got even faster at a continuous onslaught from every direction.

    If nothing else, he was rapidly wearing out Hang Sou¡¯s spirit energy by making him constantly refill his canteen.

    James¡¯ attacks then lulled slightly and went through ups and downs, sometimes attacking a hundred times in a minute or other times attacking only once or twice. Finally, James discovered something odd when he, like an idiot, tripped on a rock in the middle of his attack.

    The first strike to actually hit Hang Sou wasn¡¯t even deliberate. It was entirely accidental because James had tripped slightly and fallen forwards.

    When James noticed this, he backed away from Hang Sou and started probing him with long distance attacks. He flicked the scimitar about and launched an endless serious of wind blades through the mist. Once he began doing this, he found that the further he was when he launched the attack, the more unlikely Hang Sou was to intercept it fully.

    By the time he¡¯d done some testing, Hang Sou was covered in scratches and cuts. He tried to wave a hand and force all the water in the air to re-condense or move away, only to have a wave of fire come from out of nowhere and evaporate it all into a cloud of steam again. It was then trapped here by James¡¯ spirit pressure and just mulled about reducing Hang Sou¡¯s sight.

    Finally, James had an idea and backed a good 100 metres away from Hang Sou. Then, with all his might, he infused nearly a quarter of his energy reserves into the scimitar. Using his newly discovered magnetism, he then lined it up, and launched it like a bullet into the mist.

    Moments later, a loud scream was heard from the mist and James smiled like a demon. With a wave of the hand, the mist cleared and revealed Hang Sou impaled through the back by the scimitar. Also, his body was covered in strange burns and had smoke rising from him everywhere.

    James retrieved his Scimitar and returned to the ship to find Kelly excitedly encouraging the Black Hawks to board it. He smiled wryly and moved inside. Moments later, Goliath walked in, covered from head to toe in blood and carrying the very expensive looking sword the arrogant man had been wearing on his waist. He also carried a flight pass which he gave to James.

    Harvy naturally didn¡¯t take a souvenir and simply boarded while wiping the blood from his scythe.

    Once again, the group set off toward the inner city.

    -Yansho Inner City-

    Taking a page from Tech City¡¯s book, the inner city of Yansho now had towering skyscrapers everywhere. Unfortunately, they hadn¡¯t unlocked the technology of controlled spirit energy reactors similar to Tech City, so the height they built to was somewhat more conservative.

    In the centre of the city was a tall hill that was entirely occupied by the royal palace. At the base of the hill was an old temple nearly 100 metres in height and very much similar to designs of a Mayan temple. Once they entered the airspace of the palace, hundreds of guards flew up to surround them on Black Hawks.

    Some of them had even stranger looking mounts. It appeared a few were even flying something similar to wyverns. These Guards, which were presumably Captains or Generals, appeared to be having some difficulty controlling their mounts the moment they got more than a few hundred metres from the Velocity.

    The wyverns refused to approach closer than that and roared violently at any effort by their rider to encourage them closer. In the Gunship, Exsue was laughing madly while making strange, very quiet roaring sounds now and then.

    James immediately noticed a connection and once again slapped the back of Exsue¡¯s head. ¡°Play nice Exsue. You can have fun with the flying lizards later.¡±

    Exsue complied with a sour pout and brought the ship into land at the base of the mountain in a big courtyard next to a huge golden gate.

    James strolled out from the ship and met the 4 wyvern riding Guards. Each one was aged and dressed in golden and purple armour. Each one looked ancient and gave off the sensation of a tower realm expert, and their armour and weapons were clearly even more ancient. James restrained his curiosity to Scry these people, remembering the Emperors warnings from the last time around.

    He gave a simple salute to the men, to which they showed no reaction whatsoever. James was starting to wonder just what was going on when Rex came out from the golden gate with a large retinue of nobles and influential individuals.

    He moved up and grabbed James by the shoulders while smiling broadly. ¡°I hope you didn¡¯t have any further troubles on your journey here. After your call, I sent out the message to avoid intercepting you until you arrived here. I hope you don¡¯t mind, but we can¡¯t let you fly on the mountain. It¡¯s bound to create trouble for the both of us if you act so accustomed.¡±

    James smiled after hearing this. He understood the undertones of the message. ¡®We¡¯re being watched and if we let you do whatever you like, people are going to start getting ideas.¡¯ After a brief handshake and introductions, James and his fellow members followed Rex onto the palace grounds while being escorted by a meandering bunch of royals trying to introduce themselves.

    Following behind them was the retinue of Guards that stopped them in flight. As they walked away from the ship, James sent a mental command and the hatchway of the ship closed. Then a series of lights began to circle around the ship like search lights, and the turrets circled in the opposite direction.

    Once they¡¯d reached about half way up the hill and while Rex was pointing out palaces and mansions that dotted the roads, a loud siren wailed from the base of the hill. Everyone turned back to see red lights and turret cannons all focused on a group of people trying to approach the ship.

    As the siren wailed, Jasmine¡¯s voice came over the speaker of the ship. ¡°Please stand back. Unauthorised access to this ship will be met with the death penalty. Please stand back. Unauthori...¡±

    James smiled wryly as he watched that suspicious group of blokes slowly back away from the ship. Even from this distance, James could see them dragging bags of notebooks and strange artefacts. They clearly had intentions of trying to investigate the Velocity while its occupants were busy.

    Since Jasmine shared James¡¯ spirit realm, and he could instantly talk to her in there, she opted to have the Guild Seal, or in other words, herself, left in the ship. This allowed her to babysit the ship until they returned.

    Rex just chuckled awkwardly as he glanced over at James. ¡°Sorry about that James. Can¡¯t blame a guy for being curious.¡±

    The fact that Rex readily admitted to this being his ploy only surprised James for a moment. He then chuckled and continued on up the mountain. ¡°It¡¯s fine Rex. After all, I would have probably done the same thing. By the way, where is this Dragon Vault anyway?¡±

    Rex sighed a tense breath and followed along. ¡°It¡¯s in the Palace actually. It¡¯s not well known, but the Dragon Vault is actually on the other side of a Gateway. No one knows what world the gateway leads to because it comes out deep underground. Every time someone has tried to dig to the surface of the world they leave and never return.¡±

    James cupped his chin in thought. ¡°Perhaps, it¡¯s a universe where Earth covers the vast emptiness of space and what should be planets are instead empty hollow spaces. I would be interested in seeing such a wondrous thing.¡±

    Rex seemed momentarily shocked by the concept. He then glanced over at James. ¡°James, you¡¯re not some astronomy cultivator are you?¡±

    ¡°Astronomy cultivator?¡±

    Rex looked at the sky for a moment as if deciding whether or not to mention it. He then glanced over at James again and started to explain as he continued up the hill. ¡°It¡¯s a type of cultivation deviation. It doesn¡¯t rely on the natural elements of the world and instead draws its energy from the countless stars of the night sky and the endless void of space. As a deviation though, it¡¯s highly frowned upon.¡±

    James was shocked for a moment. ¡°What do you mean frowned upon?¡±

    ¡°Well, on the continent of Atsunari, there are legends that speak of an ancient council of wise cultivators that once worked in tandem with the Ancient One. The Ancient One was the most powerful cultivator Ascension Star has ever seen, and the stories say that he was a deviator.

    ¡°He cultivated a different path from the majority of everyone else. When he ascended into the next realm, the powers that were left behind outlawed deviators across the planet. Because the Ancient One was so powerful, they were forced to acquiesce their assistance to him. After he had left though, they made a system to prevent it from ever happening again.

    ¡°Of course, they don¡¯t particularly care about a weak little nation like ours. But if you are a deviator and you ever rose to the higher echelons of the world, they would seek you out and destroy you to avoid ever losing their positions as the most powerful again.¡±

    James stopped in his tracks and stared off into the Sky. The Wizard, The Monk. He felt that these two great powers were definitely from this council of wise men. He was certain though that ... he had long since deviated from the norm. Hell, he was certain that Goldy was a deviation and the wizard actually met him.

    Finally, his feet moved on as he smiled. ¡°You know, I think those stories may be just that. Stories.¡±

    Rex gave him another curious glance, then continued pointing at buildings and telling James about them.

    -Dragonheart Palace - Throne Room-

    James and his companions strode into the throne room of the empire and were greeted by a crowd of reputable and powerful people. Politicians, businessmen, royals. People from all sorts of factions and powers in the empire were there.

    James found the whole thing incredibly suspicious. For starters, what the hell were all these people doing here? James only came for the Dragon Vault, but all these strangers appeared to have come along for some other reason.

    As they were announced to the hall and stood in front of the emperor, the palace became quite as if everyone was expecting something. James and his companions all simply stood there looking at the flashy furnishings of the palace, they then started exploring while everyone watched on, horrified at their total lack of decorum.

    Fatty was already off to one side eating something, Harvy was trying to touch flowers only to see them immediately wither and die. Exsue was chasing the royal cat around the palace hall, and Kelly was inspecting the weapon of one of the generals.

    Jessy seemed to be flirting with a soldier, who despite his best efforts couldn¡¯t stop himself being drawn in. Goliath had simply sat on the grand red carpet and begun cultivating, and James was still looking around accessing the situation.

    Seeing every looking at them like they were barbarians, James made a confused face then glanced around. He then noticed the smell, looked down and noticed the smudge of some animals shit on his boot. He then made a big production out of wiping it into the carpet.

    It wasn¡¯t just on the carpet, he seemed to be making an effort to grind it in their real deep like. Once he was happy with his handy work, he produced a small canteen and used water energy to thoroughly wash his shoe before stepping back onto a clean part of the red carpet.

    He then gave a rather sloppy bow to the Emperor, who sat on his throne staring down at this sideshow of characters with disdain. Seeing this display of total disrespect, the royal soldiers prepared to step forward and act.

    The Emperor simply waved his hand and they froze in place. Or at least most of them did. One of the guards stomped forward and raised his sword. ¡°You vile scum! How dare you tarnish the empires reputation with your feral...¡±

    Before he finished his statement, and when he was only a few feet away from James, a sudden burst of intense spirit pressure fell on the hall. It was mostly focused directly around James and was powerful enough to drop this palace realm practitioner to his knees. Within a metre of James was almost 40 m/s<sup>2</sup> of acceleration being applied to every single particle.

    That¡¯s about 4 times normal gravity, and enough to make an 80-kilo man suddenly weigh 320 kilos. Even a tower realm cultivator would have trouble resisting that force. The only thing preventing James and his companions from being affected was their rings, which muted the effects.

    That said, the amulet that was creating this effect was very rapidly depleting its power. In the mere second after its activation, it had already burnt through an eighth of its energy.

    Before an uproar could even begin, James scimitar flashed like lightning and returned to its sheath. In the same moment the clink of it returning rang out, the head of the palace realm guard fell to the floor and pressure from the amulet disappeared.

    For everyone in the True Spirit realm, this happened instantly, and was almost impossible for them to track. It just looked like the man fell to his knee and a sudden strange beam of light had appeared, and the man was dead.

    Everyone else above that realm, which was more than half this throne room, sensed just how powerful that sudden force near James was, and all saw James returning the scimitar to its sheath. Only the very few tower realms had actually witnessed him even swinging the blade let alone drawing it.

    Silence reigned supreme ... until the Emperor decided to take back the reigns and spoke. ¡°My apologies James, it seems, some people don¡¯t yet know the nature of our relationship or your true status. It appears some of my guards are yet to be informed.¡±

    James stared hard at the emperor, smelling a suspicious plot. He now had two choices, he could deny everything, which most likely would result in the Emperor taking it as an injustice to the imperial court and surrounding and executing James and his companions.

    Or alternatively, he could play along, which potentially had either terrible or good ramifications. It all fell on just how much he could trust Artimus. Most likely, Artimus was planning something and fully intended to use James in this situation to achieve some goal.

    Deciding that he needed more information first, James decided to play along. ¡°It¡¯s fine Arty. The man has paid for his indiscretions with his life and is the only one at fault for failing to read the atmosphere.¡±

    Artimus smiled like a wily fox and stood up from his throne. ¡°Very well, though I¡¯d have preferred there not be any blood spilt on such a grand day as today, some things can¡¯t be helped. Ladies and Gentlemen of Yori, it is my pleasure to announce that James and I have agreed to the annexation of Tech City and the surrounding 100 kilometres of land.

    ¡°In exchange, James has agreed to take part in the upcoming War of the Worlds tournament as the representative of my Empire. We both agreed that our empire is surrounded on all sides and never know when we could be used as the battlegrounds of the three great nations.

    ¡°As such, James is hereby granted permission from this Emperor to annexe the first Free City seen in Atsunari for the last 100,000 years.¡±

    Artimus then walked down from his position on the throne and shook James¡¯ hand while handing him a parchment stating almost the exact same thing as he had just said.

    James smiling took the parchment and shook the Emperor¡¯s hand. He was trapped somewhat. This ploy was clearly a means to create distance between the empire and his Brotherhood. It allowed James to have a reason to represent his Empire in the upcoming tournament and also gave him the opportunity to make him into a scapegoat if anything went wrong.

    Not only that, the empire was most likely facing a great deal of pressure from numerous factions to be allowed to move troops towards Tech City. The only problem with allowing that would be that the city technically belonged to the empire.

    If Artimus agreed to allow troops to siege a city inside the borders of his land, not only the public, but the higher echelons of the political structure would begin to doubt him. By annexing Tech City, the 100 km around it were appropriately no longer owned by the Empire, and the Empire had rarely prevented anyone from travelling through their territory to another one.

    Mostly because they sat in a strange stalemate between the three great nations and no one would ever bother attacking the Yori Empire to take its tiny bit of land unless they were sure they could hold back the other two nations.

    James was now in a pickle. Tech City was now independent of the Empire and could no longer rely on the cursory treaties and stalemates of Yori to protect him. At the same time, he had now openly accepted that he would represent the Yori Empire at the tournament, which he¡¯d already planned to do, but he was now no longer a member of the Empire and afforded no protections from them.

    This created a situation where the Yori Empire had politically washed their hands of him and his guilds, while still employing them as mercenaries. If someone attacked Tech City and wiped out his guild, then the War of the Worlds wouldn¡¯t matter, the three nations would never go to war, and Yori Empire would simply retake the city allowing the normal stalemate and quite of the continent to return to normal.

    If Tech City managed to defend itself, then the War of the Worlds would happen, Yori Empire would be assured their chance to rise up and take the land of the three great nations and protect it, and James would only be a contractor that they could cut ties with and throw to the dogs if things got too messy.

    James looked the Emperor in the eye with an eerie and disgusting smile painted on his face. Just looking at it, Artimus got a chill down his spine and had the strange sensation he¡¯d just stepped in a pile of crap, which he both literally and figuratively had.

    He¡¯d now pissed James off with his little political games, and also just stepped in the crap James had spent a good deal of effort stamping into the red carpet.

    Once this little ceremony was over, James followed Artimus off to the vault as his companions left to explore the town. Harvy offered to return to his ship and take command while Jasmine returned to James¡¯ spirit realm.

    As they travelled down the dark halls and endless flights of stairs into the depths of the mountain, Artimus felt the unnatural smiling eyes of James peering at the back of his head and very slowly drilling directly into his brain.

    As they walked, he gave a bashful cough to remove the awkward silence. ¡°Ahem! Allow me to apologise for springing that on you James. As a leader yourself, I¡¯m sure you understand why I did what I did. I must protect my Empire at any cost.¡±

    James continued to smile with his eyes closed into slits as he continued to stare. Then he spoke in a somewhat light-hearted but condescending tone.

    ¡°Oh? It¡¯s fine Arty. I certainly do understand. Don¡¯t worry, I won¡¯t take it personally. However, have you considered what¡¯s going to happen once everything is over? You surely can¡¯t be expecting the rest of the continent to lay down as you fortify yourself with a huge swath of land and lick your wounds.

    ¡°Perhaps not now, or maybe not even in 100 years, but eventually, everyone will wake up and realise that without me, your empire would return to nothing. What will you do when you¡¯ve secured some land, and then the whole continent turns against you?

    ¡°I won¡¯t be able to step in and help. After all, I¡¯m the director of a free city right? I have to consider the lives of my people right? I certainly hope that by the end of your war, you have someone capable of stepping up in the next War of the Worlds to take first place. Otherwise, you may be forced to defend your nation from every side.

    ¡°I hope your people haven¡¯t grown too soft living in their little cage these past few thousand years.¡±

    Before the Emperor could finish considering all this, James distracted from the topic of conversation. ¡°So how did your family name become Dragonheart anyway? Your ancestor slay a dragon?¡±

    Seeing the sudden change in topic as a lifeboat from all the unpleasant thoughts James had been feeding into his head, Artimus began to tell the story of how the Gateway deep under this hill led to the dragons den of another world.

    The dragon would come to this world and leave the mountain to hunt and collect valuable spirit artefacts and resources. Then it would return to the Gateway, and it¡¯s lair on the other side, where it stored its horde. Then a powerful cultivator, who was Arty¡¯s ancestor, came to this place thinking it a good place to cultivate.

    Naturally, a battle ensued when he discovered the dragon. When the battle ended, his ancestor was fatally wounded and dying. In order to preserve his life, he took the heart of the dragon he¡¯d slain and put it in himself.

    From then on, all his descendants were born with the innate talent of metal affinity, and his clan became the powerful Dragonheart Clan.

    With the power of such a rare talent being innate and born with every generation, the clan naturally quickly grew stronger. By the time the ancestor died, he¡¯d united the nations nearby and created the Yori Empire. Unfortunately, he died before he could use the power he gained from the dragon heart to expand the empire and take land from the three nations.

    James pondered on this story for a while and eventually filed it away under fairy tale. He figured that the metal affinity this family had was naturally thanks to the belief that they could unlock it, and not some gift stolen by taking a dragon¡¯s heart.

    By the end of the story, James found himself standing in a huge underground hall nearly 200 metres long and wide. At the front of the hall was a massive gate spanning half the height and width of the hall, covered with murals depicting the history of the Dragonheart¡¯s ancestor from birth till death.

    James watched on as Artimus made a series of hand movements then pushed out a hand towards the door. James felt a release of spirit pressure that was quite well directed and then a rumble spread through the hall as the massive gate creaked and groaned, opening to show a huge black and red ... pool.

    It looked like the wall was actually a pool that somehow managed to defy gravity, and sat directly on the wall behind the gate.

    The water within the pool was filled with strange black and red colours spinning around and forming odd patterns. James was stunned. ¡®Is this supposed to be what a gateway looks like?¡¯ He thought to himself.

    Artimus, seeing this behaviour, smiled knowingly. ¡°Never seen a gateway before? Don¡¯t worry, they¡¯re not all like this one. Most Gateways are invisible, except perhaps to your kind. Scryer¡¯s that is. Don¡¯t know why this one is like this ... perhaps because of the dragon or some other reason. Well, it doesn¡¯t matter too much. On the other side is the Dragon Vault, where we keep our all our clan¡¯s treasures and knowledge.

    ¡°Remember, you can¡¯t bring anything out with you. Oh ... and don¡¯t touch the guardian. It knows you¡¯re coming, but it¡¯s not particularly happy about it. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll understand if it decides to show itself.¡±

    With that, James felt the sudden force of the Emperors boot on his back, and was launched like bullet into the gateway, leaving behind nothing but a splash and a few ripples.

 Chapter 41: The Dragon Vault

    -Dragon Vault-

    Deep in the underground of a world that spanned the distance of countless suns, lay a vast expansive cave network. This cave network stretched out and crisscrossed through the entire planet. It had caves as big as the entire planet of Ascension.

    In a shallow part of this cave system, far and distant from any other underground caves, was a relatively tiny cavern. This cave spanned only a few hundred kilometres and was carved entirely from a shiny black rock.

    In the centre of the cave was a grand temple that filled only a few kilometres in height, length and width. In a room of this temple was a wall that had a great big red pool filled with swirling red water that defied gravity.

    The room, and the entire temple, were shrouded in the pitch black darkness of the underground. However, strangely, torches mounted on walls, both inside and outside the temple, started to magically light up and bathed the temple in flickering light.

    Moments after, a body was launched out of the red pool and slid half way across the room using its face as its breaks. When it finally came to a stop, the person stood up and started dusting his clothes off and wiped the blood rushing from his nose and lip.

    This person was naturally James, who had been launched through the gateway by a firm kick in the bum from Artimus.

    Once he¡¯d assessed himself and his surroundings, James released his scrying field. Moments later, a strange expression crossed his face as he started mumbling. ¡°humph! That devious old goat! No wonder he had no problems with sending us here. Something in this place is blocking my scrying field.¡±

    After a few more attempts to release his scrying field, only to have it fizzle out the moment it touched one of the pitch black walls, James flicked his hand. Naturally, James had made a primitive storage ring after the others had made a trip to the black lands.

    With simply an instant of targeting his scrying field on it, he pulled out 10 little metal balls which magically appeared in his hand. These balls were about the size of a ping pong ball, and their surfaces were filled with intricate array carvings.

    Jasmine immediately took control of these little machines, and they all began to lightly glow and hover up into the air letting off a little hum as they started buzzing around the room and releasing a bright light.

    They then released a little ¡®ping¡¯ sound and flew off out of the room to begin exploring the temple.

    Meanwhile, James focused on his spirit realm. Standing in an empty space was Jasmine, who was walking around waving her arms at the blank white space that was the ground of the spirit realm. With every wave of her arm, the shape of the room they were in began to take shape. Not only that, but refined spirit energies were used to create an accurate depiction of areas that had strange or high readings of spirit energy.

    For example, apart from the doorway that leads to the hallway, which the little balls had buzzed out of, there was a door shape made from fire energy on a blank wall. This was thanks to the use of San¡¯s Eye crystals in the little drones that allowed them to see spirit particles.

    Not only could these little drones see spirit energy particles, but they could also map things out with a little ultrasonic sound wave. This was very similar to how a submarine would ping things in the water, instead it was refined to an absurd degree of accuracy and used by Jasmine to map out a 3D image of the world around the little drones.

    Slowly, more and more of the temple was mapped out. They found a huge library filled with books and spirit jades. A room stockpiled with ancient spirit artefacts and weapons. A courtyard with an old cherry blossom tree and all sorts of other oddities.

    After a few hours of this, Jasmine had eventually mapped out the entire temple, and her little drones had buzzed off into the huge expanse of the world outside the temple. Unfortunately, these things weren¡¯t designed to be fast, and it would take them days to travel the hundreds of kilometres to reach the edges of this bizarre black cavern.

    As James stood up to begin exploring, he noticed that the spirit energy of this temple was very thick. However, instead of primal spirit energy, the energy of the temple was almost entirely metal based free energy.

    After a brief inspection using his scrying field limited to only a few meters, James discovered that the primal energy in the area was all being drawn toward the walls and very quickly was refined and released as metal free energy.

    The only way this was possible was if the walls were made entirely from ore essence. That¡¯s the only natural forming materials that could refine primal energy so quickly, and it was also the only material that could release such a thick amount of free energy into the atmosphere.

    James¡¯ breathing grew heavy and laboured at the thought of how much ore essence must have been used to construct such a huge temple. As he thought about this, he decided that he wasn¡¯t going to follow the Emperor¡¯s command to not take anything from the vault.

    No matter what, he was going to be leaving this realm with his storage ring filled to the brim.

    However, after remembering that there is supposed to be a guardian, James chose to hold back for the moment and he would ... appropriate some resources before he left. This in mind, James strolled out of the room he was in and began making his way towards the library room, which was conveniently rather close to the portal room.

    As he walked in, he stared in awe at the towering shelves that spanned hundreds of metres all around him. Curiously, the library wasn¡¯t empty. There were dozens of aged old scholarly types mulling around reading ancient scrolls and quietly muttering to each other.

    The moment he noticed these people, they too noticed him. Instantly everything froze as the two parties eyed one another curiously. Before any misunderstandings could be made, an ancient old man in blue robes walked out from a row of shelves while distractedly muttering to himself and reading. Following this old man was an adorable little lizard about the size of a small dog.

    Noticing the strange atmosphere, the old man glanced over and saw James. Then, as if suddenly struck by thunder, he seemed to jerk violently, and understanding washed the confusion from his eyes. ¡°Ah! Oh! Errr ... You¡¯re here already? I thought you weren¡¯t meant to be here until next year.¡±

    James was now rather confused. In his spirit realm, he was berating Jasmine for failing to inform him that there were people here. She just brushed it aside and said; ¡°Well it would be natural for people to be here wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    Meanwhile, out in the real world, James gave a salute to the ancient old man. ¡°This Junior is James of the Dark Brotherhood. Greetings to senior.¡± For a rare change, James showed some respect to a senior cultivator. He didn¡¯t bow, as was normal decorum, but he spoke formally, which was rare for him.

    This was because the ancient old man in front of him was invisible to him cultivation wise. That meant one of two things. Either he was a scryer and could hide himself from other people, or his cultivation was so high that James¡¯ attempts to read his power level were just brushed off like dust on the man¡¯s sleeve. That could only mean that this man, whoever he was, had to be one of those ancient Core realm existences that the Emperor had told him about.

    The old man just waved his hand and strode over towards James. ¡°I am Gertrude Dragonheart, the lead researcher and I suppose ex-Emperor. I don¡¯t know what that little brat has been doing to my Ancestors Empire out there, and I don¡¯t care what he¡¯s promised you. You go back out there and tell him that only people with the blood of the dragon can come into my temple!¡±

    With that, the old man made a motion to grab at James. Suddenly, and to his great surprise, Gertrude¡¯s hand was met with a huge force that even made him exert his full force to counteract it. As if trying to push his hand through an immovable substance, Gertrude¡¯s hand froze only inches away from James.

    James was frozen solid in place. Despite his efforts, he couldn¡¯t move even a millimetre. Gertrude¡¯s pressure had locked him in place, despite his ring deflecting most of it. This stalemate only lasted for a second or two until a ¡®chink¡¯ sound rang out, and the amulet on his neck cracked like an old plate.

    At the same time, James¡¯s spirit energy and spirit pressure both rushed into the ring, and his body suddenly blurred from its position creating a phantom image. A split second later, Gertrude¡¯s body also vanished, and suddenly reappeared in the doorway to the library in the same instant as James.

    This time, without the amulet creating a spirit pressure to hold him back, Gertrude¡¯s hand reached out and grabbed onto James¡¯ shoulder like a vice. James felt cold sweat pouring down his back, however, just as quickly as that vice like grip came, it was gone. Gertrude¡¯s unnaturally powerful spirit pressure also dissipated and James felt free movement return.

    Very confused with this situation, James glanced back and saw Gertrude and a few tower realm old men all investigating two items that had suddenly appeared on the table in the middle of the library. One of them was James¡¯ ring, which, although cracked, was still operational. The other item was the 3 parts of the cracked amulet that James had been wearing.

    James glanced at his hand and touched his neck. Realising he¡¯d just been robbed, James felt indignation rising in his chest. Before he had the chance to escape and plan his revenge however, Gertrude distractedly reached out a hand towards James and grabbed at the air.

    James then felt the old man¡¯s spirit pressure solidify around him like a giant hand and grasp him. Moments later, he shot through the air and appeared suspended like a puppet next to the table.

    To say James was a little confused and fearful of the direction this trip was heading would be an understatement. His face had long since assumed the blank empty expression he made when he was unsure of a situation, and his mind had fired up to its maximum as it began trying to plan his escape.

    Gertrude looked at the amulet and then glanced over at James. ¡°Boy, what is this artefact? To freeze me for an entire 3 seconds, it must be some kind of ancient life-saving device of a powerful sect. Tell me boy, who are you really?¡±

    James made a gulp when he saw a strange, fanatical light appear in the man¡¯s eyes. He then considered carefully and decided that in this situation, he probably wouldn¡¯t get away with telling lies. ¡°My guild created it! It¡¯s design and manufacture is hardly a few months old.¡±

    Gertrude blinked his eyes, and then his face became gloomy. ¡°What nonsense! Tell me the truth boy, or I¡¯ll just rip your soul out and absorb your memories!¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow twitched at this old man¡¯s refusal to believe him. After some thought, a grim smile appeared on his face. ¡°I can prove it! If you have the resources available, I will make another one.¡±

    Gertrude seemed surprised at this declaration. To be able to make such a powerful artefact at such a young age would be unbelievable for even the oldest of men still walking around on this continent. Gertrude himself had tried his hand at forging many times and knew it to be an intense and difficult process.

    The youngest successful forge masters he¡¯d ever met were rarely less than one or two hundred years old. Even the oldest and most practised foragemasters he¡¯d met wouldn¡¯t claim to be able to make such a device that could influence the spirit pressure of the heavens.

    It goes without saying that the array patterns the Brotherhood had scrounged up which created spirit pressure weren¡¯t rare, rather they were just forgotten and incredibly difficult to properly utilise. In this, the guild got incredibly lucky to have such a mastermind of engineering like Skay.

    After a brief moment of consideration, Gertrude released his pressure and let James fall to the ground. Either way, whether the boy could manufacture another amulet didn¡¯t matter. If he could, then the boy would be locked away here by him until everything he knew of forging had been rung out of him. If he couldn¡¯t, they would just kill him.

    Either way, Gertrude didn¡¯t feel the boy could possibly be a threat to them, after all, the 16 residents of the temple were all ancient and had cultivation levels in the tower realm. He himself had a cultivation of Core Realm. This was actually a very closely guarded secret, and even Emperor Artimus was only aware that a few old people from past generations lived here to spend their lives studying ancient texts.

    With a wave of the hand, an old man walked over and escorted James out of the library. Less than a minute later, as Gertrude was examining the amulet and ring, a loud ¡®boom!¡¯ echoed throughout the temple. Even this temple made of refined ore essence was forced to rumble and shake under the onslaught of this power.

    Gertrude immediately had a horrifying premonition and raced out of the library towards the Gateway. When he reached the Gateway room, he glimpsed an extended hand giving him the finger, slowly disappearing into the rippling pond. Just as the hand disappeared, a strange cube was launched out from the other side of the gateway.

    Gertrude immediately turned and ran with full speed from the room. After only a few steps he felt a huge pressure descend onto him. Even at the Core Realm of power, he found it difficult to escape the suction of the gravity bomb James had left behind as a gift.

    The walls of the temple began to rumble and quake and slowly began to be sucked in towards the epicentre of the detonation. Seeing even the usually indestructible temple walls being warped by the magnitude of this implosion, Gertrude gave a loud roar, and his body shook as his spirit pressure and spirit energy circulated through his meridians, and he shot out of the portal room.

    As he passed through the doorway of the room, the little lizard that had been following him around raced into the room. With an earth-shaking roar, the little dragon jumped directly towards the spirit bomb. It then forced open its mouth filled with razor shape teeth and swallowed the cube whole.

    After a few more minutes of rolling around on the ground roaring and twitching, it finally calmed down. If James had seen this, he¡¯d probably have spat blood from the shock of it. For any living creature to be able to survive in the pressure of the bomb at less than a meter from its point of detonation was defying everything he understood of this world. Not to even mention a creature being able to swallow a detonating gravity bomb and somehow survive.

    What he wouldn¡¯t be able to understand was that the detonation of the spirit bomb had created a huge suction that drew in immeasurable amounts of the free metal energy that permeated the temple. This created something like a pill that had incalculable amounts of metal energy all sucked into a single point.

    For a baby iron dragon like the Guardian of the temple, this would be irresistible. Hell, even an adult iron dragon wouldn¡¯t be able to stop themselves from trying to devour such a thing. Fortunately for the baby Iron Dragon, the bomb only had a short lifespan and had ended its implosive detonation before the dragon¡¯s insides had been turned into mush.

    Unfortunately for the dragon and the residents of the temple, the sheer amount of energy it now had surging through its body meant that it would have to go into hibernation in order to properly refine it all. It also meant that the temple would be unprotected for the next few years that the Iron Dragon slept.

    Making things worse for Gertrude, was that the detonation had caused the red water of the pool to be sucked dry. It very slowly was starting to regenerate, but it meant that he would be trapped here for a while until the portal was ready again.

    With a load roar of dissatisfaction, he turned and slammed a closed fist into a solid metal wall. A clang rang out, and the temple buzzed like a bell that was just struck. Gertrude¡¯s eyes were shot with blood and filled with killing intent. With a dissatisfied grunt, he spun with a flick of the sleeves of his robe, and strode off into the dark halls of the temple.

    -Yori Empire- Beneath the Capital -

    James watched with a grim smile as the once full and excitably rippling pool suddenly began to shrink down to only a puddle at the very bottom. His brief visit to the Vault had only been a few hours, and he didn¡¯t take away quite as much as he¡¯d hoped to.

    But he did manage to take away a great deal more than he expected. For starters, although his scrying couldn¡¯t touch the walls of the temple, he could scry freely inside the room he was in. That meant that the moment he walked into the library, Jasmine had been busily scrying everything. Every book, Spirit Jade and parchment were recorded by her.

    In the first few minutes they¡¯d been in the room, Jasmine had already recorded everything. The problem was that a great deal of it was fragmented from the rapid speed she had been recording information. That meant that she would probably need months or even years to fully defragment and repair almost half of the recorded material.

    Not just this, but he also had left behind all his little drones that were connected via Q-energy. This gave him the ability to continue exploring the world of the dragon vault and also allowed him to keep an eye on the temple, and its crotchety old residents.

    James spun on his heel and walked out of the hall with a gloomy face as he began to arrange his own thoughts. ¡®That old bastard! Just you wait, the moment this gateway is ready to open again, I¡¯ll be waiting for you. Then I won¡¯t just be visiting to see your library, I¡¯ll be visiting to take all what you got!¡¯

    As James strolled up from the underground Gateway room, he was spotted by some guards. In a matter of minutes, Artimus had appeared to escort James out of the palace. As he caught up to James¡¯ brisk pace, his face become complicated when he saw James¡¯ gloomy expression.

    ¡°James, I see you¡¯re back rather early. If it was because my father kicked you out, please allow me to apologise. I had no idea he would be so stingy. Normally if someone is visiting the vault, he and his guests all disappear somewhere else.¡±

    James suddenly stopped in mid stride. His gloomy face then began to morph into the overly smiling face he¡¯d had when he followed the Emperor down here. His smile crossed from ear to ear and his eyes formed into squinted slits as he looked directly at the Emperor. Seeing this smile again, like being eyed by a dangerous predator about to play with its food, Artimus had a sudden chill run up his spine.

    ¡°Old Arty, don¡¯t worry about it. I got most of what I wanted anyway. However, some things happened, and your gateway seems to be broken for a while. When it¡¯s regained its energy, why don¡¯t you say hi to your old man for me.¡±

    With that, James flicked his sleeve and strode off through the hallways and out of the palace. Artimus clenched his teeth and his face slowly developed into a scowl. ¡®Damned old bastard! Do you have any idea what you¡¯ve done! This boy is a monster parading in the skin of a man. If I don¡¯t find some way to quell his ire, our Yori Empire is going to become a dust bowl!¡¯

    Artimus then began to take long steps back into the palace with a heavy frown marring his old face and a shadow hanging over him.

    -Yansho City- Nexus -

    James met up with his companions at the huge Mayan looking temple that sat at the base of the Palace Hill. This nexus was actually a focal point for more than 30 different Gateways all leading to other worlds. Some were only small and could only pass people through one at a time, while others were almost as big as the Gateway to the dragon vault.

    As James and his comrades explored the temple, they all stopped when the discovered a rather new looking room with ¡®Water World¡¯ written across the top of it. They didn¡¯t stop because of the name, but rather because of the short description next to it.

    ¡°Water world is a world with little to no spirit energy. Creatures of this world have no spirit energy, and the entire surface of the world is marred in huge craters and endless invisible fires. This is the newest addition to the Nexus and was a gateway only recently discovered near Gau City.¡±

    Inside the room were a number of pedestals all showing strange artefacts that had been discovered by visitors to this realm. A toaster, a traffic light and even some literature.

    James and Jessy were shocked at this discovery. This was clearly the Gateway to Earth. Not only that, but people had been visiting it. Upon further thought, James realised that the invisible fire was probably radiation from the nuclear holocaust. The reason it was called water world was probably because the ice caps had most likely melted by now and the entire planet would be covered by oceans, leaving only a few areas of dry land that would be covered in radiation and old crap that survived the war.

    James decided that for now, he would avoid returning to earth. Firstly, he wasn¡¯t sure how powerful he would need to be to avoid radiation sickness, and secondly there wasn¡¯t too much left there that he wanted to explore. Nonetheless, thanks to Jessy¡¯s endless pleading, James had Jasmine send in some drones to begin some exploration and perhaps find any survivors.

    After completing the tour of the temple, everyone split up again and went to explore the city. Meanwhile, James started wandering around to all the clans and guilds in the city that focused on alchemy and forging. He wanted to gain as much knowledge on this as he could.

    After a few visits where he gained hardly anything, James came to a tiny little alchemy guild. This guild was simply called Alchemy Guild 15, and had only 15 members. They were a group of old palace realm cultivators that had travelled the continent and devoted their lives to alchemy.

    In the end, they eventually settled down in Yansho City because it was close to the Jetsu Mountain range, which was filled with an abundance of rare herbs and plants greatly desired for alchemy concoctions. When James appeared at the door of their little shop in the city and expressed an interest in learning alchemy, the youngest of the 15 flatly rejected him.

    James stood at the counter with a wry smile and pondered on what he should do to earn their favour and get a chance to go over their notes. At the moment, James had little to no actual alchemy training or experience. In fact, apart from Norman, who remained locked away and forgotten in the depths of the Tech City lab, almost no one in the guild had experience with alchemy.

    As such, James could only seek some help from other alchemists to try and gain some understanding. Now that he stood at the door to a tiny, little, forgotten shop in the capital and was still flatly rejected, James was forced to rack his brains.

    He had long since thrown away the idea of simply paying someone to teach him. Firstly, because any alchemist worth his salt wasn¡¯t about to teach some young nobody his trade just because he was rich and influential enough to have his own ¡®free city¡¯.

    Secondly, if James wanted to learn the ins and outs of the trade, he didn¡¯t want it to be from someone who was only interested in money.

    Finally, James gave up on this guild as well. As he walked out of the shop, an old man dressed like a filthy beggar and smelling of shit strode in through the door. James was almost dry reaching just from passing by the man.

    The man acting as the store clerk today also had a disgusted expression on his face as the beggar like man walked up to the counter while scratching his ass through the dirty hessian sack he was using as clothing. Curious to see just what this man expected to achieve, James stopped at the doorway. Then after second thought, he stepped out into the street and observed with his scrying. At least this way he didn¡¯t have to smell the old bastard.

    The beggar stopped at the counter and then reached up under his hessian clothes as if trying to scratch at his balls. Moments later he produced a sack filled with coppers and silvers which he unceremoniously dropped on the counter.

    ¡°This is the payment for the water lily base I asked you to prepare. Where is it?¡±

    As the beggar spoke, he started scratching around in his dirty grey beard and pulled out a wriggling bug, which then very quickly disappeared into his mouth. As if struck by realisation, the man at the counter suddenly widened his eyes and then very quickly shot out from behind the counter and bowed to the beggar.

    ¡°Master Alchemist Sully. It was my grave mistake for not having recognised you be...¡±

    Sully quickly interrupted this grovelling with a loud fart, that based on the smell and sound it made, James was certain was actually a shart, then flicked his hand through the air. ¡°Shut up! Who cares?! Go and get my fucking potion base!¡±

    With that, the man bowed again and ran off through a door leading downstairs. After the man had disappeared, James decided the show was over and went to start walking off. As he strode down the street, the beggar that had been busily scratching at his ass again, swivelled his head and stared after him.

    James quickly forgot about the whole incident he¡¯d witnessed in the alchemy shop and then continued onwards to try and find another place to start learning alchemy. As he wandered through the city, he would now and then smell the stench of shit nearby. Although he didn¡¯t pay much attention to it, especially because this was a city with technology from the middle ages where they just shat in buckets and through it in the gutter, James couldn¡¯t wave the feeling of being watched.

    After the smell of shit had followed him to 4 other alchemy shops, James finally grew too suspicious to leave it alone. He released his scrying field to full radius and strength as he began searching for anything suspicious. Very soon, he noticed the old beggar man squatting near a gutter eating bugs out of a puddle of dirty old water.

    At first, he ignored him, but after he visited a few more shops and noticed the man nearby pissing on something, eating something questionable, or being chased away by city guards, James finally gave up pretending not to notice him.

    After turning into an alley, James stopped and turned around staring at the entrance of the alleyway. Moments later, the beggar disappeared from his scrying field of vision. Before James had the opportunity to investigate what was going on, he heard a sickly sounding cough behind him.

    ¡°Little boy. How would you like to become my apprentice?¡±

    Moments after this sharp grating voice sounded, James smelt the odour of crap and spun back to see the old beggar standing behind him in the alley. Seeing the man standing there but not even giving off the slightest reading in his scrying field, James was stunned.

    He then suddenly realised what had been making him feel so uncomfortable these past few hours when he felt the full force of the old man¡¯s scrying field scanning him. Making James even more uncomfortable with the situation was that even with the combined efforts of Goldy, Jasmine and himself, the man¡¯s scrying continued on, only being slightly inhibited.

    A curious look passed over the man¡¯s face when he¡¯d scanned James from such a close distance. Firstly was the level of concentration and effort he¡¯d had to use to scan James. This showed that James¡¯ scrying field was almost as powerful as his own, which was a huge difference in power considering James was only True Spirit, and he himself was Tower Realm.

    The second shock he received was from when he witnessed the ¡®Hands of Time¡¯ breathing technique operating inside James¡¯ body. It boggled his mind to witness someone simply creating spirit energy randomly in their body and then having it just as easily disappear. Where was this boy¡¯s dantian?

    Finally, his mind almost collapsed in on itself when he realised that James was operating his breathing technique with 6 different types of energy! He almost wanted to kill James right on the spot to assuage his envy and hatred of the boy¡¯s abnormal amount of good fortune.

    ¡®The heavens are truly unjust!¡¯ Sully grumbled in his mind. However, he then considered the potential of such a fortuitous youth. When he reaffirmed his decision to take this boy on as an apprentice, he looked up only to see that James had vanished.

    Sully rapidly spread out his scrying field and began to hunt for James. Meanwhile, James was rapidly speeding away from that part of the city with absolute haste. He didn¡¯t care if this dirty beggar was the fucking god of alchemy, he wasn¡¯t about to get sucked into a strange relationship with the filthy man.

    To his chagrin however, he¡¯d only made it to the end of the street before a shadow fell from the roof of a nearby building. James was shocked when he witnessed the figure of Sully emerging from the blinding rays of the suns above him. He very quickly felt sick to his stomach when the unfortunate angle of the old man¡¯s decent placed him in the perfect position for James to see everything hidden under his hessian sack clothes.

    Before James had time to once again escape, Sully fell onto him and started trying to pin his hands. He was going to make James his apprentice even if he had to force it. James then began to violently resist while screaming ¡°rape!¡± at the top of his lungs.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    The hundreds of passer-by¡¯s gave the pair strange looks and diverted their travel path to avoid approaching these weird perverts. A little girl tugged on her mother¡¯s hand while pointing at the strange scene. ¡°Mommy, mommy! They¡¯re doing that thing just like what you and daddy do!¡±

    The mother glanced over to see a filthy beggar manhandling a young noble looking man from behind. To say the position the two were in was incrementing wouldn¡¯t be an understatement. James was trying to push up from the ground on all fours while Sully was kneeling behind him trying to grab his arms and hair.

    Making this situation worse was Sully screaming things like; ¡°Stop resisting boy! It won¡¯t hurt a bit!¡± and James screaming ¡°rape!¡± into the streets while trying to escape.

    Seeing the situation devolving into such strange rumours, Sully finally had enough and simply reached out and slapped James on the neck. He then let out a long sigh of relief once James was unconscious and then stood up with him over his shoulder. As if nothing untoward had just happened, Sully leapt up to the roof of a nearby building flashing all the poor wretches on the streets with everything hidden under his hessian sack.

    Without further ado, Sully sped off across the rooftops of the city carrying the unconscious form of James.

    -Alchemy Lab of Sully the Tramp-

    James awoke to a strange stone ceiling in a strange stone room. After a brief moment of probing, he discovered that this was, in fact, a little stone tower only a few floors high, secluded away in the middle of a forest.

    This stone tower was the epitome of evil wizard towers. It was crooked and narrow, snaking up into the air and made of black glossy stones. All the vegetation for hundreds of meters around was dead or dying, and the forest in this area would be more appropriately termed a swampy dead marsh.

    Interestingly, despite the horrid condition of the vegetation in this area, there were swarms of little furry rodents bustling about in the marshes. Even more shocking was the cultivation of these creatures. Almost all of them were True Spirit Realm Rats!

    After this brief look at his surroundings, James rose from the crappy little straw bed he¡¯d been laid on. With quiet steps, and by using his wind energy and spirit pressure to quieten them into soundless, James snuck out of the mouldy wooden door and began to make his way to the ground floor and hopefully escape.

    As he travelled, his mind reeled with everything he saw. Before long, his footsteps had slowed to a crawl because he was too busy inspecting strange phials of living liquid and floating pills. Not only that, but huge glass spheres trapping various spirit animals and spirit beasts were separated throughout the tower every now and then.

    Before long, James was motionless and busily inspecting a cage that had a little forest hopper trapped inside.

    This forest hopper was nothing like Little Blue. For starters, it was still a spirit animal and hadn¡¯t formed a core yet, despite the level of primal energy coming off it being close to the palace realm. James couldn¡¯t stop himself from pointing a finger into the cage and releasing a huge arc of lightning onto the cute little critter.

    He then noticed some very caustic looking liquids nearby and was unable to prevent himself from grabbing them and pouring them onto the forest hopper while madly laughing. So entranced was he with playing mad scientist, James completely forgot about escaping.

    Almost half an hour later he finally remembered what he was supposed to be doing and moved to leave. With every step he took, he glanced back regretfully at the little forest hopper three times.

    With a long sigh, James continued on down the stairs to the next level, leaving behind a very frightened, twitching and exhausted forest hopper. Moments after he left the room, the figure of Sully emerged from the dark shadows and curiously eyed the forest hopper.

    Much to his surprise, the creature showed signs of forming a lightning core. Sully had been painstakingly trying to forge this creature into a potential spirit puppet, but now that thought was gone. He didn¡¯t mind giving up the chance to create a puppet from the forest hopper, because James¡¯ experiments showed that it was possible to artificially assist a spirit beast to cultivate into a beast with an unusual spirit energy.

    Sully, now slightly cleaner and dressed in a purple robe, smiled evilly and dissipated into the shadows like smoke.

    On the 4th floor of the tower, James encountered an experiment that had metal rods connected to a little rodent by cables. The metal rods sat in a little pot filled with bubbling liquid. The moment James noticed this, he immediately began to think ¡®battery¡¯.

    Once again stopping in his travel down the tower, he moved closer to investigate. After a brief look at the project, James let out a dissatisfied ¡®tsk¡¯ and then without any warning took the pot and poured its contents out a nearby window. While he did this, he suddenly realised why this area had become a disgusting marshland.

    Meanwhile, hidden away in the darkness of a corner like a Nigga¡¯s Shadow, Sully nearly spat blood. This little project had been years of painstaking research in the making. Not to mention the mixture James just poured out of the window took him months to finish brewing.

    James ignored such possibilities and then began to look around. Thanks to Jasmine and the keen use of their scrying field, James found a multitude of phials filled with all sorts of liquids. Although this wasn¡¯t exactly what he expected to make a homemade battery with, James was pleasantly surprised with Jasmine¡¯s estimation of its effectiveness.

    In only a few moment, using a handful of liquids from very expensive looking phials, James had created a new alchemic brew. Then after considering for a moment, he split it among some other pots and set the system up in parallel. James assumed Sully had been trying to electrocute this rodent because that¡¯s what he planned to do, and so set everything up to create more current than voltage. This way, instead of flash flying the creature he could instantly stop its heart.

    When everything was ready, he took the two wires at the ends and poured in lightning energy to fill the battery. When he was done, he touched them to the rodent. The little rat then began to spasm and shake, only to suddenly freeze solid and collapse. James, being the sadistic bastard he was, simply left the little wires attached to the rodent and began to creep away once more.

    As he left this floor of the tower, Sully emerged from the shadows again and inspected the completed battery. Although this wasn¡¯t what he¡¯d set out to achieve with this project initially, it was a glorious discovery that created hundreds of potential future projects and created countless questions that needed answering.

    On the third floor, James encountered a small storeroom of very valuable and rare looking herbs. Thanks to the great deal of knowledge that had recently been crammed into his head by Jasmine, he could pick out every last one of them and tell their effects and methods of brewing or concocting with them.

    Seeing so many useful things all stored away in one place, James saluted thin air. ¡°Many thanks to the old beggar for this gift.¡± Then without pause, his hand swished through the air, and everything was sucked into his storage ring.

    This time Sully couldn¡¯t hold back entirely and watch this little brat stealing everything he owned while then thanking him for it, blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth like he¡¯d received a fatal blow.

    Thankfully, he maintained enough control to remain hidden, and James continued on down the tower.

    On the second level, James only saw a door that was locked. After considering for a moment, he turned around and walked back up to the now empty third floor. He then looked around a few times and finally pulled out a little paper package.

    When he opened it, the package simply looked like it was clay. James kneaded it in his hands for a moment then sniffed it. After that, he walked up the wall of the room and began creating a circle on the wall. Seeing this strange behaviour, Sully wasn¡¯t quite sure what to think.

    It was only moments later that he realised what was going on, when James flicked a spark onto the putty, and it burnt a huge hole in the wall of his tower. The fact that James had something without any spiritual energy in it and could silently burn so hot that it went through a foot of black rock shocked Sully silly.

    By the time he¡¯d reclaimed full control of his faculties, James was 300 meters away and setting a mean pace towards the edge of the forest. Sully almost couldn¡¯t believe what he¡¯d just witnessed. He then suddenly snapped back to reality when he remembered that James had just made off with the storehouse he¡¯d been slowly collecting and building up for over 400 years.

    James had long since suspected the old beggar was hiding nearby. He couldn¡¯t sense him, but he knew no one would leave a stranger alone in their lab. Thus, James had come up with a little scheme. He had a little play in the weirdo¡¯s tower while he waited for Jasmine¡¯s satellite to locate them via GPS.

    When he finally heard Exsue urgently hailing him on his coms, he returned to the third floor. Seeing as this beggar could utilise scrying, James needed to use something that wouldn¡¯t be suspicious to him. Luckily, Skay had long since foreseen similar problems and went to the trouble of making some things from earth.

    In this case, he created a putty utilising some different chemicals that could burn as hot as the surface of the sun. The beauty of this stuff was that it burnt rapidly and silently. With everything set in place, James made a daring escape. The moment the stuff had burnt a hole big enough for him to escape through, he slapped his lightning boots and shot off into the forests.

    Unfortunately, not everything was going to go according to plan. Just when he thought he was far enough to activate a talisman that could launch him into the sky and safely onto the Velocity gunship up above, a little rodent leapt onto his leg and held on.

    Quickly following this trend, all the hundreds of rodents mulling about turned towards him with a ¡®swish¡¯. With a speed that put cheetahs to shame, the rodents were swarming all over James and preventing him from activating his talisman.

    He released lightning energy from his body and stunned or shocked them off, only for a hundred more to suddenly appear from holes and burrows and launch onto him.

    Sully rapidly shot out from his tower and appeared only a few metres from James where he suddenly stopped. With a sharp ear piercing whistle, the rodents all started grabbing their fellow dead brothers and dragged them into their burrows for food.

    This resulted in an eerie silence as James and Sully stood staring at one another. Sully almost looked unrecognisable with his clean purple robes and no longer smelling of shit. After giving James a strange look, and his face going through all sorts of interesting expressions, he finally let out a long sigh.

    ¡°Boy, stop resisting. I am seeking an apprentice. In my entire life, I have never taken an apprentice, and now I¡¯ve finally found one that meets my stringent requirements.¡±

    James straightened up his ruffled robes and then stood looking at Sully with a straight back. ¡°Denied.¡±

    Sully smiled and made to turn back to his tower as he spoke. ¡°Excellent, you¡¯ve shown remarkable talent so far. With me as your master, you will ... Heuk!¡±

    As he spoke, he suddenly realised that James had flatly rejected his offer. He spun back with a vicious look. ¡°Boy! Do you not know who I am?! I am the almighty tower realm alchemist Sully Buck! In the entire continent, no one stands as my equal in pill refining and potion mastery!¡±

    James remained unperturbed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry old beggar. I do seek to learn alchemy, but I can¡¯t take a master. I plan to travel to Nahtiro and apprentice under Master Alchemist Tantsu.¡±

    Hearing this, Sully looked like he¡¯d just bitten into a lemon. ¡°Tantsu that dusty old fuck! What could he possibly teach you about alchemy? I¡¯ll tell you a secret boy! Tantsu and I were both apprenticed under the same master and he never once out did me in any subject. Theory, Practice, Cultivation. Everything! Tantsu isn¡¯t a fart in the wind compared to me!¡±

    James cupped his chin in thought. As he pondered to himself, a loud roar shook the forests and echoed across the valley of Sully¡¯s tower. Sully gaped wide-eyed as the Velocity Gunship descended into the clearing around the tower and then without pause, all six cannons swivelled around to aim directly at him.

    Before he could react, the voice of Exsue loudly roared from the ship. ¡°You filthy old bastard! How dare you steal away my beloved! You seek death, you filthy commoner!¡±

    Following this declaration, the cannons aimed towards Sully¡¯s tower and released a volley of MK III Arc Cannon fire. Sully¡¯s gaping mouth only widened further when he witnessed his home of over 400 years suddenly disintegrate into dust and debris.

    Before his shock wore off, James waved a hand behind him towards the gunship. ¡°Exsue! That¡¯s enough! Stop creating trouble!¡±

    As if subdued by this simple command, the ship flared once and slowly landed in the marshy swamps with its cannons still focused in on Sully.

    Sully dropped onto his knees as he stared back at his tower. He looked like he was on the verge of tears. James remained impassive to the man¡¯s plight and continued to mumble and ponder. After a while, just as Sully was transitioning into rage-induced madness, James nodded his head.

    ¡°Very well, I will become your apprentice. However, I have a condition. You must be able to teach me how to create spirit jade.¡±

    Hearing this, Sully shot to his feet and glared at James. ¡°Boy, have you no shame? You come and destroy a man¡¯s home of 400 years and without even blinking you...¡±

    ¡°You walk around the city in a hessian bag eating bugs from the gutter and kidnapping young men off the street. Don¡¯t talk to me about shame!¡±

    Seeing James rebound his complaints instantly, Sully could only hold his indignation in. Besides, he once swore to the heavens that he would only ever take one apprentice in his life, and if he was going to take one, then this boy was the best candidate.

    Not only did he fulfil the requirements Sully had for an apprentice, but he also blew them out of the water. In addition, the boy was just as shameless and tactless as he was.

    If all it cost him to gain James as an apprentice was his little tower of 400 years, then that was nothing. To a man who¡¯d lived well beyond 1500 and planned to live into the tens of thousands, a 400 year home was nothing. Besides, James had already looted the valuable herbs and plants he¡¯d stashed away here.

    The only problem was ... he had no idea how to create spirit jade with alchemy. In fact, he wasn¡¯t even sure where to start. Finally, he realised why the boy wanted to be apprenticed to Tantsu.

    Gripping his hand into a fist, Sully¡¯s face became dark and unreadable as he growled in a low voice. ¡°Tantsu you little piece of shit! How did you get your hands on Master¡¯s research? It should all be buried beyond the Gateway. Don¡¯t tell me the Gateway has already reformed?¡±

    Sully then turned and looked off into the far distance with a shadow hanging over his head. ¡°That can¡¯t be right. The Gateway should still be reforming for another hundred years.¡±

    Finally, after walking around in a circle a few times while grumbling and muttering, he looked at James with a frightening glare.

    ¡°Boy, how badly do you wish to attain the formula for Spirit Jade? I can tell you now that I can¡¯t make it yet. In saying that, I can also promise you that piece of shit Tantsu can¡¯t teach it to you either. Our Master once attained a realm of alchemy far beyond anything this world has ever seen. However, due to some circumstances and a disaster, our master died in battle, but not before exiling Tantsu and I to this world.

    ¡°If Tantsu has the recipe for spirit Jade, I doubt he is skilled enough to understand it, let alone create it. If you take me as your master, I will teach you everything I know, and give you the means to take that recipe from Tantsu.¡±

    James cupped his chin and stared hard at the ground as he pondered. ¡°What do you want out of this deal?¡±

    Sully grinned savagely when he saw James considering. ¡°I want you to kill him!¡±

    To Sully¡¯s surprise, James didn¡¯t even blink. ¡°Fine. Let us form a contract then. I will become your disciple. You will teach me alchemy to the best of your ability and give me the means to infiltrate Tantsu¡¯s inner circle. I will kill him and receive the recipe for spirit jade. You will get to see your rival die, and as a side bonus, I will occasionally tell people that you were my master of alchemy.¡±

    After a brief nod and agreement by both parties, Heavenly Law descended onto them and sealed their oath.

    The moment heavenly law had descended, Sully pointed a bony finger at James. ¡°Hahaha! Foolish brat! Now that you¡¯re my apprentice, your first task is to rebuild my house and replace all the spirit herbs you stole!¡±

    James froze for a moment then grinned like the devil. ¡°Old fart, don¡¯t play it up too much. This is a business contract, and I¡¯m not obligated in any way to complete any tasks you set forward. You, on the other hand, are bound by oath to teach me alchemy to the ¡®best of your ability¡¯.¡±

    Hearing James¡¯ proclamation, Sully¡¯s face contorted and twisted until it looked like his unwillingness to accept the situation was going to trigger the backlash of the heaven¡¯s oath. Seeing his brand new alchemy master about to flip out already, James just chuckled and started walking back to the velocity.

    Sully found this situation unbearable. He¡¯d been tricked! This shitty little brat never mentioned anything regarding his duties as an apprentice. Simply calling him an apprentice of Sully, or referring to him as an apprentice was enough for him to validate that part of the contract.

    ¡®Blasted little brat! Just you wait! Even if I can¡¯t order you around, it doesn¡¯t mean I can¡¯t make you suffer for your indiscretions. I¡¯ll make your training so hard and difficult that you¡¯ll wish you could die. If I¡¯m to train you to the best of my ability, it would require nothing less than the most dangerous and violent of routes. Hahaha!¡¯

    As James was walking back, he couldn¡¯t help but stop for a moment and look back. ¡°Mind you, I can¡¯t have my alchemy master slumming it in the streets like some beggar. You¡¯ll come back to Tech City and we¡¯ll use my lab for the time being.¡±

    Sully stepped forwards and appeared next to James in a blink. He then clasped his hands behind his back like a wise teacher and looked over at James. ¡°Tech City? What¡¯s that? Some place in the union? Or on the east side of Atsunari?¡±

    James continued to walk towards the ship as he gave Sully a strange look. ¡°Where have you been for the past 12 months? You¡¯ve never heard of my city? What about the Dark Brotherhood? You¡¯ve heard of that right?¡±

    Sully waved his hand dismissively as he gazed up into the sky. ¡°Some city? Some Brotherhood? Pfff ... why would someone of my stature bother to pay attention to such tiny things? Furthermore, I¡¯ve been locked away in my tower doing research for the past 12 years, I¡¯ve had no time for these lesser matters.¡±

    James just made a curious; ¡°oh?¡± and smiled slyly as he kept walking. When they reached the ship, everyone was standing on the ramp looking as if they were ready for a battle. Exsue seemed the most ready to kill something out of everyone, even Harvy, who had a perpetual aura of death surrounding him didn¡¯t look as eager.

    Without giving them a chance to question him, James strolled past onto the ship, leaving only a few sentences behind. ¡°Take me back to Tech City. I¡¯ll be going into training, our road trip is cancelled. Oh! Also, everyone get ready, I¡¯ll be assigning you all new missions when we get back.¡±

    -Tech City-

    For a rare instance, James invited someone into the laboratory that he didn¡¯t have absolute control over. Even more rare than that, he actually went down to the 3rd floor, which was primarily the alchemy lab set up by Skay.

    James had spent some time visiting here now and then before they left on their trip. He came down here to consolidate some of the knowledge he¡¯d absorbed from all of Jasmine¡¯s constant implants. He¡¯d even started a few little extra projects.

    The chemistry laboratory was filled with strange ancient looking urns and old cracked cauldrons. Tables lined the laboratory covered in a multitude of glass test equipment and open flames. Liquids of every colour under the rainbow and the perpetual strong smell of herbs filled the entire floor.

    Sully followed James onto his flying artefact and didn¡¯t truly expect much from his fresh new disciples ¡®city¡¯. However, he was endlessly shocked by the technology the brotherhood displayed. The speed of the flying artefact notwithstanding, just the city and its walls were enough for his heart to clench.

    His heart only continued to tighten as he witnessed the monopolisation of the endless forest, which he knew was filled to the brim with rare and interesting plants. When he first entered the laboratory, just the first level was enough for his heart to feel like it was actually bleeding from envy!

    Once he walked into the alchemy lab on the third floor, his ancient thousand-year-old heart finally couldn¡¯t take all the stimulus and felt like it was on the verge of bursting. His knees grew weak, and his skin grew pale and clammy. Sweat poured from his forehead, and he felt like he was moments away from his heart failing.

    If he hadn¡¯t already made the oath with this little devil, he¡¯d have killed him at this very moment and claimed everything here for his own! Luckily, reason concluded that this would essentially become his new workshop and he would be able to take advantage of this huge amount of technology and resources to further his own research.

    Nonetheless, he stood in the centre of the alchemy lab shaking like a leaf and his knees on the verge of collapsing as he stared in awe. James, seeing the condition of his so-called mentor, frowned slightly. He walked over to the delirious Sully and grabbed his collar.

    Moments later, James¡¯ hand flashed and began slapping his dazed Master across the face as he started coaxing him from his stupor in a bored voice. ¡°Oi oi oi. Old man, stop day dreaming.¡±

    Sully, who was getting his face vigorously worked over by James, very quickly came to his senses. He flicked his arm out, breaking James¡¯ hold on the collar of his robes, then jumped back a few paces readying himself to attack.

    Before the chance to retaliate came, drones began falling out of the roof and popping in from little side doors and hidey holes all over the lab. They focused in on poor old Sully with mini guns starting to whirl and hum and Tesla cannons charging up huge stores of electricity.

    While this escapade went on, a deep male voice began to sound out from every corner of the lab. ¡°Cease and desist! Cease and desist! Guests are not to make any overt offensive moves within the confines of the Laboratory!¡±

    Sully¡¯s face started making a series of changes as he watched all the drones preparing to fire on him. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure what these drones were, but being a Scryer himself, he could tell that they each had enormous amounts of energy stored inside of them. If not as much as a palace realm cultivator then surely a peak True Spirit cultivator¡¯s.

    Even worse than that, they clearly had no soul. Although that was good in a way, because it made it easier to influence them with his pressure, it was also bad because it meant he couldn¡¯t sense killing intent and worse still because it limited him from using his most powerful trump card.

    What he didn¡¯t realise was that even if he unleashed his pressure, the drones would be completely unaffected thanks to similar arrays to what James had in his Pressure Diverting ring.

    James waved a hand through the air as if shooing flies and then continued walking through the lab. Sully watched vigilantly as all the drones powered down their weapons and tucked themselves back into their little hidey holes.

    Once they were all gone, and Sully had managed to release a tense breath, he caught up to James just in time to meet a young man in a white lab coat rushing around a huge experiment table. The experiment he was working on was filled to the brim with a long series of tubes, boilers, decanters, bubbling cauldrons and half refined spirit ingredients.

    It all looked very complex and indecipherable, not to mention Sully couldn¡¯t even fathom what half of this equipment was. He couldn¡¯t even guess what the equipment he did recognise was actually being used for.

    James came to a stop a few feet from the table and watched with a strange glint in his eyes as Norman, the long forgotten Lackey 12, that according to Skay had a prodigious talent in chemistry, rushed about twisting things and flicking stuff.

    Sully seemed baffled as he watched this scene and looked at James next to him to ask; ¡°What exactly is this Junior doing? Does he even understand the first thing about alchemy?¡±

    The side of James¡¯ mouth curved into a smile and his eyes grew brighter as he watched. Instead of answering the question, James asked a question of his own. ¡°Have you ever wondered about the state of drunkenness in this world?¡±

    Sully¡¯s face twisted in confusion and he glared at James for asking him such stupid questions. ¡°What? You¡¯ve never got drunk before?¡±

    James¡¯ grin developed into a smile. ¡°Oh, I have. The real question is, have you ever been drunk before?¡±

    Before Sully could interrupt, James continued on. ¡°I¡¯ve noticed something rather odd about alcohol in this world. It¡¯s very much alcohol in every sense. Just like alcohol from my home world. The only difference is that here, on Ascension Star, I can get as drunk as I want, but I still don¡¯t truly become drunk! Although my body is drunk, my spirit remains sober. How do you explain that? It¡¯s like having two different states of mind at the same time. Making this worse, no matter how drunk I am, I can instantly alleviate this state by cycling my spirit energy through my body.¡±

    Sully was getting impatient as James rambled on, but before he could interrupt, a sickly sweet aroma wafted out from the experiment table. It was so rich and powerful that he could taste it. Not only that, he started to feel slightly giddy and intoxicated just from the smell. Making it even more confusing, was that in his Spirit Tower within his dantian, his true spirit shook and began to feel the effects as well.

    James¡¯ eyes closed and he smiled even more as his body and aura began to change into that of a calm bliss. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply as he savoured the sweet, tangy smell, and a rosy flush spread across his face.

    This blissful moment was quickly shattered by the sound of glass shattering and violent cursing. ¡°Heavens why do you hate me so! Piece of crap! Damnable fucking spirit wine! Fucking disgusting devils piss!¡±

    James opened his eyes, but his calm smile remained on his face as he finally approached Norman. ¡°Norman, how goes it?¡±

    Having someone suddenly appear down here in the chemistry lab, which was normally forgotten by the rest of the guild, Norman turned in shock. Seeing James, his face slowly congealed into a solemn gloomy frown as he made a bow with his fist clasped in hand as a salute.

    ¡°Greetings, Guild Master.¡± His body then slumped into a nearby wheelie chair while giving off a gloomy demoralised feeling and his face pouted like a child sulking.

    ¡°I¡¯m so close Guild Master. I can feel it! Unfortunately, nothing I¡¯ve produced is good enough. At best, the Heavenly Six Rice Wine and the Golden Grain Whiskey have just barely reached the passing grade you set.¡± As he said this, he spun in his wheelie chair and grabbed two little bottles from a nearby bench, then wheeled over and handed them to James.

    James popped the cork from one of them, and a spicy tart smell permeated the room. In much the same manner as before, James took a long deep breath and savoured the smell. He then tipped the bottle back and took a swig.

    Very quickly, his face flushed red, and his whole body seemed to release all the tensions and burdens it had been holding onto. His face took on a goofy grin, and he burped. ¡°Not bad. Certainly, nothing to write home about, but I suppose it will suffice as saleable to other factions and the commoners. Not the strongest piss I ever had, though.¡±

    Finished his assessment, he handed the opened bottle to Sully.

    Having been suddenly given a bottle of something he was now guessing must be alcohol, Sully made a strange face. He then copied James¡¯ actions and took a deep breath of the aroma from the bottle. After the initial breath, Sully felt his soul shaking again, and his body suddenly felt a little more relaxed.

    Looking oddly at the bottle, Sully tipped his head back and took a swig. This first swig felt like having taken the first sip of water into his parched throat after crossing an endless dry desert. As it travelled into his stomach, he felt an indescribable release of all his tensions and worries. Everything that once mattered no longer had significance.

    His body become comfortably warm, and his soul entered a calm and peaceful state. His eyes suddenly shot open as he inspected his own soul. He felt his secret soul developing arts suddenly increase with proficiency and felt that his aged soul, which had long since stopped experiencing any form of dramatic growth, suddenly propel forwards what would have once taken him a decade to achieve. All the things that had troubled his soul and blocked his development suddenly became clear in his mind.

    His whole body shook as he thought over the repercussions of something like this. He then took another swig and felt his body warming even more, this time though, he started to grow a little tipsy, and his mind and soul grew slightly cloudy.

    He felt somewhat sullen with the fact that it¡¯s monumental assistance only happened on the first sip, but after some thinking, he quickly realised that most likely this would only help a person clear their built up blockages and allow them to increase their cultivation. It was only so dramatic for him because he was ancient in comparison to these Juniors and he had built up a great deal of limiting factors that had slowed down his soul cultivation over his many years.

    Nonetheless, even in the tipsy state, his soul developing arts were still at least 50% faster than before. The only odd thing was that no matter how hard he tried, whether it was circulating his spirit energy in his body or using his soul pressure in his spirit realm, he couldn¡¯t eliminate the intoxicating effects of the alcohol. When he came to this realisation, Sully looked strangely over at James who was busy smelling and enjoying the scent of the other liquor.

    ¡®These brats don¡¯t even realise what they¡¯ve achieved here! They¡¯re clearly just trying to make wine that can make a person drunk in both body and soul. They¡¯re just a couple of fucking drunkards!¡¯

    Coming to this conclusion, Sully suddenly felt greatly alarmed. He then looked over at Norman, who was busily discussing his recent changes to the formula.

    ¡®This little Junior hadn¡¯t even formally begun to learn anything about alchemy, and yet he was already creating wine that could affect the state and growth of someone¡¯s soul. Monster! What a truly monstrous talent in the art of alchemy!¡¯ thought Sully as he took another appreciating look at Norman, who he believed was the mastermind of this experiment.

    Little did he know, that this experiment and its entire process, was actually a brainchild of James¡¯. Norman had only recently taken over this project in James¡¯ absence from the guild and had achieved little to no results apart from making the Heavens Six Rice Wine and Golden Grain whisky smell better and a little stronger.

    James finally finished appreciating the second bottle and momentarily stared off into space as he remembered his apprentice days when he brewed strong homebrew rum in a rickety still behind his parent¡¯s house.

    He soon snapped out of it and put a stopper on the little palm-sized bottle as he slipped it into his sleeve. He then turned to Sully who was still staring at the bottle in his hands with an odd look. ¡°Well then Master, I should probably introduce you to our one and only alchemist. Though at present, he is still only half decent and trained in chemistry, he is the closest thing to an alchemist one can get. This is Norman.¡±

    James then looked at Norman, who was standing and giving a bow after he heard James referring to Sully as his master. ¡°Greetings Senior, this little one is Norman. My skills in alchemy are shameful and not worth mentioning.¡±

    Having said as much, he suddenly raised his head and stared at Sully like a ferocious beast gazing into the eyes of its lunch. ¡°However, I dare say that my desire to learn and master this ancient path are unmatched by anyone. Although I won¡¯t be so presumptuous to beg for you to take me as a disciple, I beg that you at least allow me to remain in this laboratory and learn from you as another practitioner on the same path.¡±

    Seeing the fanatical need and desire for knowledge on the boy¡¯s face, Sully almost started to feel regret at having prematurely picked James as his disciple. Although James had many qualities that made him an ideal disciple, it was clear to Sully that James didn¡¯t have the same all-encompassing desire for the craft as this young man. Furthermore, although Norman may not have similar talents, such as scrying, he clearly had a great deal of talent for alchemy.

    Sully could only make a wry smile and let out a long sigh. He then looked at the young man with a breaking heart. ¡°I¡¯m sorry little Junior. I once made an impetuous oath to the heavens that I truly regret. I can only take one disciple in this lifetime. If I hadn¡¯t made this oath, I would most definitely take you as my disciple now that I¡¯ve seen your talent for alchemy.¡±

    James realised Sully had mistakenly thought that Norman was the creator of the Heaven Six Rice Wine and Golden Grain Whiskey. He quickly gave Norman, who was about to deny credibility for the creation, a warning look to shut up.

    His face then wreathed in smiles as he sidled up to Sully¡¯s side, like the devil about to whisper sweet nothings. ¡°Mn, yes it¡¯s most regrettable Master. Young Norman¡¯s talents in alchemy are truly awe inspiring. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he is a natural born prodigy. You haven¡¯t seen them yet, but I brought with me many of the interpretations and recordings of my entire home world in regards to the heavenly law of chemistry. It is equivalent to the teachings of a thousand master¡¯s from thousands of years, and young Norman here consumed this knowledge like a dry sponge.¡±

    James then consolingly looked at Sully with some pity. ¡°I had originally intended to find a revered master that could help teach him, but unfortunately the best I could find was you. It seems that Norman will be forced to seek out another master that can help to teach him. Perhaps even Tantsu would be a good choice. After all, I don¡¯t have to kill him immediately, and he is revered as the greatest alchemist on the entire continent!¡±

    Sully¡¯s eyes bulged from his sockets as he spun to James and growled out through gritted teeth. ¡°Fuck Tantsu that piece of shit! If it weren¡¯t going to cost me a lifetime of cultivation, I¡¯d take this Junior as my apprentice right now!¡±

    James grinned evilly on the inside. Meanwhile, he continued to fuel Sully¡¯s rage. ¡°I know Master. It¡¯s truly regrettable. You can¡¯t imagine what you¡¯re missing out on! This Junior Norman is truly an unequal talent in the craft. You should see some of his creations!¡±

    Saying as much, James started to show off some of Norman¡¯s potions and pills. All the while, Sully grew slightly paler with every example, and his innards turned cold and grew green from regret.

    Then James started to hum and haw for a little bit and put on a face as if making a truly difficult decision. Finally, after Sully had realised James seemed to be having an internal battle over something, James seemed to come to some resolution and looked at Sully with what seemed like determination.

    ¡°Master, I have a confession to make. In truth, I have a way to annul your oath and allow you to take as many apprentices as you want. Unfortunately, it requires quite a bit of rare materials which have to be sacrificed to the spirit of the monolith.¡±

    Sully¡¯s body froze, and his face became devoid of all emotion. Finally, after trying to process this in a number of ways, he realised he hadn¡¯t misheard. He looked at James with a face filled with fervour and excitement. ¡°Little Junior, don¡¯t jest with me now. Do you truly have a method to annul a personal oath?¡±

    James made a nod, looking all the while the picture of an innocent little apprentice helping out his master. Meanwhile, in his spirit realm, he and Gold James were laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes.

    ¡°I do Master! It¡¯s true. But like I said ... it¡¯s very difficult. To achieve this goal ... you will need to sacrifice some truly rare treasures to the monolith for it to consider lifting your oath. Even then it can often times be fickle.¡±

    Sully looked so excited that he seemed to be ageing backwards. He started walking around the lab with his hand behind his back and muttering to himself in a daze. ¡°What could possibly entice a monoliths spirit? I¡¯ll need something grand. I have hundreds of rare herbs and cultivating resources hidden across the continent, but I still can¡¯t be sure that would be enough. Perhaps I¡¯ll need to steal something for me to be able to...¡±

    Hearing Sully about to disregard all his saved up fortunes, James quickly jumped in to persuade him. ¡°Master I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve collected plenty of rare spirit materials. You don¡¯t have to resort to angering some large faction. Perhaps you should bring together your amassed wealth and see if it can tempt the monolith. If that doesn¡¯t work, then we can consider more options.¡±

    Sully nodded in agreement and then made to leave the lab as he began planning out a short journey across the continent to all his hidden stashes. He left behind only a few words as he stepped into the elevator with a solemn expression. ¡°I¡¯ll be back in a few weeks. Then we will start your training after you¡¯ve helped me get rid of this accursed oath.¡±

    The moment the doors closed and the elevator started moving, Norman moved to start questioning James only to suddenly be silenced by James intense soul pressure. After a few more minutes and once Jasmine had confirmed Sully had left the city, James finally relaxed and let out a breath as he smiled like a sinner.

    He then turned to Norman. ¡°Sorry ¡®bout that Norman, Sully has a powerful scrying field and I couldn¡¯t be sure if he were observing us as he left.¡±

    Hearing this Norman suddenly perked up. ¡°Does that mean you can¡¯t really annul his oath and you¡¯re just tricking him Guild Master?¡±

    James chuckled as he proceeded towards the elevator. ¡°No, I can really annul his oath. Only truth be told, I could do it for free. However, the man¡¯s an ancient Tower Realm existence. He surely has endless supplies of rare materials stored away around the continent. I won¡¯t do it for free, and he¡¯d be likely to rather avoid sacrificing them for you if he knew that they¡¯d all just be going back into my hands anyway. He¡¯d probably give up on the idea completely just to spite me for blowing up his little tower in the moat.¡±

    Norman could only give a wry smile when he realised his chance to be apprenticed by a rare and powerful alchemist wasn¡¯t half as important to James as said alchemist¡¯s stashed goodies. However, the fact that he still went about it in a way that gave Norman a chance to get such an apprenticeship slightly warmed his heart.

    He bowed to James who was walking into the elevator. ¡°Guild Master, thank you for organising this opportunity. I won¡¯t forget it!¡±

    James just waved his hand nonchalantly as he pushed the button and the elevator shot off towards the top floor.

 Chapter 42: Beginnings of a Conspiracy

    James walked into his guild master office and sat down at his round table. Already seated and waiting for him was his other 5 sins, the 5 Ghosts and what he was referring to as a knight in his own mind. He felt a profound sense of happiness as he surveyed his people.

    The sins were the foundations of the brotherhood. Goliath of Wrath, Jessy of Lust, Exsue of Envy, Fatty of Gluttony, Kelly of Sloth and himself, James of Pride. Unfortunately, they¡¯d lost their greed thanks to the strange deviation of his and Jasmine¡¯s spirit realms, which meant there was presently an empty seat at the table.

    The Ghosts were naturally, Alecksa of the Patient Famine, Cash of Apathy, Junior of Suspicion, Tommy of Discipline and lastly Cassidy of the Deceptive Memories.

    Lastly was his only current Knight and his most loyal subordinate, Death ... also known as Harvey.

    All of the people gathered here in this room were elites amongst their peers. They had yet to match up against anyone apart from each other, in the same realm, that could threaten their superiority.

    James felt a perverse sense of pride at having ¡®created¡¯ these monsters amongst their generation. As he gazed at them, he organised his thoughts and finally let a sinister smile slip.

    ¡°In 3 months we will be holding the War of the Worlds tournament. Because we have agreed to represent the Yori Empire, I will be entering as one of their contestants. Also, we have some pending jobs.

    ¡°Firstly, the Spirit Jade will now be a long term goal. Instead of applying to apprentice under Tantsu this year, I will wait 4 years and attempt it then.

    ¡°Secondly is the Spatial Stone. We can move to recover some more of this now, but I would rather we wait until the War of the Worlds is over. I originally intended for us to leave Tech City immediately and only return occasionally, but it seems I¡¯m going to be stuck here a little longer until I¡¯ve successfully accumulated a better knowledge base and skill in both forging and alchemy.

    ¡°That said, you all will be starting some rather specific jobs for me. Fatty and Alecksa, you two shall be working in concert in the West. The nation of Soel is a religious nation that worships the three suns. Your task will be simple. Go there and cultivate your Famine and Gluttony.

    ¡°After some time considering it, I¡¯ve discovered something interesting in regards to our Abstract elements. This will concern all of you, even Harvy who only has a Rare element. For those of us who have Scrying, you too have no doubt noticed this anomaly. Abstract elements don¡¯t usually appear in nature. At any given time, the surroundings are filled with primal spirit energy and free spirit energy.

    ¡°Most free energy is created when primal energy interacts with something in the world and is created from the reaction. The earth generates a feeble amount of free earth-based spirit energy, the wind generates tiny amounts of wind energy, etcetera. Free energy serves two purposes.

    ¡°The first is how it interacts with a person¡¯s refined spirit energy. This usually allows us to more easily influence matter and energy in the world. For example, if I use a martial technique to try and alter the earth nearby to create a wall, the free earth energy is what I am actually influencing and it, in turn, will allow me to raise an earth wall from the ground.

    ¡°In the case of materialising spirit energy, for example creating water out of thin air, or creating a blade made of wind, this is when we don¡¯t rely on the interaction between our energy and free energy, and directly create matter using our refined energy. This requires a tremendous amount of spirit energy but also allows us to create matter that reflects the properties of our spirit energy and not just the nearby free energy.

    ¡°The problem with this is that it requires a great deal of control and spirit energy, and it also slowly loses its form. Naturally, the more spirit energy you use to create something, the longer it will exist and the stronger it will be.

    ¡°The second point is the matter of free energy¡¯s influence on cultivation. After some testing, I¡¯ve discovered that free energy is a great boon to cultivators. Your spirit realm can easily absorb copious quantities of free energy that aligns with your own elements. This means that being in a place that has a large saturation of free energy similar to your own will speed up your cultivation speed tremendously.

    ¡°At the same time, it also allows you to study the free energy and further increase your experience and affinity with it. This in turn, greatly increases your control over your refined spirit energy. Phew.¡±

    Finished his little speech, James looked at the faces of his guild members. Some showed recognition and others showed surprise. A few showed confusion and one or two showed a lack of interest. James expected as much, but he went through the trouble of explaining this to them both to help him order his thoughts on the matter and in the hopes it would help some of them with their cultivation.

    Seeing that at least some of them understood his explanation, he continued on.

    ¡°The reason I¡¯ve mentioned this is because Abstract elements don¡¯t appear in nature. They only appear on people. This means that if you want to increase your cultivation speed in an abstract element with free energy, then you will need to find people who are giving off this free element.

    ¡°In the case of Fatty and Alecksa, both your elements align. Fatty, explain how exactly you cultivate.¡±

    Fatty nodded and stood up with a serious expression on his face. Everyone was curious as to how exactly he cultivates. Fatty took a breath as if he was going to go into a long deep contemplative explanation only to simply say; ¡°I get hungry and then eat stuff.¡±

    Everyone nearly fell out of their chairs, and James¡¯ eyebrow started to furiously twitch. ¡°What about a breathing technique, have you bothered to develop one yet?¡±

    Fatty gave another nod. ¡°When I breathe in, all the primal spirit energy nearby get absorbed. When I breathe out its just air.¡±

    James put his face in his palms and felt deep regret at having had picked Fatty to start this discussion. He then looked at Alecksa with some hope in his eyes and nodded for her to explain her cultivation practices.

    Alecksa stood as Fatty sat back down and then began to explain. ¡°My cultivation is in three elements and as such requires a little more effort. In a sense, I¡¯m worse off than the rest of you because I actually have two abstract elements. Famine and Patience. We thought that famine would be considered a rare element at first, but after thinking on Guild Master¡¯s explanation, I¡¯m now certain it¡¯s also abstract.

    ¡°For Famine, I carry around a box enchanted with hunger arrays that keep me in a perpetual state of hunger. This has helped me to better understand, control and speed up the cultivation of Famine. It also allows me to temper my patience. Similarly, anything that requires patience helps to fuel my cultivation. Even now, as all of you exert patience sitting here, I can feel my cultivation speed jumping up.

    ¡°My last element is water, and I generally cultivate that through my breathing technique. For the moment I haven¡¯t created one as suitable as Guild Master¡¯s star point breathing, so that is all I use.¡±

    Alecksa then sat down, and everyone returned their eyes onto James. James felt slightly better hearing that Alecksa at least put some thought and effort into her cultivation, as opposed to Fatty. He then nodded his head after thinking for a moment.

    ¡°Well, I suggest that both of you start thinking of methods to create a breathing technique that will resonate with your elements. The breathing technique doesn¡¯t just increase your ability to draw in spirit energy, but also increases your bodies attributes and allows you to generate more power or control in martial techniques.¡±

    James threw out two folders to the duo showing their respective tasks. ¡°Well, I suggest that both of you consider methods to generate your own personal breathing techniques. Also, you should consider and practice some new martial techniques that are personalised to your elements.

    ¡°Right now, I know that Fatty doesn¡¯t have any techniques at all, and relies entirely on his strange body. Alecksa, you also mostly only rely on releasing your element wildly into the surroundings, you should consider creating some martial techniques to focus your talents.¡±

    James then looked around again and took out two new folders. He threw one over to Jessy and the other to Goliath. ¡°You two will also be working together on this assignment. You will take the 3 dark brothers from the ghosts. Tommy, you will follow their advice, but ultimately you are in charge of you three brothers. In addition, you will have another mission, but ultimately I want you to assist these two in their task.¡±

    James then threw another folder over to Tommy, who sat between his other two brothers. He knew they didn¡¯t particularly like the idea of splitting up from their siblings, but they would eventually have to learn to act independently of each other.

    James then glanced at the 5 people and considered for a moment. He then pointed at Goliath and asked; ¡°Goliath, would you mind describing your method of cultivation to us?¡±

    Goliath nodded and stood up. His tall, muscled figure loomed over the table like a war god, and his serious, stern expression gave everyone the impression he was a fearsome and disciplined soldier.

    ¡°My cultivation is in fire, earth and wrath. My breathing technique is unique in that my fire energy doesn¡¯t run through my meridians but instead is focused like a solitude raging flame encompassing my heart. My earth runs through my meridians similar to an upside down pyramid and focuses on increasing upper body strength and reinforcing my centre of gravity.

    ¡°Lastly, like my fire element, my wrath energy doesn¡¯t run through my meridians but instead is infused into my blood. With every beat of my heart, my fire energy heats my blood into lava and aggravates the wrath energy infused within. When I am prepared to unleash my spirit energy, my heart beats faster, and the flames burn hotter until the wrath energy can¡¯t be contained any longer, at that point, it fills every part of my body like a great surge of anger.¡±

    ¡°Within my spirit realm, my earth element is a great mountain, stable and unshakable. On the top of my mountain is an earthen altar within which is my ever burning flame, engulfed within that is a blood orb of my wrath which is constantly being refined and envelopes my True Spirit. At the moment, this structure is the most helpful for my cultivation but also somewhat unstable and difficult to maintain. When I eventually reach palace realm, this will be the structure of my palace.¡±

    Goliath then gave another nod and sat down. James was surprised that Goliath had already begun structuring his palace, even though they¡¯d all only recently stepped into the True Spirit Realm and had at minimum a few years or more until they reached the point they would face their three tribulations.

    James considered for a moment whether he should restructure his own spirit realm to reflect how he wanted his spirit palace to look. After another thought, he decided to wait. He had quite a few more energies that he would need to structure together to resonate properly with his soul.

    At last James glanced over to Jessy. Seeing everyone¡¯s gazes focus onto her, Jessy couldn¡¯t stop herself from blushing. Finally, after the silent pressure of everyone¡¯s curious stares built up for a moment, Jessy humphed and stood up with and angry glare at James.

    ¡°As you all know, my aspect is lust, and I also have wind and water. My breathing technique is still the star point technique because without as many elements it¡¯s difficult to operate the hands of time properly and feels uncomfortable for me.

    ¡°I discovered the link between cultivating an abstract element and experiencing the aspect it represents back when James told me that it would be the only way to increase my control over it. As such I ... ahem, well, have lots of sex and create various sexual fantasies while I meditate. This increases my cultivation speed rapidly.

    ¡°I¡¯ve also discovered that when I ... erm ... have sex with strong cultivators and release my energy into their bodies it returns to me with huge amounts of excess lust energy. During sex, I can rapidly increase my cultivation through this method...¡±

    Jessy then paused for a long moment with an awkward facial expression as she thought back to her times experimenting with this method of cultivation. ¡°Unfortunately, this often comes at the expense of my partner¡¯s cultivation. If I use this method on someone who has a weak willpower, it could even suck their entire cultivation from their body to fuel mine.

    ¡°In my spirit realm, my True Spirit sits in a cloud of pink mist. In the centre of this cloud is a pink flame which tempers my True Spirit. Although it greatly increases my sexual frustrations, this method raises my cultivation speed faster and increases my ability to visualise fantasies. Around this cloud is a constant gentle green breeze and beyond that is a stream of water which orbits my True Soul like a circle. It has characteristics of highly pressurised water and spins in and endless circle.¡±

    Jessy finally sat down with a blushing face while everyone else stared at her with incredulity. Especially those other 3 from earth. James couldn¡¯t help staring at her in shock. ¡®Isn¡¯t she a succubus? Does she not suck the life force out of people she fucks? Holy crap! I¡¯ve actually created a demon.¡¯

    Finally, he shook this thought off and glanced over to the three brothers of the ghost team. Tommy stood up at this glance and bowed to everyone. ¡°Seniors, we three junior all have similar methods of cultivation for a darkness attribute. It¡¯s easiest to cultivate in the cold dark of night, and we each operate the star point breathing technique. Cash cultivates his apathy by just not giving a shit. Junior cultivates best in the underground black markets where everyone is deeply suspicious of everyone.

    ¡°I cultivate my discipline through patient cultivation and quiet introspection. As the only one of us with a normal element, my cultivation is fastest because the earth element helps me to temper my heart and mind as an immovable rock.¡±

    Tommy then sat down with a straight back and continued to listen to the conversation at the table. As one of the youngest members of the Dark Brotherhood council, he greatly relished this chance to interact with his senior brothers and sisters. Although they didn¡¯t meet often, but he acknowledged each of the sins as incredibly powerful seniors.

    In fact, it wasn¡¯t just the three brothers. Alecksa and Cassidy both acknowledged these 6 sins as powerful seniors. Even with their strange talents, they could feel the bizarre level of power they gave off. Although none of them could scry, the instinctively knew that the sins each had incredibly powerful willpowers.

    Even after James had found them and explained how soul pressure worked and told them it was a reflection of their willpower and their ability to influence the world around them. Even after they¡¯d spent countless amounts of effort training their willpower and spirit pressure, they could still feel that they weren¡¯t a match for these 6 seniors.

    Actually, the one they were most instinctively afraid of wasn¡¯t even one of the sins. Although James had tempered his willpower the most, and Exsue was simply unreadable, Harvy was actually the most frightening. It wasn¡¯t a case of his spirit pressure being more powerful or well controlled than James¡¯, but that the nature of his spirit pressure was simply ruthless and unyielding. Like the cold hand of death, it just kept coming no matter how much you ran.

    It was as if Harvy didn¡¯t have a limit to the amount of spirit pressure he could release. Although he was limited in his control and power, his spirit pressure was endless in quantity and could exude from him endlessly.

    Although this was just a sense, like intuition, it still left them most afraid of him out of everyone.

    They, of course, weren¡¯t the only ones aware of this oddity. James too had talked with Harvy and experienced his endless spirit pressure and the strange clammy cold feeling it gave him when it was acting on him.

    Probably the only certainty he felt in defeating Harvy came in the fact that Harvy¡¯s pressure was still quite weak and he had trouble controlling it. Also, he had the Pressure Diverter which helped him to alleviate the pressure for a while, even though that ring would also eventually be destroyed after fending off an endless pressure for any deal of time.

    After Tommy had sat back down, James looked over the remaining 4 participants of this meeting. Exsue, Kelly, Harvy and Cassidy. Finally, he looked to Cassidy and took out a folder. ¡°Cassidy, I¡¯m giving you a mission as well. Yours will be harder than everyone else¡¯s combined and...¡±

    ¡°No.¡± Cassidy quickly interrupted.

    James sat stunned for a moment then scowled slightly. ¡°You don¡¯t even know what the mission is and your already going to reject it?¡±

    Cassidy raised her head to the roof proudly and pouted slightly, looking all the while the incarnation of cuteness. ¡°I don¡¯t wanna.¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow started twitching wildly. He¡¯d interreacted enough with Cassidy to know her personality by now. Unfortunately, he needed her for this mission to be a success and as such, he had no choice but to acquiesce.

    ¡°Fine, what is it?¡±

    Cassidy glanced over at James from the corner of her eye as a devilish smile spread on her lips. ¡°You have to give me ¡®it¡¯.¡±

    ¡°Denied.¡±

    James didn¡¯t even need to consider. He knew what ¡®it¡¯ was and immediately rejected. Although no one else in the room knew what ¡®it¡¯ was, they knew that it must be something significant if James wasn¡¯t even going to consider discussing it. They all watched stunned, as James took back the folder he was about to hand to her. It then suddenly burst into flames and disintegrated into ashes.

    James then looked over to Kelly and started to outline the task he¡¯d set for her. Cassidy, seeing James so resolutely denying her could only give a ¡®tsk¡¯. She then waved her hand, and everyone in the room suddenly found a needle stuck in their neck.

    Cassidy then cutely looked at James with big adorable eyes and spoke. ¡°Harder than everyone else combined? But Guild Master, I don¡¯t know if I¡¯m ready to take a mission on my own yet.¡±

    All of a sudden, it was like time had rewound to just before the moment she had said ¡®no¡¯. Apart from her, everyone had completely forgotten that brief moment.

    James just smiled evilly as he looked over at Cassidy. He then opened the palm of his hand and let the needle which was supposed to have struck him in the neck drop onto the table with a ¡®tink¡¯. Cassidy wasn¡¯t surprised. Apart from her, the only other person who knew about her power was James.

    She didn¡¯t know how he¡¯d discovered her power, but after they all broke through into the True Spirit Realm and she¡¯d stolen another kiss from him, he suddenly showed up at her room and took her off to a secret training room somewhere in the city.

    He then made her stay there and practice needle skills for days on end. By the end, her hands were filled with cuts and pricks, and she could barely move her fingers. For those few days, she tried numerous times to make James forget that he was supposed to be training her in needles, only to discover that he would suddenly smile like the devil and her training would just become even harsher.

    By the end, she knew that the Guildmaster had become aware of her spirit power and had found some way to nullify it. Needless to say, he taught her to pour her spirit energy into the needles so as to act as a poison, causing anyone they touched to suddenly forget back a set amount of time.

    She couldn¡¯t help but cutely pout, seeing James revealing her needle.

    James then continued on as if this whole spectacle had never happened. ¡°No need to worry Cass.¡± He continued as he pulled another folder out from under the table and slid it over to Cassidy. Seeing him produce another folder as if he¡¯d expected this to happen the whole time, Cassidy could only pout cutely, meanwhile cursing and throwing a fit in her spirit realm.

    ¡°Although your mission will be the most difficult, you will be taking a guardian with you.¡± James then nodded to Exsue and handed her a folder. Before she had a chance to deny this mission and claim she only wanted to stay here at James¡¯ side, James put a hand on her head like patting a dog.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry Exsue, you will definitely be generously rewarded for this mission.¡±

    Exsue visibly crooned and rubbed her head into his hand like a cat trying to create more contact. Because James hardly ever showed her any attention of affection, she was especially weak to his devious methods like this.

    She could only comply.

    James then looked at Kelly. ¡°Kelly, I know you don¡¯t like being given orders and especially don¡¯t enjoy doing anything that might be considered work, as such, you can do whatever you want. I don¡¯t know if you¡¯re interested, but we have an alchemy master joining us soon. If you like, you can join Norman and I in training, or you can remain in the lab and continue on your own little projects.¡±

    Kelly gave a silent nod from her slouched half asleep position. As James said, if he gave her a task to accomplish, that would be like giving her work, which by her very nature she would avoid putting any effort or thought into. When she could freely do what she wanted she would gladly do stuff, even if most the time it were destructive or pointless. After all, the idle hands are the devil¡¯s tools and who had more idle hands than sloth?

    James then looked at Harvy. ¡°Harvy, you are going to remain here. You will be either in the university¡¯s flight program or at the graveyard.¡±

    ¡°Yes, my Dark Liege.¡± Replied Harvy promptly.

    Finished giving out his instructions, James left. Everyone quickly then began preparing for their missions. Even though James hadn¡¯t given any instructions to Kelly, he knew how to get her to do work. He just needed to make it not look like work. As such, everyone had instructions in their mission folder to visit her and complain about this or that which would make their mission easier.

    The fact that most of the things they would need developed by her were rather interesting or destructive would naturally draw Kelly¡¯s attention. Although she may be sloth, that was only in regards to anything she hated doing. Although she was incredibly lazy and tired, she loved to build things. Idle devil hands and all that.

    -Tech City Catacombs-

    The Tech City Catacombs were actually a relic of the past Gau City. Although almost everything from the old city was destroyed and rebuilt, the catacombs were left mostly intact. This was because Jasmine faced a great deal of resistance when she decided to try and destroy it. Not from the people who lived in the city, but rather from the residence of the catacombs themselves.

    The first few levels of the catacombs, apart from the reeking of dead bodies and endless hordes of rats, nothing was out of ordinary, and these levels got stripped bare and rebuilt to accommodate untold amounts of corpses. In fact, the first 8 levels were rebuilt to fit damn near every citizen of the entire empire. That¡¯s millions of resting places.

    However, down beyond the eighth level was the Crypt. From what information he¡¯d gathered, James knew that the Crypt descended even deeper into the earth and was filled with the corpses and dead ancients from long ago.

    The problem was that most of these levels were filled with beings that could only be called undead. Ghouls, ghosts, zombies. All the usual characters. James had a few theories on what exactly these creatures were but wasn¡¯t too worried about taking some back for an autopsy just now.

    Back when Jasmine tried to renovate, she tried to have the undead purged but discovered that the horde was almost endless. After the renovations to the top layers, she promptly forgot all about the lower levels, deciding that those walking corpses could just stay down there. As far as she could tell, they had no intentions of climbing up to the surface to start trouble, so she never mentioned it to James.

    Now, however, James had been trying to think of ways to help his companions increase their prowess and cultivation. Due to that, he asked about the cemetery and was informed about this place. Learning that it was filled with zombies, James held nothing back in berating Jasmine for this oversight.

    As such, James and Harvy found themselves standing at the bottom of the eighth level staring at a massive 40-meter tall iron door filled with various inscriptions of brave warriors fighting monsters and invaders.

    It looked very much out of place, because behind the duo was a huge clean stone chamber that looked very new and shiny and was lit by modern lights. Meanwhile, the ancient door looked like it was dragged straight out of some Dwarvish mine from Mordor.

    James walked forward and knocked on the door a few times. ¡°Clunk Clunk Clunk.¡± Rang out in the eighth level. James then tried pushing on the door only to find it swung open easily and without any resistance.

    The moment the door opened, it revealed an old worn stone staircase leading down into pitch blackness. An ominous black mist poured out from beyond the door. James didn¡¯t even need to scry to tell that this was a manifestation of death spirit energy. After scrying, he confirmed that all this death energy was free energy and not the refined energy of some creature.

    He then looked over to Harvy. ¡°Well? What do you think?¡±

    Harvy moved forward and stood in the mist. After a moment his own death aura spread out like a mist from his body and then rapidly cycled back into him like waves. Before the wave returned, he¡¯d already released more energy which floated out and mingled with the free energy coming back once more in a great wave.

    Harvy nodded and pulled all his energy back in. ¡°It is perfect Master. This Crypt will be perfect for cultivating my death spirit energy.¡±

    James nodded slightly. ¡°Good. Go cultivate for a while, just make sure not to let any undead out. In three months when the war of the worlds comes, I expect you to be the master of the first level of this crypt. From what Jasmine told me, there are many powerful creatures deep in here. I don¡¯t expect you to take over the entire crypt right now, especially considering there are probably some ancient undead creatures living here that have existed for millennia.¡±

    Harvy nodded, and then without further words strolled down into the crypt. James then very quickly closed the door tightly behind him while talking to Jasmine in his spirit realm.

    ¡°Jasmine, set up some stronger defences at this door. I don¡¯t want anything walking out of here that isn¡¯t Harvy.¡±

    With that done, James turned and left.

    As Harvy descended slowly into the crypt, he felt, for the first time in a long time, some sense of excitement. His master had giving him everything, and now even sought out such a miraculous place for him to cultivate.

    He truly loved his master. The Dark Overlord took a great deal of care for him to supply a place so perfect for his cultivation.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    Here, deep within the earth, surrounded by such thick death aura, he could cultivate both his understanding and power over death, as well as his affinity to the earth and the connection between the two.

    After nearly 10 minutes of descending, Harvy entered into a dark corridor that branched off into tens of other corridors. Filling this corridor were hordes of slowly shambling corpses that meandered about aimlessly. It was pitch black but that had never worried Harvy.

    Through his affinity with death and earth, he¡¯d long since developed an inner eye. Although this wasn¡¯t to the same degree as James¡¯ Scrying, which revealed everything, Harvy could see a great deal more than others.

    The moment he stepped onto the bottom step, the zombie-like corpses sensed the tiny piece of flickering life force still remaining in his body and started turning towards him. Harvy simply waved his hand, and a compact rectangular steel device flicked out of his sleeves into his hand.

    With another wave of the hand, the rectangle flicked out and took the shape of a great big scythe. This was the Hand of Death. It was created by James in the forge and contained the strongly focused free energy of a Blood Lotus. These flowers generally only grew on battlefields littered with corpses and blood.

    The most interesting part of these flowers was that they absorbed the thick death energy left over from destructive battles and huge amounts of death. By using this to craft Harvy¡¯s folding scythe, James managed to imbue it with a very strange property. Anything it cut off would not just die, but very quickly disintegrate into dust and return to the earth.

    Harvy truly loved his Master. With a simple stride forward he moved into the crowded corridors of the crypt and began a slaughter as he slowly operated his external breathing technique that he¡¯d just displayed in front of James.

    -James¡¯ Meditation Room-

    James sat in his meditation room in the guild. As he sat in meditation, he was having a discussion with Jasmine in his spirit realm. On a floating asteroid within his spirit realm, James¡¯ True Spirit, Jasmine¡¯s spirit and Gold James all sat enjoying some tea.

    Jasmine took a sip and then began the discussion. ¡°Everyone has begun their preparations to leave for their missions. It seems everyone is quite excited to be going out of the city for a while.¡±

    James nodded his head as he placed down his cup. ¡°I¡¯m not surprised, I too wish to escape this damnable city. Being a cultivator on the martial path, I need to leave and gather experience of the world as well. However, I am also aware that the things I can learn here and now are the most important and I will carry these skills with me to the precipice of this world.¡±

    Gold James patted his chest proudly and bragged.Hah, knowledge is the true power of the world. I should tell you both, I have a perfect memory and have never forgotten anything I learn. You should let me take control to learn alchemy.~

    James quirked an eyebrow at him oddly. ¡°You do realise, you can¡¯t brag in front of me. Being the same person, everything I learn you will naturally learn as well. I can confirm that our memory has vastly improved, but it still isn¡¯t perfect.¡±

    Jasmine smiled to herself as the two bickered between each other. This was quite a common scene in their Spirit Realm. Although the two bickered endlessly and fought constantly, it was like a single person having an inner monologue. She couldn¡¯t help but giggle.

    James finally stopped bickering with himself and decided to return to his original reason for sitting down here. He needed to lay out his future plans and discuss the path they would be moving forward. Originally he¡¯d hoped to get the Spirit Jade out of the way earlier, but it had now somehow turned into a long-term investment, and he¡¯d even somehow ended up with an alchemy master.

    ¡°First off, the War of the Worlds is in three months. That is my most pressing priority. If all goes well, a few months after that the 3 nations will already be at war with each other. How¡¯s the factory going?¡±

    Jasmine seemed to space out for a moment then nodded. ¡°No problems. The factory is now operating at maximum efficiency. By the time the War of the Worlds is over we should have enough stockpiled to equip the entire Yori Empire. However, by that time our reserves will be dry as a bone, and the resources on the market in Yori will most likely be in severe flux due to our huge purchases.¡±

    James cupped his chin and pondered for a short time. Finally, he focused his mind, and a piece of white floor space rose up like a great big rectangle in front of them. With a wave of the hand, the floor began changing colours. He then smiled to himself.

    After some more focused thought, the big rectangular wall then started shaking and suddenly an image appeared on it. Jasmine, being the more adept with the quantum particle communication, suddenly widened her eyes as she looked at the screen in front of her.

    On the screen was the interface used for communicating between com cubes. After some consideration, Jasmine finally realised what James had done. Looking at James with some shock, she couldn¡¯t help but ask. ¡°Did you just jack into the com network with your spirit realm?¡±

    James smiled then shook his head. ¡°Not with my spirit realm, more like with my subconscious. After you had taught me how you interpret the code the spirit particles operate on, I started to ponder on why it was that you had such an easy time of it while I found it so incredibly difficult.

    ¡°After a while, it struck me that this had been second nature to you since your inception. Not a conscious level of thought but rather a subconscious level of thought. I then realised my mistake in trying to consciously understand the code and interpret data from it. Instead, I decided to let my subconscious do what it does best, which is all the heavy lifting, while I continued doing what I do best, which is interacting.

    ¡°To achieve that goal, I had this thought, that is, I could create a means to interact in this world. Then, my subconscious just does all the communicating for me.¡±

    James then glanced at Gold James who appeared completely unaffected. Being looked at, Gold James just shrugged his shoulders.Don¡¯t look at me. We already agreed that I¡¯m most likely not your subconscious but a split consciousness.~

    James let out a sigh. He¡¯d really, really hoped that Gold James had just been a figment of his subconscious imagination this whole time and the massive strain he put on his mind communicating on the network would affect him in some way.

    Forgetting about such troubles, James then waved his hand at the screen again and the contact list cycled through until it landed on Lucas. Within a matter of moments, Lucas¡¯ face appeared on the screen. To his great surprise, what he saw nearly made him fall out of his chair.

    On the screen Lucas saw, was a reflection of the trio sitting in someone¡¯s spirit realm enjoying tea. He almost couldn¡¯t comprehend just what he was looking at. James didn¡¯t really care if other people saw his spirit realm, which is why he allowed it to appear that way. In the end, he was basically untouchable on this continent now, and what was someone going to do even if they did know how bizarre his spirit realm was?

    Gold James gave Lucas a wave to grab his attention and began speaking.Lucas, my good buddy. Your Yansho merchants guild, is it somehow connected to any bigger merchant powers?~

    Lucas, after taking a few minutes to digest this strange scene, couldn¡¯t help but look at the shadowy True Spirit of James. ¡°James, is this your spirit realm? It¡¯s ... beyond anything I¡¯ve ever imagined of anyone¡¯s spirit realm ... and ... it appears you have ... Guests?¡±

    James just waved his hand as if it was nothing. ¡°Never mind the small stuff Lucas. So like I asked, do you have a parent guild or sect or something that runs merchant operations all over the continent?¡±

    Lucas couldn¡¯t help but start thinking James had gone mad. ¡®What¡¯s he mean ¡®like I asked¡¯, it was clearly that gold guy who asked.¡¯

    After that thought had finished, he decided that business came first. He leant back in his chair and nodded. ¡°We do. Yansho Merchant Guild is just a branch of the Profit Sect. They¡¯re based in Nahtiro like all the major sects and guilds and are one of the 5 most powerful sects on the continent. There¡¯s almost nothing they can¡¯t get their hands on.¡±

    Jasmine then piped up. ¡°Excellent, I¡¯ll send you a list of things we need, if you can, contact your parent sect and try to get us the best prices they can from the entire continent. We¡¯ll handle the transport of these goods.¡±

    Lucas, smelling the potential for a great deal, started to hum and haw. ¡°I¡¯m not sure it will be that easy Miss Jasmine. The Profit Sect generally only deal with large customers and influential backgrounds. Although you¡¯ve come a long way from the small guild you were before, they probably won¡¯t move to trade with you without more incentive.¡±

    James cupped his chin and started thinking. After a bit, Gold James stood up from his spot and crushed his teacup into dust.Good! Very good then! You tell them, they help us with this matter, or we will expand our interests into major trading and take over the markets of this entire shitty little rock!~

    With that said, Gold James then waved his hand through the air and caused the screen to shatter and fall back down into the lake below until it sunk to the bottom and merged into the endless white floor.

    James quirked an eyebrow and then came to realise a huge drawback on doing business through his spirit realm. Gold James was incredibly proud and arrogant. For Lucas to belittle his guild and state that they weren¡¯t of an influential enough background set off his pride. In Gold James¡¯ mind, all he heard was; ¡°Your guild¡¯s shit and not worth the time.¡±

    James then smiled bitterly to himself while Gold James started throwing a fit and smashing boulders into dust with lightning only for them to reform moments later.

    Jasmine also let out a light sigh.

    -Yansho Merchant Guild HQ-

    Lucas stared at his com cube, stunned. After a moment, he smiled bitterly. He should have known better. Doing business with James was already incredibly difficult because the man was too astute in some things. Although the Yansho merchants guild had managed to pull the wool over them now and then and make some huge profits, James, Jasmine and especially Jessy, generally forced them down to the absolute bare bones of profit they could make.

    He also knew better to try and do business like this when there was a third, unknown party, sitting right next to James. Based on the fact he could say such things and act in such a way, that gold man clearly held quite a bit of influence in the Brotherhood.

    After cursing his luck at having run into such a troublesome fellow, he pulled out a sound talisman and called his Senior Brother in the Profit Sect.

    -Nahtiro Island, Freedom City- Profit Sect -

    Seated in his meditation room, a scrawny big nosed man suddenly quirked his eyebrow then reached into his robe and withdrew a sound talisman that was glowing. After pouring some spirit energy into the talisman, the talisman¡¯s array patterns swirled and twisted until the circles on it realigned in a specific way.

    Moments later, Lucas¡¯ voice came out of the talisman. ¡°Senior Brother Feng. It¡¯s Lucas. I might have created a problem for us.¡±

    Feng creased his brow. ¡°Oh? What kind of problem is so big it could affect the Profit Sect from that tiny little Empire you¡¯re in?¡±

    ¡°Well, about that Senior Brother ... You remember that Guild I mentioned?¡±

    Feng scratched his chin for a moment then stood up to go make some tea. ¡°The Black Brothers or something? Sure. They have some technology you believe the sect would be very interested in purchasing. I haven¡¯t brought it up to Master yet though. Why? Has something changed?¡±

    ¡°About that ... they asked me to contact the Sect in the hopes Profit Sect could help them with some business.¡±

    Feng¡¯s brow creased again as he placed the talisman down on a little bench and sat to steep some tea. ¡°Don¡¯t bother with such trivial places. Just tell them that we only deal with large transactions, and some little guild out in the backwaters is hardly worth our time.¡±

    Feng heard Lucas groan slightly. ¡°Nnggg ... I had a feeling you¡¯d say that Senior Brother, and I very much said the same thing. Unfortunately, they have said that we can deal with this matter for them, or they would begin expanding and take over every market on the continent. You¡¯ve yet to meet these people. When they say such a thing, they will generally follow through. The leader of this guild ... he can be absolutely ruthless.¡±

    Feng poured out his tea, remaining entirely unconcerned. ¡°Heheh. Little Junior Brother, you¡¯ve spent too long out in the muck and shit of the countryside. You seem to have forgotten just how powerful our sect is. If this little ant can bite the toe of our sect, we would welcome it so that we know which little ant we need to be stepping on.¡±

    ¡°Sigh... very well senior brother. Be sure to take my warning to heart though. Do not blame this Junior when you discover the pig is actually a tiger in disguise.

    With that said, the connection broke and the talisman on the table burned into ash. Feng creased his brows at his Junior Brothers words. He and Lucas had been apprenticed to the same master for nearly 60 years. He knew that his Junior Brother would not needlessly worry over this if it was a trivial matter.

    With that in mind, he clicked his fingers together. As if having always been kneeling there, a man clothed in green with his face covered suddenly appeared nearby. ¡°My Lord, do you want this piddling guild eliminated?¡±

    After another moment¡¯s thought, Feng nodded. ¡°Yes, destroy them. But bring me these flying carriages they have invented. Master will be most displeased if we give up such an important artefact and the method to create it. With such a thing, our control over resources and trade on Atsunari will become unbreakable.¡±

    This said, the green ninja once again disappeared like a gentle breeze, as quickly as he¡¯d come.

    -James¡¯ Spirit Realm-

    James sat at the table pondering on what to do. Suddenly, his eyebrow tweaked. He just received a message from Lucas informing him that; ¡®Unfortunately, the Profit Sect has declined the invitation to do business, but if there¡¯s anything I can do to assist in acquiring the resources they need, the Yansho Merchant¡¯s will help as best they can.¡¯

    Gold James immediately perked up when James received this message. Being the same person, naturally this would not escape his notice.Hahaha! Foolish! They dare to test me! Jasmine, prepare to begin a new operation. Codename, ¡®All your base are belong to us!¡¯.~

    Jasmine could only let out a sigh. Very quickly, an operation to start taking over markets all over the continent began. James could only smile wryly. With Gold James so insistent on this course of action, he could only join in and let it happen.

    -3 weeks-

    Over the next few weeks, markets all over the continent started to fluctuate wildly. Resources were being traded through the Dark Brotherhood at an astronomical rate. With the assistance of Jasmine, a number of rockets were launched from Tech City, the next day, every major marketplace in every city suddenly had a handful of strange boxes suddenly land in the middle of them.

    If a person approached one of these boxes, it would scan them and then drop a little cube. People, out of curiosity, started to take these boxes. They would then pour a little spirit energy into it, and suddenly a screen would appear in front of them explaining that they had just connected to the Dark Brotherhood¡¯s Continental Markets.

    This little box was truly devious. Each dispensary only had about 100 boxes. This meant that only a few thousand of these boxes existed. Once people discovered their purpose, a bloodbath engulfed the continent.

    That was because this little box provided a person with the means to get anything they needed at the lowest possible prices. They could select almost any resource, in any market in the entire continent, and this little box promised to deliver. At first, there was scepticism. But after trying it, people would suddenly have a man rock up at their doorstep, usually within the day, on a magic flying board.

    He would then have them stamp their seal on a delivery docket and hand over whatever goods they¡¯d ordered after payment. A few people got greedy and tried to rob the delivery man only to later be engulfed in a furious explosion. These people were recorded and shown on the little black box to help set an example.

    Gold James had invented FedEx. Not only that, but he¡¯d also invented internet shopping. Suddenly everyone was salivating over getting their hand on one of these devices. What they didn¡¯t realise, was that these boxes also sucked up information like a sponge.

    The AI in the guild HQ was in control of the Continental Markets and needed an upgrade just to handle all the information pouring into it. With this information, the Dark Brotherhood suddenly had a means to determine the market prices for the entire continent. Every businessman and trader suddenly became connected to a huge network that connected everything.

    All of a sudden, people that lived and breathed this business, whether it was trading, transporting, creating or buying these goods were rushing towards Tech City. People focused on transport were rushing to join the guild. The flying boards that Guild Members used were absolutely remarkable.

    Hell, they could carry nearly a tonne of goods with the board, even though that would slow them down severely, this method of travel was still faster and safer than going on the roads where bandits and creatures often roamed.

    Traders needed this box! They rushed to tech city to try and get their hands on a box. If they didn¡¯t have this device, then trading and selling goods would become incredibly difficult. They would essentially be cut out of the market. At least if they have it, they can stockpile certain goods and sell to places they were in need.

    Creators wanted this box so they could track their competitors and also determine how they would price their goods.

    Suddenly, markets all over the continent began to flux wildly as people dropped or raised the prices of goods. By the second week, the Dark Brotherhood had a huge influx of potential guild members. To limit the dregs, James organised a trial for new entrants into the guild for the next week.

    In addition to this, the guild started selling more Market Boxes at exorbitant prices to anyone who came for them. For these three weeks and weeks beyond, Tech City had another huge inrush of visitors.

    During this time, James spent most of his time focused on training. After the system had been thought up and deployed, there wasn¡¯t much for him to do apart from wait.

    Every second day he would go to the Spire and climb as high as he possibly could. He was currently still stuck on the 30th floor. However, he discovered that the spirit pressure created from the spire arrays didn¡¯t just help to strengthen his body and increase his cultivation rate, it also helped him to increase and control his own pressure.

    In the spire¡¯s endless pressure, James tried to constantly maintain his own pressure to combat against it. By doing this, he discovered that his control and quantity of pressure rapidly improved. Unfortunately, as much as his control increased, it didn¡¯t matter how small he reduced its range it remained at 40m/s of pressure.

    However, he was still ecstatic with his progress. By the end of the 3 weeks, he could control his pressure field to the point that it was only a meter or two from his body. He learnt this skill by necessity in order to reduce the amount of wasted energy from projecting over a larger area. Regardless of that, he still kept forging higher into the tower in the hopes of tempering it to the point he could cover only his body with it.

    By that point, he hoped, it would become a powerful armour that could protect him from harm. Not only that, he wouldn¡¯t even have to bother learning a flight martial skill or trying to develop one because he could just use his own soul pressure to fly himself around. Mind you, it still required a great deal of energy to achieve any form of prolonged flight.

    If he calculated correctly, then he would need nearly 900 newtons per second just to eliminate gravity. He guessed he was at nearly 50,000 newtons as his maximum ¡®soul energy¡¯. That means he could remain weightless in normal gravity for almost a minute. That didn¡¯t include moving his body in other directions and fighting against wind resistance.

    In addition to training his soul energy and control, he also spent time training martial skills in the arena. Primarily he worked on his Fleet Feet. He named this skill as such because he eventually wanted to be so fast that no one would ever get more than a fleeting glance at him when he came and went.

    To test his skills, he would often go to the arena and challenge Palace Realm cultivators. He rarely won a match if he didn¡¯t take out his scimitar, usually having to withdraw because he couldn¡¯t maintain the amount of spirit energy he needed to output to fight with them, but at the same time that never mattered to him. He only wanted to train his skills and cultivators in the same realm had long since no longer been a match for him.

    His Fleet Feet skill used 4 different types of energy simultaneously. Firstly, he used wind energy to reduce wind resistance and to make his body lighter. It also helped to increase his reaction times along with his lightning element and soul energy, which at the speeds he generally moved at was incredibly important.

    The second energy was obviously lightning. This increased his ability to quickly process his surroundings and made the world and everything else to seem to be slowing down somewhat. It also sped up his movements, especially in straight lines and instantaneous changes in direction.

    The third was fire energy. The explosive nature of fire energy helped improve his speed and direction changes. It also allowed him to almost stop on a dime by employing its explosive force to slow his body. Unfortunately, the nature he was using these energies in put a huge strain on his body and probably the only reason he didn¡¯t take damage from it was because his body was being constantly tempered by his Hands of Time breathing technique.

    Lastly was his Soul Energy. He used this to help limit the effects on his body from using these three energies simultaneously, and also to increase his perception speed further. Not only this, but his scrying also increased his perception of the world. Although not the perception speed, rather he could know everything in his surroundings and alter his travel path accordingly.

    The other skills he worked on were simple things like manifesting wind blades, throwing lightning or creating a water whip. Although these things sound simple, they are only simple in comparison to his Fleet Feet skill because they didn¡¯t use such a complex manner of employing their energies.

    To most other practitioners, just these simpler martial techniques were difficult to master.

    Whenever he had some spare time or was meditating, he would spend time processing all the information on spirit materials and cultivation techniques that Jasmine could force into his head.

    While James had been busy training himself and causing a huge uproar all over the continent with his continental trade, his subordinates were all out busily creating trouble.

    In the nation of Soel, a great famine seemed to fall onto the continent. At first, it seemed to only be some of the outlying villages. All their crops began to die and a strange disease spread through the livestock culling creatures bread for eating.

    Soon this strange phenomenon spread. Stories began to crop up everywhere of the Ghost of Famine. Deep in the night, many peasants and farmers claimed to have seen a strange shadow of a woman shrouded in a pervasive green mist walking through their towns. In a matter of days, the crops and livestock would die.

    The lower classes began to grow restless, and soon hunger embraced the nation. To further increase the troubles of Soel, a man known as the Red Barron began to pop up all over the place. At first, no one thought much of this man. He was just a very fat man that everyone slightly hated because he would eat so much while the town was in a state of panic over their lack of foodstuffs.

    The problem started when his gluttonous nature soon became contagious and the residents of these towns would, even if unwilling, begin feasting on all their stockpiled food and gorge themselves full.

    The nobility and upper-class were especially susceptible, and every town that was visited would be stricken with a wild need to fulfil their hungry, needy bellies. Being a nation governed by their religion, many people started complaining to the church that they must have done something to upset the mighty sun gods.

    They would then start hearing rumours of how churches were stockpiling huge hordes of food only to devour them all themselves. Solaris the 22nd, Who was the current Pope of the Order of the Sun¡¯s, issued orders to investigate this matter in the hopes of finding out exactly what was going on in his nation.

    Over in southern nation of Hastoel, a different kind of calamity was befalling them. Hastoel and the northern nation of Baquerro often had many ties through marriage. Being a powerful nation structured on commercialism, the families of Baquerro often married their young daughters into powerful aristocratic families of the southern nation of Hastoel.

    This provided them with a constant source of information about the goings on of the south nation and also allowed them to foster a good relationship. Of course, being a commercialist nation, they had no problems marrying their daughters off to the Soel nation either. It was all a way to build a network for trade and profit to them.

    Hastoel, on the other hand, was a Feudalist Aristocracy and governed by a council of noble families. The inner politics of Hastoel were incredibly messy and vicious. Over these three weeks, something no one ever had imagined started to happen. Adultery!

    Being a nation governed by how people viewed each other in public, adultery was a big no-no. Making it worse, all the adulterers were high-class nobles in the inner circle of the major political powers in the nation.

    They all claimed the same story. They would meet a single woman adorned in red, a beautiful goddess descended from the heavenly realm. This woman would then tease and beg and eventually, pull them into bed, only to moments later be caught by their arranged wives from the northern nation of Baquerro.

    Normally, this situation wasn¡¯t too strange, what was strange was that even though their wives didn¡¯t seem too afflicted at the time, they would suddenly begin to be enraged beyond reason. In these 3 weeks, all of these wives had met a handsome god like Adonis who would counsel them on their worries and discuss their inner anger.

    He would start every conversation with, ¡°Young Lady, are you angry?¡± whenever this happened, these noble ladies would suddenly feel a sudden rush of wrath for their cheating husbands and release all their pent up anger with the man, only to discover that their rage had only suddenly increased 100 fold. Naturally, this then created a scene where they would publicly renounce their husband or confront him.

    As these rumours spread about, and other noble households used it as fuel to attack each other politically, further rumours started to spread among the populace about all sorts of dirty secrets these nobles had. No one was certain where they came from, but all it took was some thinking or speculation to piece together clues that made these rumours seem true.

    Great waves started forming in the Hastoel nation due to these events.

    Up in the North, everything seemed quiet. Apart from a few daughters that had already left their husbands coming home and complaining to their doting fathers, everything else seemed fine.

    -Tech City Spire-

    Today was the day in which James decided to weed out the wheat from the chaff. He announced last week, due to the huge influx of people begging to join the guild, as well as the need for people to complete guild missions, that the Dark Brotherhood would be doing an intake.

    What he didn¡¯t expect, was that half the city showed up to join his guild. Almost all the residents were once commoners with no way to take a step into the cultivating world. Thanks to the Brotherhood supplying cultivation methods to the public for almost nothing, everyone had a chance to become a cultivator.

    To add to this, hundreds of these applicants were from the arenas in the spirit district or the university district and longed to join the guild that had the means to create such marvellous training and learning grounds. They all thought that if the guild had the power and resources to create these places for the public, surely they reserved even better stuff strictly for members.

    Naturally, they were absolutely correct.

    Among the thousands of applicants begging to join the guild, there were no fewer number of infiltrators.

    Due to the constant expansion of the guild, Gary, the acting Guild Master, had structured levels to the guild. Similar to mission levels, guild members now carried a guild seal with a star. The number and colour of their star reflected the part and level of the guild they were a part of.

    At the top, and not needing any stars because Gary could never enforce them on them even if he tried, was the Brotherhoods Core, the 6 sins, 5 ghosts and of course the sole knight. Next was himself, at 1 Black Star. This showed he was acting in the stead of the Guild Master.

    Next on the list was his acting vice guild master, who was actually someone everyone should be familiar with. Henry McCord, the smuggler of Star City. James had no idea how Gary had ever met this fellow, or what possessed him to put him into such a position of power, but he had kept a close eye on the pair since their inception and discovered McCord to be a perfect fit.

    As Vice Guildmaster, he became incredibly possessive of the Brotherhood and their secrets. Although his character was more to be desired, he would never let himself be blindsided, and because he was now basically running the guild, he¡¯d become absolutely ruthless in his protection of it.

    McCord was adorned with 1 white star.

    The next in rank was 2 stars. Generally, only people who had accomplished quite a bit for the guild and had a suitable level of power enjoyed such a status. This was also the first division in the structure of the guild. 2 star members have the right to create their own hall in the guild to pursue their own goals.

    Among the 2 star members, black stars were a hall master and white stars were their vice master. At the moment, the only people sitting in this position were Elder Grace from the Gau Clan, who was running the Sword Hall and focused on martial fanatics that only cared about combat.

    The young lady who helped invent the conversion arrays which Skay and James once announced as a winner of the science fair at the University. She was now delegated to take charge of that project and also started the Hall of Mysteries in an effort to attract intelligent minds to explore the mysteries of science, arrays and everything. She referred to herself as ¡®This Mind¡¯, and so everyone just called her Brain.

    The next in line was Elder Song. Although he wasn¡¯t the best forge master, James had invited him to join the guild and take on this role. In fact, the Gau Clan and Brotherhood had long since become inseparable, and the Gau Clan was well and truly engulfed by the Brotherhood. Although they maintained their independence and could act separately of the Guild, they weren¡¯t able to give out things like cultivation techniques and martial techniques that were developed by the guild to each other or others.

    It was well established that even the Gau Clan would seek no respite from the Brotherhood¡¯s merciless assassins if they broke their oath to the guild and tried to give out guild property to others. This meant that anyone in the clan who wanted to take advantage of these things from the guild would have to officially join it.

    Returning from that digression, Song was in charge of the Hall of Forging. It goes without saying that they shared an incredibly close relationship with the Hall of Mysteries.

    The AI that basically ran everything in the guild and city was also somehow a member. It was essentially a place filler for the latest addition of the latest Hall, which was the Commerce Hall. Until a suitably impressive member of the Guild stepped up to this position, the AI would continue to run things and simply give out jobs on the job board for deliveries and pickups.

    The final 2 star member was shrouded in mystery. They used a strange martial technique that allowed them to shield their face and body in mist and so their identity was unknown to everyone except the Guild Master Gary, and the Core Brotherhood. This person, whoever they were, ran the final Hall, referred to only as the Blood Gallery.

    James met this person only recently, and he was a truly astounding assassin. Even Jasmine and the AI of the guild hadn¡¯t been able to track him properly, and he was the closest person to ever sneak close enough to James to make an attempt on his life.

    This man was actually the green robed ninja that was sent to kill James and destroy his guild 3 weeks prior. How he failed in his attempt on James, and why he was now a hall master, were both known only to himself, James and Jasmine.

    Needless to say, he was a master of assassination, subterfuge and all things truly dark and shady. Amusingly the person who handled that side of the guild was McCord, who didn¡¯t even know this man¡¯s identity or backstory.

    Regardless, the man took in all the guild members who were inclined to that way of life through a brutal and vicious testing process.

    Proceeding on, stars then increased in numbers up to 9 stars, which was the lowest level of guild member. Since James had expected to leave Tech City, he¡¯d made arrangements to create another guild seal.

    The process of which, to share the same status as the seal that was a part of Jasmine¡¯s being, was a great deal more complicated than he¡¯d expected. Luckily for him, Jasmine was able to devise a series of arrays that allowed the two seals to be linked together as if one.

    That allowed Gary to make oaths for the guild and use the seal of the guild while Jasmine could remain with James and travel. It also allowed him to keep track of the people in the guild and know their status intuitively.

    Not that it mattered too much seeing as everyone received the implant and were constantly monitored by the AI and received certain death if they tried to betray secrets of the guild.

    With the star system, it allowed Gary to limit what certain levels of the guild could access in the guild. For example, everyone started out at 9 stars and then had to work their way up to the top. All sorts of methods existed to advance in the Guild, from combat and assassinations to developing unique and interesting science projects or showing remarkable talents in forging.

    At the Spire within the centre of the Spirit District, James stood next to Gary overseeing the huge crowd of uncountable people that arrived to join the guild. Standing behind him were the 4 Hall Masters as well as McCord.

    As James surveyed the growing crowd, he couldn¡¯t help but grin. Finally, at about midday, he realised the crowds weren¡¯t slowing down. Seeing, even more, people still coming, James got the shits with waiting. With Jasmines help, he had some drone move around the city and project his face all over the place as he addressed everyone.

    ¡°Hello, everyone! I¡¯m sure, if you don¡¯t recognise me, you can at least guess who I am. Today is the intake for the Brotherhood but I¡¯m surprised to see that the city is filled with cultivators hoping for a chance at this opportunity and if I wait for you to all gather here I¡¯ll be waiting forever. As such, you all have a few choices to enter the Guild.¡±

    James then looked over at his hall masters who had organised tests for prospective members. First, Grace stood forward and addressed the drone floating around in front of her. ¡°I am Hall Master Grace of the Combat Hall. If you wish to join the combat hall or do not wish to join any hall and simply wish to join the guild as a free member with no affiliation to a hall, then your task is simple. You must reach the 12th floor of the spire by midday tomorrow.¡±

    She then stepped back allowing Brain to step forwards. ¡°Obviously, strength isn¡¯t the only way to join our guild as This Mind can attest to. At the university district, This Mind will be holding some basic tests to assess your mental faculties and knowledge. If you wish to join the Hall of Mysteries, or equally wish to join as a free member, then This Mind asks you to meet at the University¡¯s main discussion podium before the end of the day.¡±

    Song then stepped forwards. ¡°I am Song of the Hall of Forging, I will be testing on knowledge and skill in the art of forging. Meet me at the Gau Clan¡¯s Hall of forging in the Central District.¡±

    The screen flickered, and the guild¡¯s seal appeared on the screen. ¡°I am the AI. Commerce Hall seeks members interested in delivery, business and trade. Members seeking admission through this avenue are to meet at the commercial districts North Market Square. Anyone who seeks to join the cities guard forces are to meet the Generals at the southern city gate.¡±

    Lastly was a figure clouded entirely in mist. ¡°Assassins, Spy¡¯s and Infiltrators are to meet at the entrance to the Endless Forest Checkpoint.¡±

    With this short announcement made, James simply left to return to whatever it was he did. Gary scratched his face as if he was confused and had no idea what exactly was going on and the 4 Hall Masters separated to go and do their own assessments.

 Chapter 43: Master?

    Having fulfilled his purpose, James retreated to his Forge in the Lab. He had so much he was trying to focus on recently and decided to distract his scattered thoughts for a short while to work on a project he¡¯d been putting off for a while.

    In the forging room, James stood at a bench looking at an assortment of dark stones. These were his space stones. After some careful investigation, he discovered that the pocket space inside a stone was not relative to the size of a stone, but rather to the density of free energy which permeated the stone.

    While scrying he could discern this energy from other faint energy particles easily. He also determined that the energy in these stones was rather weak and not particularly well refined. Unlike in something like a piece black-iron essence which didn¡¯t just have a lot of a specific type of energy, but the free energy was also incredibly dense and had obviously been refined any number of times.

    Similar to when he refined his spirit energy, instead of quantity of energy particles he instead increased the quality of the energy and density of each particle. Looking at the space energy in the stones he could see endless numbers of impurities, tag along particles that had half fused or fully fused with a space particle, and excess earth particles and every space energy particle were quite a distance from each other and rarely were there particles that were near each other.

    After this realisation, he concluded that he would need to heavily process these stones. After some further thought, he started forging something else instead. After three days he¡¯d forged, instead of an item, a new room.

    This room was an idea he¡¯d thought of a long time ago, but only now started trying to design. After some thought and back and forth with Jasmine, he¡¯d managed to create this little room only a few metres in length and width.

    From all appearances, this room was incredibly dull and normal. However, anyone with the intuition or a strong soul would immediately sense the whole room had a soul of its own, very much similar to when an artefact was given a soul.

    James sat down a few feet from the centre of the room then took out the bag with the Spatial Stones. He then also took out a few of the Greater Spirit Storage Gems they¡¯d mined from below the LS3 Quarry.

    He then made the strange motion of reaching out his hand to place a gem onto something invisible. With this action, the room hummed slightly, and a spirit array pattern suddenly emerged from the floor in a ring of lights.

    As if like some magical inscription written on the air itself, the ring array rose up and suspended the gem in mid-air.

    James smiled like the devil as he watched this. Shortly after, another inscription pattern rose up from the floor and started shining lights over the Gem. When it was finished, it disappeared back into the floor like some ethereal, ghostly hallucination.

    Following which some more inscription patterns started shimmering to life around James looking like some holographic computer screens. James was ecstatic. This was actually technology Jasmine had developed long before now to use in the Mobile Base she¡¯d been so diligently working on.

    Not only this, she¡¯d developed an absurd number of array patterns for a whole multitude of different mundane purposes. She even had array¡¯s that could wipe your ass if you wanted. To which James politely declined when she¡¯d asked.

    Following the shimmering to life of these new arrays, strange figures, shapes and colours began to appear. To most everyone else, these simply represented gibberish, however to James, who had designed this system with Jasmine, it all meant something.

    That little scanning array was actually one of the most complex parts of this entire artefact. It¡¯s ability to scan something and the rooms ability to interpret and display these scans was actually a product of a great deal of research into using San¡¯s Eye Crystal¡¯s as a catalyst. The ability for the room to interpret and display this information was a result of the rooms immature young soul.

    Although this seemed complex, the tasks this little soul had to accomplish were a great deal simpler for it because the array patterns basically did most the work for it. It was essential only there to act as a buffer between the array patterns and James and to allow James to interact with the room properly.

    Once these little screens popped up, James reached out to one that amusingly looked like the recycling bin on a person¡¯s desktop. Moments later a serious of arrays popped up on all the walls, and a huge suction force suddenly appeared for all the spirit energy in the room.

    Within seconds the entire room was devoid of spirit energy, with the exception of James¡¯ body, which naturally didn¡¯t leak any spirit energy thanks to having long since stopped his hands of time breathing technique, and the storage gems and spatial stones.

    With the room purged of all its spirit energy, James then touched another array, and another colourful array sprang to life. This time, the array came from the roof and descended onto the Gem. In his Scrying field, James carefully watched as the array pattern descended. In his Scrying field, he could see the array generating an abnormally huge amount of pressure.

    As the pressure slowly increased on the Gem, James watched as all the free energy, refined energy and primal energy impurities were slowly washed out. When this was done, the only energy remaining in the gem was a strange crystal-like energy which James was fairly certain was the free energy this Gem naturally produced and was the energy that allowed this gem to store other energy so proficiently.

    With this step finished, James then pressed another button, and the energy that had been forced out was once again purged from the room. He took the gem from the centre of the array and then repeated the process with one of the spatial stones.

    Unlike the Storage Gem, he was far more careful with the spatial stone. The reason for this was twofold. Firstly it was because the Storage Gem¡¯s free energy didn¡¯t fuse with other energies unlike with the spatial energy.

    The energy of the storage gem instead attracted refined energy to it like orbiting planets. The particles would fall into an orbit of a storage particle and then wait there until they found a method to release. At which point they would very quickly try to rush out from the storage gem into whatever it was that was trying to draw energy from it.

    Secondly, it was precisely because the spatial energy in the stone was somewhat fused with other particles. If he just blasted it with pressure similar to before, it would instead drag those fused spatial particles out and greatly reduce the quantity of the stone¡¯s energy.

    Thanks to the soul he¡¯d imbued this room with, it was capable at least of controlling the focus of spirit pressure from its arrays. Thanks to this, James invented the method of creating two opposite forces. The first was an array that sat on the floor under the Spatial Stone. It had a rather specific job, and its pressure was used to lock the spatial energy down, preventing it from moving.

    Only then could James use the other array from earlier, which blasted away at any spirit particles which the soul of the room couldn¡¯t identify as being native to the material in question. In this case, it got rid of any energy that wasn¡¯t Spatial Energy.

    Once again, James started this process. However this time, he remained incredibly focused with his scrying field and personally controlled the speed that the pressure array from above descended. At least this way, he could immediately stop or slow its fall if it was starting to force spatial particles out of the stone, which theoretically, it shouldn¡¯t.

    Regardless, much to his regret, no matter how hard he tried, the array continued to force fused, and half fused spatial particles out of the stone.

    He could only assume that the soul of the room was still too young and inexperienced to tell the difference. As such, he changed his plan. He took out the Storage Gem he¡¯d just purified and placed it on another array under the Spatial stone.

    He then allowed the room to continue purging the Spatial stone until nothing was left except pure spatial energy. All the foreign free energy and fused spatial energy was instead pushed into the storage Gem, which readily accepted it.

    Once this was done, he continued this process with all the stones. Once this was finished, he then placed a spatial stone into the array. This time, instead of trying to force any energy out, he pressed a different array, and a whole number of arrays fell from the ceiling.

    They then aligned themselves like 6 faces of a cube around the stone. Moments later each flat array side suddenly focused a little beam of light onto the stone and started carefully, but very mechanically, cutting away at it.

    Once this was finished, all that was left was a little stone ring, cut so smoothly it glistened in the light of the room and reflected everything around it like a polished mirror. James then scooped up the cut off excess and along with all the other spatial stones threw them back into the array.

    Each stone or piece of stone then hung suspended around the ring within the array as if stuck in cobwebs. A few more pokes at the array screens, and suddenly the 6 cube sides shimmered, and the array patterns began to morph and change.

    Once again an enormous pressure was exerted onto the spatial energy in the stones until it had all been forced out. With the ring as the dead centre of the arrays, all the energy was being forced inwards until all the pieces of spatial stone were empty of spatial energy and it had all been focused into the ring.

    Once this was finished, James fiddled with some more arrays, collected up the empty stones, then pressed a few more arrays and left the room. The ring still sat floating in the dead centre of the room, surrounded by array patterns which seemed to be intermittently flaring to life now and then.

    The last thing James had set for the room to do was an experiment he was curious about. With all the energy focused in the ring, he was curious what would happen if he left it under the focused pressure of the arrays for an extended period of time. What he was hoping to see was all the spatial energy fusing together to create fewer particles except with more density and quality.

    James then went to an empty, clean room. These were the rooms set up to purge all spirit energy so that he could run experiments in them. When he entered, he drew some array patterns around the room and then connected them to the spirit power grid of the building.

    Once these patterns had fired up, James carelessly threw the left over spatial stone into the arrays where they were all rapidly sucked into the centre of the arrays. This little experiment was something else he was curious about.

    According to his understanding, free energies are created between the interaction of primal energy and a specific substance or material. If that was the case, what would happen if he left the space stone in a huge compression array that was feeding endless amount of primal spirit energy into its epicentre?

    Two things, he was hoping. First, the massive pressure from the array would be like the pressure of the earth crushing coal into a diamond. He wanted those assorted stones to be compressed to the absolute limit until they became a single stone and eventually ... hopefully, something more powerful ... like an ore essence.

    Secondly, he wanted the primal spirit energy being forced into the stone to properly interact with the material and create more spatial energy. He suspected that both of these processes would take an incredibly long time, but seeing as he was going to be so god damn busy for a while, he didn¡¯t mind waiting to see the results.

    As James tiredly marched out of the forge room and through the lab towards the elevator, Jasmine finally took the chance to distract him. ¡°James, I haven¡¯t bothered you because you were so focused, but it appears Sully has returned and is rather eager to find you. I¡¯ve been delaying, but he seems to be on the verge of having a fit.¡±

    James let out a long sigh. After some thought, he decided to ignore the old bastard. Instead, James went up to his room and climbed into bed. He wasn¡¯t aware of it yet, but he¡¯d been so intensely focused on his Storage Ring project that almost a week had passed by outside.

    -Monolith Plaza-

    The next day, before James could even rub his bleary eyes of his sleepiness, Sully barged into his room raving about terrible apprentice piety and how he, as a poor decrepit old master, was stranded alone by his disciple to fend against the world by himself.

    James felt nothing, not even twinge of guilt at having ignored his master. Instead, he chose to silently crawl out of his bed and begin preparing some tea while he munched on some nearby fruits.

    Seeing his one and only disciple completely ignoring his existence, Sully was enraged. ¡°Damnit boy! You could at least show some concern for your master. And let me tell you now, if this is all some cruel trick you¡¯ve played on me, I don¡¯t care if the heaven¡¯s oath strikes me dead, I¡¯ll kill you right now!¡±

    James just waved his hand nonchalantly and poured himself some tea. After a few moments of continuing to ignore Sully, and enjoying the morning sun coming in through the window, James finally stood up and got ready.

    As if a whole different person, he walked out of the bathroom with a totally different attitude. Once again he had reverted from the cold, unconcerned and not in the least bit caring man who¡¯d been woken up earlier, to the happy to help and concerned for his master¡¯s well-being, young, innocent disciple!

    ¡°Master! I¡¯m glad you¡¯re finally back! I hope your trip wasn¡¯t too dangerous. Let¡¯s go down to the monolith right now, and I¡¯ll try and call in that one last favour he owes me.¡±

    Sully almost spat blood from the sudden shock of James¡¯ lightspeed turn around in character. He couldn¡¯t tell if he should be laughing or crying. Nonetheless, his dream of annulling this oath which he¡¯d so impulsively, and regrettably, uttered as a youth was on the verge of being fulfilled.

    Even James¡¯ strange behaviour couldn¡¯t drown out his excitement. This exuberant excitement also helped to cloud his mind enough to not pay too much attention to James¡¯ behaviour and to simply brush it off as James not being much of a morning person. If he¡¯d taken the time to consider further, he might have realised how odd James was acting, and it could possibly have prevented him from losing so much blood in the short future.

    As they left the guild hall, and after James had gone to the lab to retrieve something, James noticed Sully not bringing anything with them. ¡°Master, aren¡¯t you going to bring your tributes for the monolith spirit?¡±

    Sully arrogantly lifted his nose looking rather proud of himself for some reason. ¡°Naturally I have everything I need with me. Being as powerful a cultivator as I am, I have my own means.¡±

    James eyed him suspiciously and then looked him up and down to see if there were any bulges in his purple robes. Seeing nothing, James suddenly had a thought and then looked over at Sully with sparkling innocent eyes.

    ¡°Master, it couldn¡¯t be that you have ... a Storage Ring?¡±

    Sully almost missed a step and fell on his face at James¡¯ sudden query. ¡°Little brat. How do you know about storage rings?¡±

    James then made a show of doing the same thing that Sully just did, raising his head up and looking down at the world arrogantly and pridefully while saying; ¡°Being as powerful a cultivator as I am, I naturally have my means.¡±

    Sully almost spit blood at the audacity of his disciple. ¡®This little bastard! Just you wait, your training is going to be like hell on Ascension.¡¯

    James was rather shocked that Sully had completely forgotten about him stealing and entire room¡¯s worth of precious herbs previously. Either Sully¡¯s acting was terribly good, or he¡¯d actually completely forgotten about such an important matter.

    It wasn¡¯t long before they found themselves standing in front of the ever glowing monolith. The moment James came near, the monolith started to surge and flash with excitement. Seeing this, James could only smile wryly. Once he stood next to it, he reached out a hand and made contact.

    As is usual, James was sucked into the spirit realm of the monolith, within which sat the lazy looking shaggy dog that was Ruff. Before James even managed to get his bearings, he was blown off his feet by an unstoppable force. Looking down at his chest as he laid on the ground, James discovered Little Blue rolling around on him and jumping up and down playfully.

    Seeing that there would most likely be no way to avoid it, James then began their age old game of cat and mouse. Unlike prior times, James had a huge advantage. Not only had he been regularly cultivating and long since surpassed Little Blue in cultivation, but he¡¯d also significantly increasing his skill in Fleet Feet.

    In a matter of minutes, balls of arcing lightning were flying all over the place, and Little Blue was tired. With the most important thing done, James then turned to Ruff. ¡°How¡¯s it goin¡¯ Ruff?¡±

    Ruff raised up his head from his tired sleeping then slowly stood up and transformed into is human form. ¡°Little Junior James. It¡¯s not too bad. Ruff! I can see why many spirit beasts chose to go into a monolith way back then. It¡¯s very much a perfect method of cultivating an understanding of humanity. Ruff! So, what seems to be today¡¯s oath you need to break?¡±

    James sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. He almost, only almost, felt guilty for not having visited at all since he stuffed Ruff into the monolith. ¡°I¡¯m trying to fleece this old man outside. He needs an oath dispelled so he can take more than one disciple. I agreed to help him out on the condition he gives me everything he¡¯s got. Of course ... as far as he¡¯s concerned, he¡¯s making an offering to the spirit of the monolith. What do you say? Can you help a brother out?¡±

    Ruff seemed to daze out for a moment as he inspected Sully standing anxiously out in the plaza. After only a few second of inspection, he nodded. ¡°Sure, he¡¯s got lots of good stuff in that space ring. Ruff! But what do I get out of it?¡±

    James considered for a short moment then came up blank. What could he possibly give to the spirit of the monolith in exchange for this favour? Coming up with a loss, James just shrugged and looked at Ruff. ¡°What do you want?¡±

    Ruff, without hesitation, pointed at the little blue ferret. ¡°Take your pet with you this time. Ruff! As nice as it is to have someone here, it¡¯s incredibly distracting while I¡¯m taking care of the monoliths duties and trying to cultivate.¡±

    James felt a headache coming on, but after a short moment of thinking about some things he decided it shouldn¡¯t be too hard. He nodded his head in agreement. ¡°Sure, just make sure to push him out to me when I activate the monoliths arrays.¡±

    With that, he left the monolith spirit realm and returned to the plaza. Then, without saying anything to Sully, he levitated up into the air and started to activate the little array to transfer from the monolith.

    Unlike the glorious scene of Exsue¡¯s escape from the monolith, Little Blue was just shot out of the monolith in a little arc of lightning, like a very unwanted furry little blue ball.

    After rolling along the ground a few times, he got up, shook himself then scurried over and climbed up onto James¡¯ shoulders to take a nap.

    While this was going on, Sully¡¯s face went through a whole number of expressions. Mostly, though, he was shocked. Did all monoliths spit out little spirit beast pets? Before he could get too distracted, James drew his attention back to the task at hand.

    ¡°Master, The spirit of the monolith is willing. It wants to know what you¡¯re willing to offer it though.¡±

    Sully shook for a moment then very quickly waved his hand in front of him. Moments later a mountain of rare herbs, plants, materials, ores and even artefacts appeared in a huge pile reaching almost 4 metres off the ground.

    ¡°All my worldly possessions!¡± Sully said without reservation.

    James almost couldn¡¯t stand from the sudden shock of it. How badly did Sully want to take more apprentices? He, without even a thought or hesitation, offered up everything he owned to annul this oath.

    James imperceptibly nodded his head, and all of a sudden heavenly law descended onto Sully from the sky. At the same time, with a flick of his hand, and while Sully was distracted in his moment of euphoria, James sucked up everything into his own space ring.

    Even though Sully had been distracted by heavenly law, he didn¡¯t miss the little nod and the shake of James¡¯ hand. He only now realised he¡¯d been fleeced. It was rather comical to watch as he spat a spear of blood from his rage moments after the heavenly law descended.

    James quickly realised he¡¯d been noticed, but without even a change of expression, he rushed forward like the good little apprentice he was and helped his now pale gaunt looking master to stand. ¡°Master! Are you okay? I know, I know. This has been a very trying and powerful experience for you. I¡¯ll take you back to the guild to rest for a time. Don¡¯t push yourself to hard master!¡±

    Sully, hearing James acting so sincere and the epitome of a caring, good disciple, spat another mouth full of blood. James was now certain the man had to be on the verge of anaemia. While he was helping Sully to his feet, and while Sully¡¯s guard was lowered, James flicked his hand, within which appeared a little thin needle glowing with a strange murky grey spirit energy.

    A small prick later and Sully suddenly forgot everything that had just happened in the last 30 seconds. Right up to the point where heavenly law descended onto him. Feeling slightly confused and as if he¡¯d missed something important, Sully climbed to his feet with James¡¯ assistance.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry Master, I¡¯ll take you back to rest. I¡¯ve never seen anyone have such a reaction to annulling an oath before. Your oath must have been very powerful for you to have suddenly spat blood and passed out for a few seconds.¡±

    James quickly supplied an explanation for Sully and then without further ado, began to drag him back towards the HQ building.

    In the monolith, Ruff was shaking his head with a solemn look on his face. ¡°That poor man. He¡¯s got no idea what kind of monster he¡¯s taken on as an apprentice. I just hope he survives through this trying experience. Ruff.¡±

    After putting Sully in one of the rooms on the upper floor, James returned to the lab to begin cataloguing his haul. He made a mistake, however, in that he forgot just how powerful Sully¡¯s Scrying field was.

    Unsuspectingly, he once again made Sully spit blood in a rage when he, by habit, scanned his surroundings only to witness James pouring everything he¡¯d just sacrificed to the monolith out into the lab a few hundred metres underground.

    Quite a few of these things, James had never seen or even heard of. Even Jasmine with her encyclopaedic knowledge hadn¡¯t seen any records for some of these things. That only made them more valuable in James¡¯ eyes, and very quickly everything had been stashed back away into his ring.

    Now that he had a moment, he inspected his ring with scrying. He noticed that the spatial particles, through an entire night of constant pressure, had slightly begun to fuse and be refined. With this notion, James then investigated the size of its space within.

    ¡°Holy crap!¡± he muttered. Within the ring, the space was almost a 70 metres in length width and height. That was enough to store an entire small hill, or a small lake. Hell, he could secret away an entire building in here.

    In comparison to the space created from the refining of the stones into this ring, this space was huge. Altogether, the space in the ring had only been about 2/3rds of the space it had now. James suspected this had something to do with the proximity, quantity and quality of the spatial energy that he¡¯d managed to fuse into this single stone ring.

    If he¡¯d been able to keep all that space energy that had been fused or half-fused, he might have been able to create a space larger than the total spaces of the stones before they were processed.

    After playing with it a few more times, James then went about and started to pack all sorts of things he considered essentials into it. The first on the list was his personalised Arc Cannon and Arc Pistol. Both of these had been designed and forged by him personally and were almost works of art both in their design and operation.

    Through the use of different free energies, he¡¯d managed to reinforce the black-iron essence based alloy which he used to create it with. In addition, the battery packs he¡¯d created for it were all crafted with purified Greater Storage Gems as the base of the storage gel and the entire thing was covered in inscription arrays to stabilise and increase the output.

    The Arc Pistol was very much the same, and they both were beyond any other similar weapon ever crafted in the guild. Thanks to his effort in their construction, as opposed to the short life span of the original models, which general only had a few dozen shots in them at most, James¡¯ cannon and pistol were limitless in their fire lifetime.

    Not only that, they were so structurally sound that he could use them as melee weapons in combat to bludgeons people to death. Even the war hammer that he¡¯d recently forged for Goliath, which was entirely focused on destructive melee damage, couldn¡¯t hope to destroy James¡¯ Arc Cannon when its arrays were powered up.

    After some thought, James stopped by the room with the spatial stones inside and discovered that there were already a very small number of spatial particles starting to form. He also noticed that the pressure had crushed the stones into dust and compressed it into a single larger perfectly spherical stone. He was aware that this was only the very beginning of this experiment and wandered off again, putting it to the back of his mind.

    -Alchemy Lab-

    The next day, bright and early in the morning, Sully assembled his new apprentice hopefuls in the alchemy lab. James, Norman and Kelly all sat around in the lab looking at Sully. Seeing how relaxed and disrespectful these brats were, Sully wanted to give them all a good thrashing.

    Seeing as they were the first disciples he¡¯d ever taken on to share his knowledge with, he¡¯d thought they should at the very least show some more respect for their master. Naturally, James respected few to none and believed everyone should earn his respect before he gives it to them. Even the elderly, who many people view as older and wiser.

    James just considered old people old, and nothing more. They were still just people, with maybe a few more stories and life experiences. That is hardly deserving of respect in his opinion. After all, a frog can live its whole life trapped at the bottom of a well, but the only thing it can teach you about the world is the colour of the sky.

    Kelly, being of the character she is, was aloof and uncaring. If this were just going to be like some boring lecture, she¡¯d rather not. She was mostly self-taught anyway and only came along for the novelty. Norman took his cues from his Guild Master and although his desire to learn all the secrets of alchemy trapped in this scruffy bum¡¯s head was almost tangible, he was aware that the guild master had grander plans in the long run and would undoubtedly meet other experts with even more knowledge eventually.

    Seeing them just blankly staring at him and leaning this way or that in their chairs, Sully¡¯s eyebrow started a strange twitch, not too dissimilar to James¡¯ when he was suppressing his desire to just detonate the spirit reactor under the Spire and watch the whole continent burn in chaos.

    Finally, after an extended silence, Sully started with the basics. ¡®Seeing as you little shits want to act so aloof and arrogant, I¡¯ll have to take you down a peg or two.¡¯

    ¡°The first, and the most important thing that any alchemist must learn is how to differentiate materials and herbs as well as their properties and common uses.¡± Saying such, Sully flipped his hand over and summoned a stack of books almost as tall as himself from his space ring.

    He held onto these, and a few other things he felt the monolith spirit wouldn¡¯t want. Basically, the only thing left filling his spatial ring were stacks and stacks of old books and research notes. Sully then put the books onto the nearby work bench and continued on as he paced back and forth with his hand behind his back.

    ¡°I expect each of you to memorise everything in these books by the end of the month. In Alchemy, we generally qualify other alchemists with a set standard. To become a first tier alchemist, the ability to recite these books by heart is the most important thing. The next is the ability to create a potion or pill at the first tier. Usually, simple herbal mixtures and recipes are the limit.

    ¡°To reach the second tier a person must be able to refine a second tier pill or potion with an alchemical furnace or cauldron. This is when an alchemist first starts to learn how to control a flame with their spirit energy and how to properly mix and extract the properties and parts of ingredients to achieve a desired outcome...¡±

    ¡°Hey, is this one in the implant?¡± Queried Normans voice from behind. Sully turned to see all of his books, with the exception of three or four, simply tossed onto the ground like rubbish. His heart, finally having taken too much strain for the short time he¡¯d known James, collapsed in his chest.

    He felt the blood draining from his face and quickly took out some pills and stuffed them into his mouth to stabilise himself. Before his condition improved too much, he watched James flick through the book Norman gave him then just toss it over his shoulder like more rubbish to join the others.

    Sully spat some more blood from his mouth. By this point, he was surely anaemic from all the blood he¡¯d spat in rage and madness. James was starting to think that Sully had some sort of sickness or condition that caused him to spit blood at regular intervals.

    Seeing Sully spitting blood again, and his eyes turning red and his skin growing clammy and pale, James rushed over. ¡°Master! Are you okay? You seem to have some horrible problem. Don¡¯t worry, on my world we have medications to help alleviate anaemia.¡±

    Having said as much, James rushed over to the corner of the alchemy lab that was almost entirely automated and produced standard medications and drugs from earth, he then grabbed a bottle of pills and rushed back over. Without fanfare, he poured out about 20 of them and stuffed them into the weak looking Sully¡¯s mouth.

    He then, out of nowhere, produced a water skin and started pouring water into Sully¡¯s throat almost drowning him. Sully, who was already weakened, frail and in sudden shock, accidentally swallowed the pills.

    When they¡¯d already travelled down to his stomach, he quickly pushed the very ¡®worried¡¯ and ¡®trying to be helpful¡¯ James off him and backed up to create some distance.

    ¡°You shitty little brats! What do you think you¡¯re doing just chucking my books around like that?! Those books contain thousands of years of research and study into ingredients used for alchemy. You haven¡¯t even read them! How do you expect to memorise them if you¡¯ve fucking destroyed them?!¡±

    James sheepishly scratched his head then picked up the books to put on the table. ¡°Sorry about that Master but we already have a copy of most of these books in the university. I can already tell you every letter, word and paragraph in all of those books.¡±

    Sully was stunned for a moment. He looked down at the pile of books, which at conservative estimates should have taken months to read and understand, then looked back at the sheepish looking James, bored looking Kelly and nodding in agreement Norman.

    ¡°What nonsense! You think these books grow on trees? You think your minds are Heavens Gift? Fine then! Let¡¯s see how well you know these books!¡± Sully marched over and reached out to grab a book. The moment his hand touched it, Kelly started speaking.

    ¡°Silvester¡¯s book of deep forest botany. 382 pages. That book contains descriptions, pictures, uses and effects of nearly 800 different plants, animals and ingredients that can only be found in well-forested habitats. Of the 800 alchemic ingredients it describes, there are 12 that have the wrong description or picture. Also, nearly 150 of the herbs and plants are found in Gretel¡¯s Compendium of Fauna for Alchemists.¡±

    Sully¡¯s hand froze ... then not wishing to be trumped by these little bastards, he flipped the book open to a random page. ¡°Page 203.¡±

    Kelly thought about it for a brief moment then started speaking again. ¡°Page 203 has 4 plants described on it. This chapter of the book pertains mostly to mushroom like ingredients. 203 has the Aliobla, Carason, Dal¡¯I and Dello, shrooms. Each one has similar properties, which is to reduce swelling and encourage clotting of open wounds. The two exceptions are Carason, which is the total opposite and increases blood flow and heart rate making it easier to bleed out and Dello, which not only reduced swelling but acts as a mild pain inhibitor.¡±

    Sully¡¯s eyebrow started that twitching once again. He then reached for another book only to have the same thing happen all over again with Norman. As he was reaching for another book, he glanced over to see James¡¯ reaction. Seeing James just staring back with his most innocent wide-eyed expression, Sully suddenly felt a chill run up his spine.

    Thinking better of it, he chose not to test James as well. James laughed in his heart as he watched Sully reluctantly taking his hand back. ¡°Don¡¯t worry master, although we have most of these books, some of them we¡¯ve never seen before. Especially this one.¡±

    James encouraged as he picked up a book of handwritten loose paper. Sully perked up at this note because he recognised that book. It was actually a compendium of ingredients he himself had jotted down over the years and had a great number of rare or interesting things described in it that Sully had to toil endlessly over the years to research.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    James flicked open the book and rapidly, like lightning glanced at every page. He then re-opened it to another page as if interested in something he saw there. Suddenly, his nose twitched. No warning came for poor Sully¡¯s heart as James suddenly sneezed violently, and the book was all of a sudden covered in snot and mucus.

    Sully couldn¡¯t believe his eyes when he saw how much James had managed to project from his nose. There had to be at least a few cups worth there. How was it even physically possible to retain that much in one¡¯s nose?

    Sully¡¯s already frail weakened heart didn¡¯t get much chance to recover though, as James suddenly reared back once more and let out a massive sneeze that seemed to shake the entire lab. When Sully opened his eyes from this sudden outburst, he discovered pieces of his book scattered all over the lab.

    James wiped his nose then sheepishly scratched the back of his head. ¡°Heheh. Sorry about that Guildmaster. Don¡¯t worry though! I¡¯ve already memorised all of it, so I¡¯ll be sure to write up a new copy for you.¡±

    Sully¡¯s knees began to shake, and once more blood tried to force itself up from his throat. Through a great deal of effort on his own part, he prevented himself from rushing over and bludgeoning James to death right then and there.

    As if having survived a major war and somehow come out the other side, the very deflated Sully turned and slowly began to drag himself out from the lab looking incredibly miserable. His whole body shuddered when James threw out a parting farewell.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry Master. I know you¡¯re sick with some strange disease. You go rest up. It shouldn¡¯t take us more than a few days to memorise these few books we¡¯ve never seen. You can come down again and start teaching us in 3 days at the most!¡±

    That said, James collected up the 3 or 4 books with information that was missing from their vast database then headed off to scan them all in. While he did that, Jasmine was busily recreating all the pages of the book James had ¡®accidentally¡¯ demolished.

    Three days later, the trio once more sat in front of Sully. Sully after testing them on the few books they claimed to have fully memorised in the past few days, buried his shock and awe in his heart, then once more began his lecture from where he¡¯d left off.

    ¡°As I was saying a few days ago, a second tier alchemist starts to learn to control a flame to refine pills and potions. There are two methods for this step. The first is an external, third party flame which you have a means to control, most people use storage gems for this purpose. This is also the most difficult method, and an endless number of people are stuck at this stage because they can¡¯t create an elemental fire.

    ¡°The second, and far easier method, is to use your own spirit power and manifest a flame yourself. I was too excited in the beginning and never bothered to ask, but all three of you have the fire element correct?¡±

    James knew he did, and after scrying, he realised both Kelly and Norman didn¡¯t. In fact, he only just discovered that Norman was still only in the barrier realm and had the affinity of water. At the same time, Sully scryed the three of them and discovered the same thing. Before his hopes were entirely crushed, James looked over at Norman then said something that made Sully¡¯s head spin.

    ¡°Norman, we¡¯re going to have to give you a few more elements. If you want to become a strong alchemist, you¡¯re going to need fire. You¡¯ve finished all the basics at the university right?¡±

    Norman gave a shocked look then nodded. James cupped his chin for a while then nodded. ¡°What¡¯s something you love more than anything in the world. Something that you think about endlessly or always feel. For example, Kelly is a lazy bitch and never does anything unless she absolutely has to or actually really wants to. Because of that, she unlocked an element called sloth.¡±

    Norman then crossed his arms and stared hard at the ground for a while in contemplation. ¡°The only thing I really love is alchemy ... and probably drinking.¡±

    James, hearing this, then went over to the side and grabbed a bottle of Heaven Six Rice Wine. Showing no delay, he popped the cork then blurred like a ghost in front of Norman and shoved it into his mouth.

    In a matter of minutes, Norman had ingested the better part of the bottle and was well and truly on his way to becoming drunk. James then walked him through the steps and in less than half an hour, Norman was permanently drunk. He¡¯d unlocked the abstract element of Sloshed, Drunk, Intoxicated.

    James had now happily and without regard completely ruined another person¡¯s life solely for his own amusement. Shortly after that, and now with a great deal more effort, they managed to unlock fire, giving him the three attributes of fire, water and Fuckin¡¯ Pissed.

    Amusingly, about the only way to settle him down and get him back from the brink of a permanent state of alcohol poisoning was to keep feeding him grog so as to maintain equilibrium. It seemed though, that no matter how much or little he drank, he would always remain in that state.

    After this short interruption, James motioned for the once again stunned Sully to continue on. ¡°Ahmm ... Ahem! Yes, well. Apart from Kelly, you two should have fewer problems than most with this stage. The third tier is the two skills of cumulative refining and precision refining.

    ¡°Cumulative refining is the ability to focus the medicinal effects of a huge number of ingredients into the smallest possible space. To achieve this goal a person needs to learn to use their soul energy so as to compress the medicinal spirit energy into the smallest area and burning off the excess wastage. This requires a constant process of compressing, burning the waste and repeating. Eventually, the accumulation of many refinements such as this will result in a pill that contains the medicinal effects of hundreds of plants.

    ¡°Precision refining is the use of your soul energy to separate out certain energies to eliminate contamination of the final product. Many ingredients will have properties that have undesirable effects while at the same time having properties with tremendous use. The ability to properly separate these energies with precision is essential for good alchemists.

    ¡°At the fourth tier, you can be considered an Alchemy Master. To reach this level requires you to not only be able to develop and refine a 4th tier pill, but also requires you to master the most important part of later stage medicine refining. The use of your soul to purify and extract the essence of ingredients with precision refining and then combine certain energies into a single energy. You then not only need to focus the flame for the refining part but at the same time use your soul energy to properly fuse different aspects of ingredients to achieve another goal.

    ¡°This is called splicing. Through the use of your flame to agitate the materials, and your soul energy to manipulate them, you can fuse two different types of energy together to create something that has the combined, different or totally opposite effects. Learning how to predict the outcome and results of such fused medicines and learning to skillfully splice different ingredients is the key to being considered a Master Alchemist.¡±

    Finished with his basic instruction, he turned to see the surprised and awed faces of his little disciples. To his consternation he instead found Kelly sleeping leant over a bench, James showing a very strange expression, and Norman busily drowning himself in more alcohol.

    ¡°What? You don¡¯t even care! You all jump at me so enthusiastically to teach you then sit here like dullards just staring off into space?!¡±

    Seeing Sully preparing to wind up into a tirade of injustice, James quickly jumped in to try and placate him. ¡°It¡¯s not that Master. Your descriptions and introduction the four tiers were very informative. It¡¯s just that ... well ... I¡¯m also a Forge-master so a great deal of this sounds incredibly similar to techniques forge masters use.¡±

    Sully¡¯s eyes opened slightly shocked. ¡°Oh? Well, you¡¯re not far off. Forge Masters and Alchemists do share quite a few similar methods to our refining processes. You¡¯ll find, that similar to some things which are forged with other elements like water or wind energy, there are certain pills and potions that can also only be refined properly with these elements, or even a multitude of these elements.

    ¡°That¡¯s why a great many alchemists often learn how to properly control Storage Gems for refining even if they already have the flame element. This is also one of the reasons I was so insistent that you become my apprentice. With all four elements, your ability to refine properly will never be hindered by such a thing.¡±

    James nodded a few times sagely. ¡°Very well then Master. Where should we begin our training?¡±

    Sully smiled evilly as he swished his hand and produced a potion recipe. ¡°Since you¡¯ve all managed to memorise everything I had for you, you will all start your first exam. Your task is to go and gather these herbs and follow the recipe here to create a simple tier one potion called the Passing Fire Potion.¡±

    James moved over and took the recipe. After a few minutes, he assessed the nature of the potion and what it does. He then gave a sideways glance at Sully as he asked; ¡°Master, how will you determine if we¡¯ve passed or not?¡±

    Sully grinned even wider. ¡°That¡¯s easy. I will come with you to make sure that you have correctly identified each herb you¡¯ve collected without any help. Once you¡¯ve brewed up the potion, I will check it for purity and inconsistencies then you will drink it. Naturally, if you haven¡¯t made any mistakes, it should be basically harmless but reveal very glaring properties which will help me to ascertain if it¡¯s working or not.¡±

    James, being no fool, could tell that the name was a misnomer. It should instead be called the Pissing Fire Potion. Because after you ingest it, your piss will become like fire and burn like lava every time you go to take a leak.

    James reviewed the formula once more, then handed it to the now rather quiet and introspective drunk, Norman. He then turned back to Sully. ¡°Well then, I guess I will go first.¡±

    Sully quirked and eyebrow. ¡°Go first? I¡¯m not going to accompany each of you out to the mountains individually. All of you should come at the same time.¡±

    James smiled innocently and started walking to the elevator. ¡°There¡¯s no need for that Master. We should have everything we need in the garden.¡±

    Sully¡¯s eyebrow then began to twitch as he followed James to the elevator. After a few moments with customary elevator music, James and Sully stepped out onto underground floor number 3.

    The third floor of the HQ¡¯s underground structure was the largest by far. It had incredibly rich spirit energy and was kilometres vast. It was built with shallow rolling hill landscapes and covered in vast meadows of different species of grasses. As they walked up to the crest of the first shallow hill, Sully visibly shook and almost collapsed.

    On the other side were rows upon rows of common spirit herbs stretching off into the distance. Every now and then were some trees or shrubbery. There were even small stretches that were just different kinds of grass. After a second glance, Sully realised that the sky had a single blazing sun and wispy clouds floating about. Every now and then he would spot one of those infernal souless flying creatures shooting about tending to certain herbs or picking and planting different things.

    Every now and then he would see certain herb gardens that were segregated by shimmering almost invisible array fields. These gardens often had rarer herbs that only cultivated in certain environments. Some were filled with flames or ice and snow. Others had ponds and a few even just looked like a cube of water suspended in mid-air growing herbs and plants only found at the bottom of lakes or in the sea.

    James flicked his hand and produced a spray bottle. He then rather liberally sprayed a very toxic smelling substance over himself and went to pass it over to Sully.

    ¡°You should put some of this on master, the bugs can be rather severe.¡±

    Sully looked at the spray bottle with disdain. ¡°What bugs? I¡¯m a Tower Realm Practitioner brat! I¡¯m not afraid of some bugs. At worst, they¡¯ll break their teeth and stingers off trying to bite me.¡±

    James just smiled innocently and put the spray bottle away as he picked up a wicker basket left near the crest of the little grassy knoll in front of the elevator. ¡°Don¡¯t be silly master. Bugs don¡¯t have teeth. They have mandibles.¡±

    As they strolled along a little cobblestone road, Sully only grew more impressed. Even in his wildest dreams, he could never imagine building a place like this. It was truly an alchemists paradise. Before walking a short dozen odd meters, Sully caught site of a blur shooting here and there across the fields. After squinting a little and focussing a little harder, he realised it was a bee of some kind.

    It shot about all over the place at mind boggling speeds. Even he, as a tower realm cultivator, was having trouble keeping track of it. Very soon he began to see more and more.

    James started to explain the herb garden as they strolled along and he every now and then stopped to inspect and pick a herb.

    ¡°This underground garden was built by a great man. His mind was truly unfathomable. He managed to use array¡¯s to create nearly 20 different environments all segregated from one another like every type of herb¡¯s in a little world all of its own. After discovering them in the Endless Forest, we brought these bees over here to help all the herbs and plants propagate.

    ¡°They zip about collecting pollen and pollinating for us. We¡¯ve discovered quite a few strange plants that have grown from cross-pollination between two different species of herbs from completely different biomes. One of my favourites is the Blazing Snow Lotus Master. We haven¡¯t had a chance to experiment with it yet, but I¡¯m sure it will be extraordinary!¡±

    Sully made a strange face then scowled at James. ¡°Blazing Snow Lotus? Boy, are you just making things up? I¡¯ve never heard of such thing before.¡±

    James smiled slyly. ¡°Of course you haven¡¯t Master. It¡¯s a mutation created between the cross-pollination of the Ever Blazing Sunflower and the Eternal Icey Snow Lotus. It¡¯s quite unique because it¡¯s the only combination of two incredibly rare herbs we¡¯ve managed to rescue after it started growing. We had quite a bit of trouble creating a biome that it found suitable to grow in. Eventually, we had to invent a world where it snowed fire and burned ice, if you can wrap your head around that.

    ¡°That¡¯s not all though. Everything in this garden is closely monitored and watched over by that late genius¡¯ sole daughter and heir. Nothing on this level goes unnoticed by her. She¡¯s actually got quite a knack for this herbology stuff and has managed to produce many interesting plant species. The main ingredient for our spirit wine actually comes from a combination of Soul Feeding Ferns and Vast Starry Grass.¡±

    Sully once again received a huge shock. He¡¯d lived a long time and devoted his life to alchemy. He¡¯d seen almost everything on the entire Atsunari continent that could possibly grow from the ground. Soul Feeding Ferns just happened to be something he searched for endlessly for its unique properties in regards to helping strengthen the soul and increase soul cultivation.

    Similarly, Vast Starry Grass, which gained its name due to a strange phenomenon in which it reflects the night¡¯s sky at the darkest hour before dawn, was renowned for its properties in helping assist spirit energy cultivation.

    Sully wanted to reach over and strangle this disciple out of sheer envy. Before the chance came, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his leg. By instinct, he suddenly jumped back a few paces only for another stabbing pain to come from that soft place on the leg right behind the knee ... yeah, you know the one.

    Very quickly, Sully¡¯s legs started to ache as more and more stabbing pains started coming from everywhere. He rapidly raised up his robes and discovered his legs covered in little red ants about the size of a grain of rice. With a wave of the hand, he brushed the little bastard off with some spirit energy.

    To his great surprise, he discovered little red welts popping up all over his legs that stung like vinegar on a cut lip. Some of them were even bleeding.

    Seeing this, James smiled like the devil but soon returned to his oh so innocent disciple act. ¡°I warned you, Master. The bugs here are quite territorial and vicious. The little Fire Eating Ants are the least of your problems now that you¡¯re bleeding. Normally the bees won¡¯t bother you if you don¡¯t bother them, but curiously enough they seem to hate the smell of fresh blood.¡±

    As his sentence finished, a low hum began to envelop the surroundings. What was once only a few bees blurring about had abruptly become a horde that seemed to appear from nowhere. All charging madly towards Sully.

    Without a second thought, Sully rushed up to James and gripped his robe as he started to frantically shake him. ¡°Are you mad! Why would you let Blood Seeking Bees live in your garden? Those things are a scourge. Quickly! Give me the spray!¡±

    James complied, pulling out the spray. Without any courtesy, Sully grabbed the bottle and started spraying it all over. The moment he sprayed it on the welts on his legs, he couldn¡¯t help but draw in a sharp breath. ¡®Just what the fuck is this stuff made of! It¡¯s like putting my legs into a river of knives.¡¯

    Once he was done, the swarm of bees arrived, buzzed around him a few times seemingly confused then buggered off back to where ever it was they came from. Having averted this harrowing life crisis, and have no doubt, it was harrowing even for him at the tower realm, Sully shot an accusatory glare at James.

    James just smiled innocently and took back his bug spray. ¡°I tried to warn you, master. Sometimes you¡¯re just too stubborn.¡±

    James then continued along the path as they travelled through garden after garden and James inspected various herbs and picked some now and then. Suddenly after walking about looking at things for nearly half an hour, James froze.

    Sully looked at him curiously and then gazed off in the direction he was looking. At first, he couldn¡¯t be sure what James was looking at until a very unremarkable white flower in a field of white flowers suddenly caught his eye. The eye catching part was the single red petal among its white petals. Out of every flower in the field, it was the only one.

    James then waved his hand, and the apparition of a beautiful young lady with a solid material Seal placed in her chest suddenly appeared. Sully¡¯s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull. ¡®Holy shit! Is that a trapped soul? Just how many secrets is this kid hiding? He must have some kind of remarkable background to harbour so many secrets!¡¯

    Ignoring Sully and James, Jasmine floated out like a ghost over the field of flowers until she was right next to the little red petal flower. It was a truly beautiful sight. Wearing a thin white dress and looking like the descent of an angel from on high, the breeze in the underground valleys blew and made her dress and hair wave.

    Even Sully, they ancient old alchemist, felt his heart move at the sight. Very quickly the concerned peaceful expression on the face of Jasmine turned into an absolutely vicious and demonic snarl as she suddenly lifted and arm, coalesced a massive fireball the size of small car and then smashed it violently right onto that little flower and directly in the middle of that field of flowers.

    What was once a heart moving sight of beauty suddenly devolved into an archaic flaming purgatory as Jasmine begin to laugh madly and continue to drop car size fireballs onto the crater that had become the centre of the flower field.

    Flames sprayed out everywhere, lighting the beautiful little white flowers on fire. The sky seemed to dim, and embers of the flaming flower field floated off with the wind. In the centre of this carnage to the peaceful scene was the wildly laughing Jasmine, who by now looked more like some devilish ghastly apparition from hell than an angel.

    Sully wasn¡¯t even sure how to react to this sudden change. James just remained standing there smiling brightly and innocently. After this went on for a few more minutes, and before Sully could work up the courage to ask just what the hell was going on, Jasmine finally seemed to grow exhausted. She then started peering down into the crater she¡¯d created as if checking to be sure she¡¯d obliterated that stain on her perfect white field of flowers...

    Which was ironically now a huge flaming mess.

    Seeing Jasmine smile brightly and start descending into the pit, James finally explained to Sully. ¡°That¡¯s Jasmine, Master. She¡¯s the young heiress to everything that genius I mentioned earlier left behind. She¡¯s quite adept at many things, but this garden brings her the greatest joy of all.¡±

    Sully almost found it hard to believe. ¡°What joy? What heiress? She¡¯s clearly just mad and trying to destroy all her old man¡¯s hard work! Those Pure White Poppies take dozens of years to grow to maturity, and she just demolished an entire field of them to eliminate one oddity of the bunch.¡±

    James scowled a little. ¡°Master, please don¡¯t belittle Jasmine. She cares a great deal for this garden. Not because of some petty little plants, but because of what it represents. This garden is an Eden for herbs to evolve, cross breed and grow. She wasn¡¯t destroying anything that couldn¡¯t be replaced. What she was doing was feeding something that would be incredibly difficult to cultivate again for at least another year.

    ¡°It might just seem like an oddity to you, but you clearly aren¡¯t a master of herbs as much as potion refining, otherwise, you¡¯d have noticed that at every corner of this field is a garden being used to cultivate some rather special and rare herbs. This was done so that we could create something new.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you already know, but the Pure White Poppy is a rather useless herb. It¡¯s rather common and has no powerful medicinal effects apart from being used to increase the potency of other herbs. What we are growing here isn¡¯t just some pathetic little Pure White Poppy. Furthermore, here, in this Eden for herbs, the spirit energy is so thick and the conditions so optimised to perfection that we could regrow this entire field in only a few weeks.

    ¡°Come with me master, perhaps, even you can learn something new today.¡±

    Sully, although not happy with how his apprentice was talking to him, would be the first to admit that cultivating herbs wasn¡¯t his forte. Most of the time he simply bought or hunted for what he needed. After all, who apart from the Brotherhood with their advanced array technology could afford or had the ability to create an environment like this that reduced the time it takes for herbs to grow by dozens of times.

    After following James along a path near the Poppy field, they came to a rather special looking herb garden. This garden had 2 other types of flowers already planted in it, in neat long rows counting in the tens. Both were Pure White Poppy¡¯s, but each one had an out of place petal. One with a blue petal and one with a green petal. As they arrived, they watched Jasmine slowly planted the third Poppy in a section of this garden.

    To Sully¡¯s surprise, this poppy seemed to be brightly glowing and almost on fire. Despite that, it looked healthier than ever. After planting it, Jasmine left the field and then started to make adjustments to the array patterns. Soon the temperature in that little garden rose, and the Red Petal Poppy started sucking up the free fire energy being poured in by the arrays.

    Jasmine then returned to James spirit realm with a contented smile. Sully now realised, they were trying to use the Pure White Poppy to create a new breed of poppy that contained the four basic elements.

    ¡®Madness! If they truly achieve their goal, they¡¯ll have created something that doesn¡¯t exist. A plant with the four elements ... Is it even possible? What could it do? The possibilities are endless. If such a plant existed, it would be the perfect base for hundreds of different types of recipe. This type of plant cultivation ... it¡¯s revolutionary. They¡¯re going to change everything.¡¯

    Sully¡¯s mind spun furiously as he tried to fathom just what sorts of things this plant could be used for.

    James, seeing him finally realise what Jasmine was trying to achieve, and why she suddenly became so excited, gave a slight smile from the corner of his mouth and started moving off again.

    By the time they returned to the lab, Sully had a new understanding of the field of herbology. Before, it was a means to and end for him. He needed it so that he could refine potions and become a powerful alchemist. He now realised he¡¯d missed so many important things during his cultivation of alchemy.

    This field of study, herbs cultivation, was incredibly important he realised. Just this short stroll through the gardens revealed an endless number of things he¡¯d never understood or considered regarding the herbs he used.

    How they¡¯re grown was almost as important as how they¡¯re processed. He suddenly thought back to all sorts of failures he¡¯d had during refinement. Although he could tell whether a herb was of good quality and proper age of ripeness, he¡¯d never considered what environment it had grown in. This simple oversight could drastically change the results of a refining.

    Even with his scrying he couldn¡¯t always catch everything and quite often all it would take is a little hidden spirit energy that seeped into the ingredients when the plant grew to disrupt an entire refinement process.

    Sully sat down heavily in a chair as he dazedly watched James chop, grind, heat and mix ingredients according to the recipe. He then also watched him suddenly start doing it all over again. Seeing James already half way through another process of a tier one potion, Sully frowned for a moment.

    ¡°Little Apprentice. You¡¯re not trying again, are you? If you failed such a simple recipe the first time around, you should give up alchemy now. It¡¯s no harder than cooking a stew at this level. You don¡¯t even need a constant temperature for your flame and can just use that little flame from the table you¡¯ve got there.¡±

    James smiled over at Sully. ¡°Of course not Master. This time I¡¯m refining the Refreshing Chill Potion. You can consider this just me doing the extra practice. My Pissing Fire Potion ... errr ... I mean Passing Fire Potion is over there.¡±

    James signalled over to a test tube rack with a clear red liquid. Seeing James had already long since finished it, and worse still had discovered its nefarious effects and was already brewing a counter agent, Sully couldn¡¯t help but have his brow begin twitching.

    Distracting himself from thoughts of herbology for a moment, he stalked over and picked up the test tube. He scryed it ... scryed it again ... shook it ... then scryed one last time. He was stunned. Just what kind of method did the boy use to create this concoction? Although he obviously didn¡¯t use any more advanced techniques like precision refinement or culmination refinement, the solution still came out very pure.

    Normally, even he himself, without those techniques, would find it difficult to produce something like this without some time and consideration. When he had this thought, he glanced over and noticed James had quite a bit of strange equipment set up on the bench. After watching James continue with his creation of the Refreshing Chill Potion, he noticed him follow all the standard methods only to then put the solution at the beginning of this contraption of strange glass pipes, beakers and decanters.

    It then went through once and came out the other end as a clear bluish solution. James then bottled it up and tucked it away in his robes. ¡°Master, if you¡¯re curious, we can teach you these simple methods. They came from our world, where no one knew what spirit energy was or could even detect it and interact with it. Because of that, we developed many simple and even advanced methods of mixing separating and filtering chemicals.¡±

    Sully considered for a moment. Then, after already having received the shock to his system that was his visit to the gardens, he swallowed his pride as the Master and agreed. After all, he¡¯d already learnt something today, if he was going to learn more, why not agree to it now while he was on a roll.

    James smiled enthusiastically then pulled out a little black cube from his space ring. Moments later a little screen popped up in front of Sully. It then started to make noises and flash violently. Turns out, even a tower realm practitioner is susceptible to the stupor that¡¯s created when receiving an implant.

    When it was finished, Sully came back to himself, wiped the drool off his chin, then jumped back to distance himself.

    James smiled innocently again. ¡°There¡¯s nothing to worry about, master. It¡¯s just a little memory implant. Think of it similar to Spirit Jade. Now, you just have to meditate on it for a while, and you¡¯ll understand.¡±

    The day carried on, and eventually, the trio got passing marks. Even Norman, who was now perpetually drunk. Strangely, whenever he focused in on alchemy he was like a totally different person, and it was almost like he¡¯d never even had a drink before in his life.

    By the end of all of this, Sully was so thoroughly shaken up by everything he¡¯d learnt that he decided to postpone more master-disciple lectures for a week or two while he went into a short closed door cultivation session. Instead, he gave the Trio a list of recipes from Tier one to Tier two and a handful of manuals describing how to control your flames and other such tips and tricks.

    He then ordered them to practice these things for the next two weeks and try their hand at refining a tier two pill.

    -Tech City-

    A few days later, James found himself standing on the southern wall of Tech City, looking out into the vast wavy sea of golden grain which moved off into the horizon. Far in the distance to the south-east was the Black Forest Mountain.

    For quite a while now, thanks to quite a few contributing factors, the average saturation of primal spirit energy in and around Tech City had risen quite high, quite quickly. It wouldn¡¯t be a lie to say that the average saturation in Tech City was now one of the highest in the continent.

    It was now high enough to actually drag up the average saturation of the Atsunari continent. If the whole Yori Empire had a saturation of only 30% of Atsunari¡¯s average before, it had now been dragged up to almost 200%. That, obviously, is nowhere near the almost 2000% of the Jetsu Mountain Range, but it nonetheless began to attract numerous Spirit Beasts and cultivators toward Tech City.

    Thanks to that, even with regular subjugation missions, the Black Forest was teaming with more vicious spirit beasts than ever before. Luckily, thanks to the monolith, that was no longer a concern. What was a concern was all the greedy people that had now set their sights on Tech City.

    Everyone had some inkling of how the primal spirit energy worked. For every 100 parts used, 105 would suddenly appear to replace them out of the void. What this meant was, a place like Tech City, which was burning primal spirit energy just to power itself, and had the densest population of practitioners, even though only true spirit and barrier realm, would be drawing in, storing and using copious amounts of primal spirit energy.

    This then caused the average primal spirit energy saturation in the area to skyrocket. Just standing in the city, one can feel a vast difference from any other mundane city on the continent.

    It was this reason, as well as the fact that Tech City was now considered a free city, that an army had suddenly appeared far to the south and were making preparations for a siege. This army wasn¡¯t made up from any of the great nations, but instead filled to the brim with guilds, sects, clans, bandit groups and every other kind of faction under the sun.

    Although the bigger national powers desperately wanted to capture and claim Tech City, as well as all its resources and technology, they were all facing a crisis of one kind or another in their own countries and couldn¡¯t afford to divert attention to this tiny little eyesore that was the Dark Brotherhood.

    This ragtag army was instead acting as a mercenary army, each faction and group hired and employed by the Profit Sect to eliminate their now most hated enemy.

    In the past month, thanks to Gold James launching the Continental Markets, Profit Sect had taken a monstrous hit to their net worth. Although they owned any number of businesses and industries to help them control the markets, the Continental Market, and the Brotherhood delivery service, made them almost obsolete.

    Only making them even more enraged, it appeared that no one from the profit sect could operate one of those little black boxes to connect to the continental market and use it for trade. It became obvious that the Brotherhood was directly cutting them out. Seeing as their profits and businesses were now being harmed, they had no choice but to actually take the Brotherhood seriously.

    Feng received no short amount of abuse from his seniors and elders when they found out this was basically his fault. Thanks to his screwing this whole thing up, he was put in charge with fixing it. According to the Elders, they didn¡¯t care how he did it, but he must get his hands on their technology and reduce their threat to the Sect. Either by placating, trading or eliminating. Whatever worked best.

    Feng had contacted Lucas within the first week, only for Lucas to let out a long sigh, throw out an ¡®I told you so.¡¯ and hang up on him. By this time, he¡¯d come to realise that his most trusted assassin had still yet to return. Seeing as the Brotherhood was still churning away like always, he could only assume he¡¯d failed.

    This then led to an attempt on Feng¡¯s part to incite the surrounding three great nations into taking action. He quickly found that this was almost impossible. He wasn¡¯t sure what was going on there exactly, but it almost seemed like everyone was going mad.

    He contacted the leaders in the Northern Commercial Nation of Baquerro 4 days in a row. Strangely, it seemed like every time he spoke to them, they¡¯d completely forgotten their previous arrangements and agreements made the day before.

    With no other options, Feng turned to this route. He called in every favour he had and spent nearly every dime in his own substantial treasury to assemble this army of almost 30 different factions. With their rapidly dwindling influence over the markets, the Profit Sect was only growing more incensed and decided even if they couldn¡¯t get this technology, they would eliminate it.

    The breeze blew across the fields of golden grain as James stood with arms crossed surveying the gathered mercenary army off in the distance. As he stood there, General Weist, in charge of Tech City¡¯s defence, stood behind him barking orders left, right and centre to his City Guards and tried to prepare his men and the city for a siege.

    Standing nearby, also surveying the approaching army, was General Gallin who was in charge of the Star City Guard. He and Weist were both young and fresh in the art of war. They¡¯d been trained up by Goliath and put into their positions mostly just because someone needed to do it.

    Despite their young age, the duo both held themselves with considerable military bearing and seemed completely unflustered by this event. They had long since guessed that such a day would come to pass and had tirelessly drilled their soldiers in preparation. Gallin walked up to James, and seeing James with a somewhat scrunched up brow as he looked at the enemies he smiled confidently.

    ¡°There¡¯s no need to worry Master James. We¡¯ve long since prepared for a day like this. Your city will be perfectly fine.¡±

    James distractedly gave a ¡®yes, yes.¡¯ Meanwhile, in his spirit realm, Jasmine placed down a knight on a chess board. ¡°Checkmate. James, you are a thousand years too young to challenge me at chess.¡±

    James sat but in his chair with arms crossed looking somewhat sulky. ¡°Hmph, stupid chess computer!¡±

    Jasmine, not taking his jibe at her to heart, only giggled and poured some more tea. ¡°You¡¯re not worried about this oncoming army?¡± She asked James.

    James, as if a switch had been flipped, suddenly smiled brightly. ¡°What army? They have at most a few tens of thousands. If I had to guess, the most powerful practitioner among them is barely palace realm. The Profit Sect truly underestimates us.¡±

    Gold James, seeing a moment to brag jumped in to proudly start spouting off about how well defended their city was.

    Back in the real world, Weist was finished with his preparations. Behind the wall of the City, nearly 2000 black armoured guards stood. Each guard had a Mk 3 Arc Cannon and was suited up in the Brotherhoods Mk 2 Combat Suits. They also held a Mk 3 Air Board looking like well-ordered lines of armoured surfers.

    Weist then turned back and moved up to stand on the other side of James. ¡°Master James, we¡¯re ready.¡± James smiled brightly, and his eyes shimmered with a sinister light.

    ¡°Good, I¡¯ll let you maintain command Weist. I¡¯m just here for the show. Make it a good one.¡±

    Weist, hearing the orders of the Sin of Pride, couldn¡¯t stop his face from warping into a devilish grin. ¡°Certainly Founder.¡± he replied before turning and stalking off to the inner side of the wall¡¯s rampart.

    James¡¯ eyebrow quirked for a moment, and he glanced at Gallin. ¡°Founder?¡±

    Gallin gave a wry smile as he scratched his neck. ¡°That is what everyone has started to refer to you as. Because you have elected a new Guild Master, but still essentially retain full control of the guild.¡±

    Gallin then quickly rushed out another sentence. ¡°That is to say ... No one believes anyone could take this guild from you Founder. Even if Guild Master Gary or Vice Master McCord were both tower realm existences, everyone knows the true heart of the Guild, AI, will only ever follow your orders.¡±

    James just smiled. ¡®Take the guild from me? Hah! Who would dare try?¡¯ He thought to himself quite proudly.

    Moments later, the Invading Army came to a stop about a kilometre away from the walls. They were all formed up in strange formations, and there were all kinds of different flags showing all the different types of factions the army was made up of.

    Once they¡¯d stopped, an old Palace Realm cultivator marched out from the force. Using his spirit energy to increase the volume of his voice, he began to throw out their demands.

    ¡°We seek to negotiate with the City Master!¡±

    James waved his hand, to draw the man¡¯s attention as his voice cheerfully rang out, and his face was creased with a shallow smile. ¡°Ahoy hoy! Yes yes yes, what demands do have little fellow?¡±

    The face of the Palace Realm Cultivator became savage when he heard the young man on the wall calling him a little fellow and acting so shameless, as if this whole thing didn¡¯t concern him in the least. Taking a deep breath to control his rage, the cultivator pulled a parchment from his robes and began to read.

    ¡°We, the United Front for Free Trade demand the release of any affiliated member that has been unlawfully captured within this city. We also demand that the technology for the Continental Market as well as the cargo transport methods be released to us due haste. Lastly, we demand the wanted criminal, City Master James, be relinquished into our custody for trial by the people and control of the Free City of ¡®Tech¡¯ to be given to the United Front for Free Trade for governance.¡±

    The man then rolled up the parchment and glared at James. ¡°Little Boy, you think too much of yourself! We have 24,000 trained True Spirit realm and Palace Realm combatants. Forged in the fires of war! Your city might be filled with cultivators, but most of them will only be commoners playing at cultivating. They are not our match. Relinquish these things, and we can forget any enmity and your people will survive court martial.¡±

    James just smiled. Before he had the chance to reply, Weist stepped up to the wall with a stern face. ¡°Piss off you git!¡±

    His voice echoed out from the wall across the assembled army of cultivators.

    Voices and thoughts began rumble out from the invaders.

    ¡°He¡¯s mad right? There¡¯s no way he can stand against our army.¡±

    ¡°Ignorant country bumbkins! They think because they made some useful stuff they can keep it. Only the powerful can keep their possessions. Let¡¯s kill everyone in the city!¡±

    ¡®That man is either too courageous or too stupid. Either way, he¡¯s going to die in this city today.¡¯

    As the crowded army started to murmur and curse back, Weist lifted his hand into the arm. With a chop of the arm, a huge boom resounded out across the lands. Everyone saw the distant top of the spire, held aloft above the city like a great beacon, suddenly flare with light.

    Seconds passed, and nothing happened. Then, without warning, a strange shimmering force field came to life above the heads of the invaders. Everyone watched as a huge cylindrical slug, fired from the Devastator cannon atop the spire, spun madly against the shield.

    The shield was slowly pressed downwards as if a great weight was settling onto it. At first, the invaders thought the formation was actually going to break. The dome-like shield flexed even further until reaching only a few feet above the heads of the combatants lined up in the centre of their strange formation.

    With the huge load created by the Devastator Slug, weaker practitioners that had been feeding spirit energy into the formation started shaking and collapsing.

    Finally, after a few more seconds, but what seemed like hours to the invaders, the shield started pushing back the slug. The slug¡¯s rapid spinning began to slow down. All the assembled invaders finally released a tense breath.

    James, who stood up on the wall, was shocked. What the hell was that translucent shield? Having spent a great deal of time working with array patterns, James could tell this shield was very similar, but somehow subtly different.

    It finally clicked. He surveyed the orderly formation the invaders were in and recognised it as very similar to a force field array. ¡°So it¡¯s like that...¡± he mumbled to himself.

    Weist, seeing the slug now being forced back by the shield, and rapidly slowing it¡¯s spinning to a near stop, just grinned as madness filled his expression.

    He raised his arm and chopped down again. Another boom shook the lands, and the spire top flashed with bright lights again.

    Just as the first slug was about to finally stop and be blown away by the shield, a second slug fell from the sky like the finger of God smiting sinners.

    The collision between the two slugs cause the arrays to activate, and suddenly a massive suction force spread out to almost a kilometre in radius. Blood-curdling scream started to rise up, and the invaders desperately tried to escape the suction only to be pulled in like some invisible tentacle had reached out and grabbed them.

    Thousands died in an instant, and the formation was suddenly broken. Weist then yelled a command, and huge iron doors opened up on the empty wall turret emplacements. Turrets filled with supersonic death slowly rose up in a steamy mist from within the wall towers and then all turned to aim down at the invading army, which was well and truly in disarray now.

    The palace realm cultivator that had marched out to the front started screaming orders and trying to rebuild the formation to protect against these long distance death machines, only to suddenly have his head explode. Only a split second had passed before the boom was heard. Up along the wall, a man dressed entirely in black pulled back his sniper rifle type arc cannon and replaced the slug.

    He then rolled back over onto his stomach and began searching for more high profile targets. Finally, the short life span of the compression bombs died out, and a huge crater was revealed with a single highly dense ball filled with dirt and corpses remained.

    It fell to the ground and buried itself deep underneath the earth. The invaders finally started to reorganise a little and prepare to charge forwards. Another boom rang out from the spire, and the turrets along the walls started to hum to life and spray death across the enemy lines. It was truly a monstrous scene.

    Weist and Gallin stood atop the wall looking more and more vicious by the second. James, standing nearby, could feel the blood lust radiating off them like standing next to a heater.

    By this time, many of the worried citizens of Tech City had climbed high buildings in the city to peer over the outer wall and view the carnage. Many people grew sick from the scene.

    Infiltrators that were scattered around the city were rapidly reporting back to their parent factions, filling them in on what was going on and describing the scene. A great many other people had set up Spirit Recording Stone and similar artefacts that acted as a camera to capture this gory moment.

    Less than 20 minutes later, the turrets stopped firing and the spire no longer resounded with loud booms. The invaders had been reduced to only a few thousand, all of whom were trying to flee at top speed.

    Weist walked back to the inner side of the wall and looked down at his Guard squadron. ¡°You all have been graced by the walls of this city. You stand here now because this city has given you something precious. A home, a family, an opportunity. Today, you will show the City Master that you are worthy of your post. You will prove that you have earned your title of Tech City Guardian.

    ¡°This City, our home, you will give your lives to protect it, or I will take your lives myself. These filthy invader scum dare to march here, crush our crops and cower our people. Take no prisoners, for the Jail is Full.¡±

    Although this was a lie, and everyone knew that the dungeons had enough room to fit thousands, they still complied with this order in their hearts. Everyone in the Guards loved Tech City. Most of them not even because they had families and loved ones, but because Tech City was a wretched place where they could commit all the evil they wanted as long as they didn¡¯t cause too much trouble.

    Plus, by this point, the enemy had basically already been decimated. They just had to fly around picking off the escapees.

    With that in mind, the Guard Squadron let out a ground shaking ¡°For the City!¡± and then shot off into the skies on their Air Boards to start the hunt.

    James smiled to himself then turned to leave now that the show was over. He¡¯d learnt something interesting about using people to create arrays with formations and felt standing around out here watching for a while had all been worth it.

 Chapter 44: War of the Worlds

    The next two months, until the War of the Worlds, passed rather quickly for James. He spent most of his time training his combat and practising forging and alchemy. The incident with the mercenary army spread far and wide, and the tickets that had been bought up for the war of the world started to find their way onto the black market or disappeared from the hands of the smaller factions that had managed to nab one at auction.

    The two nations of Soel and Hastoel were starting to flare up even more violently. Hastoel¡¯s political infighting devolved to a vicious state. Noble husbands had been found sleeping with the wives of friends and allies. Wrathful wives and husbands started viciously attacking each other either politically or in the shadows.

    The leaks of the upper classes dirty secrets only grew more numerous, and many factions and the majority of the populace began to resent those aristocratic families that were in power. The entire nation was in turmoil as resentment and enmity between each other started to escalate to the brink of civil war.

    Soel had actually banded together, and faith in the Order of Sun¡¯s only grew more intense as the populace sought out some order of comfort in their now famine stricken lives. The Red Barron and the Ghost of Famine were now on the most wanted lists with bounties reaching into the millions of gold coins.

    To date, the few people that had managed to corner or attempt to catch these walking calamities had all died miserable deaths.

    Regardless of the increased faith of the populace as they raced to churches in hopes of seeking redemption from the gods, the nation¡¯s famine only continued to worsen. By now all the major crop production towns and cities and been swallowed by plague and drought.

    Few to no places across the nation still had any substantial amount of crops growing. Unfortunately, these places weren¡¯t enough to sustain the nation. With this calamity looming over their heads, the Order of Sun¡¯s began looking for new ways to feed their people.

    They tried numerous times to use their contacts with the Northern Commerce nation of Baquerro to import food, only to discover they acted as if any discussions had never happened the very next day. Worse still, anyone they sent to investigate the Capitol would suddenly disappear.

    The southern nation of Hastoel was even harder to seek support from because no one there trusted each other and the nation was in a state of civil war and constant turmoil.

    The three nations to the south and west had long since allied each other in order to hold back Soel. They were revelling in Soel¡¯s misfortunes and just waiting for a chance to start pushing for war to try and take land in their weakened state.

    Apart from the Northern Nation, seemingly ignoring everyone else and pretending they never spoke to any of the other nations, everything seemed eerily normal in the northern nation.

    Yori Empire, trapped in the middle of these three nations was surprisingly quiet. One would think that being the centre of the three great nations, it would be targeted quite extensively by the two nations that were now on the brink of calamity or collapse.

    On the contrary, the two great nations that were currently in an uproar never even thought to look to Yori Empire for help or concern. After all, it had been, and always will be, a piddling little neutral zone that no one really cared about.

    Every now and then James would get in contact with his trouble making companions and laugh his ass off at their status reports.

    The Profit Sect, having already taken a huge blow twice now, had started trying to get in contact with the Brotherhood to discuss. Even though they started trying to create some political channels with Tech City and the Brotherhood, they continued to send assassins and infiltrators.

    Almost all of these people would disappear the moment they stepped into the city. The AI¡¯s pervasive big brother like security was almost omnipotent. The one or two infiltrators or assassins that actually got into the city and guild or close to James, often ended up being recruited or killed. Those were their only choices.

    Thanks to the Profit Sects Efforts, Green Ninja had assembled quite a powerful arsenal of skilled shadow practitioners.

    After the second month, Harvy returned and reported that his progress in the underground was fast and he was already considered by the undead populace as the Underlord of the 2nd level of the Crypt.

    When he appeared to report to James, James had been in the middle of talking to Sully. Seeing Harvy, who had only decayed further than before and appeared to only be skin, bone and bandages, Sully almost lashed out to instantly kill him.

    More surprising for Sully was that Harvy had somehow materialised out of the Shadows. James also was curious how exactly how he did that and learnt something interesting. Apparently, moving into the True Spirit Realm didn¡¯t lock your elements. It just made it incredibly difficult to master a new element.

    Thanks to his living in the pitch black underground crypt and slaughtering undead, Harvy had somehow unlocked this darkness element. James wasn¡¯t so sure that it was just a matter of spending time attuning to an element and was probably something more to do with Harvy specifically. After all, Harvy was a deviator, and his cultivation path was definitely not the same as others.

    Having already over succeeded in his primary mission, James sent Harvy to the university to join a batch of rookie guild members who wanted to learn how to fly the velocity. The class was small, and the AI did most of the teaching with implants and the simulator. Thanks to his prior experience with captaining a velocity, Harvy was the second best out of the whole class.

    The best in the class was a skinny young man with golden blonde hair and blue eyes by the name of Charles. Turned out, he was from earth. Originally, he was abducted into a faction from Char. Said faction had been hired to come here and attack Tech City only to then be obliterated.

    The man holding the Clan Seal that he had an oath to was unlucky enough to be sucked into the blast radius of a compression bomb from the Devastator. Luckily for Charles, he and his compatriots were then freed from their oath because the Clan Seal had been crushed into dust.

    Thus, they made their way here.

    They weren¡¯t the only ones who started turning up at tech city. By the time the War of the Worlds came about, nearly a hundred Earthlings were living in the city or part of the guild. Quite a few had skills that made them quite useful to the guild.

    Originally, when James discovered there were more earthlings here from Kelly, he had a brief notion of going to rescue them all. Very quickly he changed his mind though. He didn¡¯t really care that much about them. As long as they didn¡¯t get in his way or oppose him, he could care less.

    Despite that, he made a little effort and put up a Job on the guilds job boards for an Earthling Rescue Mission. By this point, the AI had drones and other recording devices across half the continent. Thanks to this, the AI had a list of hundreds of earthlings that were still trapped in a guild or clan somewhere.

    Some of them were lucky enough to have been picked up by a sect, or weren¡¯t noticed when they came through a gateway, so those people were living their lives mostly freely.

    Interestingly enough, he heard rumours of a few of them possessing rare or abstract elements. Even other people possessing one of the elements of sin. These people were all top priority to be dragged back to the guild. Everyone except Pride. Anyone who had the sin of pride was hunted and killed immediately. There can only be one Pride after all.

    While all this was going on, Tech City was winding up for a huge commotion. The day the war of the worlds came, Tech City was filled to the brim with traders, tourists, powerful factions and commoner alike. Every inn, hotel and spare bed had someone sleeping on it.

    Not just that, the outer city, which was the town¡¯s slowly building up outside the gate of the inner cities walls, had thousands of practitioners building little dodgy wooden shacks to sleep in for the next few days.

    Originally, James had intended to only have competitors that bought tickets enter the competition, but two months ago he instead announced that those tickets would only be seeded spots. Another 50 slots would be opened to allow competitors who couldn¡¯t afford to buy a seeded slot to compete for a chance to enter.

    Although there was some dissent from the factions that forked out huge sums of gold for their ticket, there was nothing they could do about it. It¡¯s not like they were going to throw their seeded spot away and potentially lose a chance to win a velocity or the help of the guild.

    As the day had approached closer, James had released an even grander prize list. Third place was a spatial ring with about a square meter of storage space.

    This was made using the residue spatial particles built up over the past month from the pressure formations. He started calling the stone in the centre of the formation a Seed Stone. As it grew more spatial energy, he would harvest it with his Forging Chamber and then pour it into just a normal metal ring.

    Because the properties of the metal ring didn¡¯t resonate with the spatial energy like spatial stone did, the effects of forging a ring with the spatial energy were drastically reduced. Nonetheless, it allowed him to keep the same amount of spatial stone that he had so he could make more spatial energy.

    When people found out something so rare was going to be a prize, people started seriously training or seeking disciples that could contend in this competition. Many factions didn¡¯t look favourably upon the first and second place prize, first because they were too small a faction to need the Brotherhood or second because they were too powerless to keep hold of an artefact like the velocity. Everything was different though when the third place prize became a spatial ring.

    Not just that, but all sorts of interesting prizes were listed. Fourth place was the guild paying and supplying the materials to forge this placeholder a customised weapon to their exact specifications.

    Because of this, the competition became an event that could be finished in a few days to an event that could take almost a week.

    The opening day of the War of the Worlds, everyone who wanted to compete had to climb to the 15th floor of the spire. For most true spirit realm cultivators, this was incredibly difficult already. Apart from seeded teams, there weren¡¯t many true spirit practitioners as monstrous as James who could climb beyond that.

    James once again stood at the base of the Spire and addressed the whole city via the drones.

    ¡°Boys and Girls, if you wish to apply for the War of Worlds, registration is simple. All you need to do is ascend the spire to the 15th Floor and meet one of my guilds Halls Masters. They will register you and check to be sure you¡¯re a true spirit realm practitioner.

    ¡°I should warn you all of two things beforehand. The first is, this competition doesn¡¯t disallow killing. If you join to compete, you must be prepared to die or hope that your opponent is merciful. The second is also rather simple. I know there are means for tower realm or palace realm cultivators to suppress their realm to the true spirit level or hide their true cultivation.

    ¡°If you are one of these people, please stop your pointless effort now. The moment you enter the spire today, you will be crushed to death.¡±

    James finished this statement with a rather malicious smile. When he was done, he turned and walked into the spire. Taking that as an invitation to start, people started rushing wildly into the spire.

    There hadn¡¯t even been a few hundred people in the spire yet before an old man in red robes stepped past the main door into the first level of the spire only to suddenly freeze in place. The pressure directed specifically onto him was immense. Using everything he had, he gave a roar and circulated his cultivation base to try and back out of the tower.

    Unfortunately, the moment he released the seal on his realm and returned to his usual palace realm cultivation to escape, a huge array pattern shaped like a hand descended from the roof of the first level and clasped into a finger pointing formation.

    Everyone watched on, shocked, horrified and awed, as what appeared to be the hand of God slowly fell onto that old man and squashed him into a mushy paste. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the gory remains of his body were indistinguishable.

    The hand then shimmered and disappeared. James, who was already on the 15th level watching this on a screen with the Hall Masters couldn¡¯t help but chuckle. This array was purposefully designed and built for today by James. His sick sense of humour couldn¡¯t help but be unveiled in this brutal display.

    He wanted everyone to know that he is like a god in this city and regardless of how powerful you are you will still be squashed like an ant under his finger.

    Naturally, screens were put up all over the city by the drones so that everyone could watch the fierce competition. Why else would all these people be coming to Tech City?

    Seeing this display of might, everyone drew in a cold breath. Some palace realm and tower realm practitioners faces became stony, cold and unreadable. Whatever they were thinking, no one could tell.

    Seated in there very luxurious rooms in the most lavish hotel in the central district, the seed teams all had varying reactions.

    Of the sixty spots open for seed candidates, nearly 20 teams had been formed. Of the nation¡¯s on the mainland, Soel and Hastoel had 4 candidates each. Strangely, Baquerro sold off their tickets long ago but didn¡¯t seem to realise they¡¯d done it or even acknowledge that today was the day for the war of the worlds.

    The five western nations of Chor, Sargie, Lanthoe, Lokio and Jecuro all had 2 members in each of their teams.

    Bietsu, Pomit and Castello each had 1 candidate.

    Nahtiro, the island nation far in the south, didn¡¯t have a single team but rather had 4 teams from each of the respectively powerful factions that ruled the island together. Each of these teams had 5 members showing just how powerful the southern nation¡¯s factions really were.

    The strangest team, which James still had no idea how they even got a ticket, let alone numerous, was the Tillion Unity. This was the island nation that was controlled by bugs. Interestingly the Bugs were very humanoid in appearance, except instead of having skin they had a carapace or shell or some other insect-like qualifier. They managed to secure 4 slots.

    The Gollian Empire, which was an island nation from the far west, and it¡¯s neighbouring island nation of Sully Isles, both had 2 spots each.

    The United Islands had 5 spots. From what James had heard they¡¯d expanded a huge amount of wealth and resources for this chance. The Island nation was in frightful need of assistance due to the Tilion Bug people attacking from the south and Pirates attacking from the west.

    The last few teams were from assorted powerhouses scattered around the continent. This made up 3 teams of two and single one man team.

    All of these seed teams were put up at the Hotel along with whatever important dignitary that had escorted them here for this competition. Quite a few had hoped to use this chance to try and set up some contacts in Tech City and most importantly set up a relationship with James.

    Unfortunately for them, all of their efforts were rebuffed. James had no intentions of making friends with these people. After all, they are all just ants in the grand scheme of the world, and he would one day stand above them like a giant ... if he wasn¡¯t already essentially doing just that.

    As the first day continued on, a few more attempts to infiltrate the competition happened, and similarly to their predecessors, these people became a mushy paste. When night eventually fell, the Hall Masters had registered a few hundred new competitors.

    Sitting in the room of central hotel were the competitors from Nahtiro. A rather dignified and arrogant looking young man was watching the screen where the final dregs were ascending the spire in hopes of signing up. He was quite handsome and well built, with long brown shaggy hair and clean shaved face.

    ¡°Humph! What use is this elimination method? That pathetic little tower is hardly an accurate measure of strength. I could probably walk to the top and then back down without sweating.¡±

    Seated on a nearby couch, a very elegant young lady with long blonde hair was lounging around while eating little cakes and talking to some of the others about the upcoming competition. She smiled wryly and glanced at her brother, a young short-haired blond boy seated next to her who can¡¯t have been more than 15 or 16.

    ¡°It¡¯s not as easy as you might think. Betto and I tried to climb it yesterday. I couldn¡¯t make it past the 21st floor. Beyond that, it¡¯s only even more difficult. Betto was forced to give up on the 34th floor.¡±

    Seemingly shocked, the neat arrogant youth spun and stared at Betto with wide eyes. ¡°Betto, even you couldn¡¯t climb to the top of that tower?¡±

    Betto just shook his head quietly, seemingly more focused on the little cakes on the table in front of him. The arrogant youth turned back and stared hard at the screen as if trying to discern its mysteries.

    ¡°Just what kind of genius mind came up with the arrays for this ¡®spire¡¯? And where the hell are they getting the power to run this thing?¡± he mumbled to himself.

    Also seated in the lounge room area they were in, was an old man with long grey hair and hunched back. He carried a gnarled and twisted walking cane and seemed for all the world like a boring plain old man. He too stared intently at the screen with some consternation on his face.

    Similar scenes were playing out in the other rooms about the hotel. These powerful groups only now were starting to realise that what they¡¯d seen of this guild¡¯s power and technology was only the tip of the iceberg. It¡¯s not that they didn¡¯t have the same sort of arrays or even similar understandings, but rather that they simply could not imagine the methods that these people used to implement them.

    Furthermore, they would never guess that the energy for these advanced arrays was actually being supplied by such incredibly dangerous and volatile device as the Cube Reactors.

    -Endless Forest-

    Early the next day hundreds of competitors were gathered sitting in the backs of Big Bertas and hovering over some unknown part of the endless forest. The task was rather simple, everyone got a little badge.

    This badge served two purposes. Firstly, it had a little marker that pointed towards the closest badge nearby. Secondly, it was considered to be worth 1 point. These competitor hopefuls were going to be randomly dropped into the forest and had to find and collect enough badges. Anyone who could collect 13 badges would pass.

    Since there were only 643 participants, the last contender only had to gather 6 badges. Unfortunately for the last remaining six, everyone that hadn¡¯t been killed when their badge was stolen will be hunting them like dogs in the hopes of getting back into the competition.

    To make it even more exciting, when 45 participants for the arena battles had been chosen, everyone else¡¯s badges are going to flare up like beacons, attracting every person who lost their badge.

    To further add to James¡¯ amusement, the area they would be playing their game in was considered a hot spot for true spirit and even palace realm beasts. From what James had recently learnt from Exsue, these level are actually more commonly called Core and Solidification realm beasts. It was only because Atsunari was such a backwards continent they didn¡¯t really understand how beasts cultivated.

    This little area was nearly 20 square kilometres and fully policed by drones and guild members that kept an eye on anything.

    Because James wasn¡¯t completely heartless, he gave all these people a chance to escape the forest when they needed to. Everyone only had to say the words ¡®Babaganush¡¯. Because a drone would always be following everyone to live stream this event back to Tech City, this method was more than feasible.

    All these True Spirit Realm¡¯s got told this on the way out here. Once they were over the forest, they were given a single talisman to help prevent their death by falling and then pushed out one by one from 6 different Big Bertas.

    Once everyone landed, they waited as instructed. Soon, everyone had landed. At this point, James¡¯ voice resounded out from the drones that were monitoring everyone. ¡°You may begin!¡±

    It only took minutes before battles started erupting all over the forest. Some were cultivators, and others were spirit beasts. With the help of the AI, people could cycle through and maintain watch over their favourite player or simply watch the Action Feed, which monitored the best and most interesting battles with the use of multiple drones.

    Every pub, inn and drinking hole in the city had a few screens donated by the guild, which allowed everyone in the city to monitor the game.

    It was a huge spectacle, and everyone loved it. Not many places in Atsunari could boast such a scene or the ability to properly monitor it. As the day wore on, numerous deaths occurred throughout the forest. There were only 6 people left with badges. Amusingly, against James¡¯ expectations, all of them but one had more than one badge. This meant that there were still 2 more spots open and there were 19 badges remaining.

    The contender with only a single badge was a young woman with long black hair, not more than 17 or 18 years of age in appearance. She was dressed in a Japanese kimono and wielding a long samurai blade. Strangely, she never picked up other people¡¯s badges. She just killed anyone that came for her and left their bleeding corpse and badge, or badges, lying on the ground.

    James wasn¡¯t certain if she had actually understood the rules or not. He sat in his spirit realm with Jasmine and Goldy watching the excitement on a multitude of big screens scattered about in his realm. Eventually, curiosity got the better of him, and he addressed her through the drone that followed her around. ¡°Young lady, are you not aware of the rules in this competition?¡±

    The samurai girl stopped walking and then looked over at the talking drone. She silently nodded her head to the drone. James¡¯ eyebrow quirked slightly. ¡°Is that a yes, you are aware of the rules?¡±

    The girl nodded again, just silently staring at the drone with an expressionless face. James pondered for a bit then asked another question. ¡°Are you just here to kill people then? Why aren¡¯t you collecting badges?¡±

    The looked down at the ground for a moment, then in a voice as quiet as a mouse, finally responded. ¡°Can¡¯t count...¡±

    James almost fell out of his chair. His eyebrow started twitching as he stared at the screen. Goldy couldn¡¯t help but laugh loudly and almost fall out his chair from the hysterics. ¡°HAHAHA! Good God! The girl¡¯s thicker than a brick! Hahahaha ... She could have just picked up the badges until she had enough and we would then automatically come and pull her out of the forest. She must have thought that if she just killed everyone, there wouldn¡¯t be anyone to contend with her for the spot.¡±

    James sat there listening to Gold James. On the screen, the girl obviously heard his laughing and guessed explanation then looked at the screen with slightly widened eyes as if in shock. Her very quiet voice then came through the drone. ¡° ... tell me when to stop?¡±

    James gave a ¡°yes¡± and then all of a sudden the girl shot off in the direction of the closest competitor. It was minutes later that the girl appeared in a clear patch of the forest. In the centre of this little patch, two participants that had badges were busily going at each other with gusto.

    Seeing two people, the sword girl then seemed to blur for a moment and reappeared right between the two. Her hand shimmered as if it was some kind of glitch in the video feed and then the heads of the two people fell from their bodies in a fountain of blood.

    Before the first drops of blood had even finished their arc through the air to come back down, the girl had shimmered again then reappeared tens of metres away holding 6 badges. In a matter of seconds, she was already shooting off into the distance for her next target.

    Gold James had long since stopped laughing after that spectacle. He looked solemnly over at James. ¡°That girl¡¯s very fast.¡±

    James¡¯ true spirit nodded. ¡°I may not even be as fast as her.¡±

    The Live Action Feed in Tech City just happened to be broadcasting that battle which that girl had suddenly interrupted. When this sudden interruption happened to the fight, with the fast, lethal killing blow she delivered that even the drones camera couldn¡¯t fully catch, the entire city went silent.

    A huge raucous then spread across the city as everyone started guessing at this mysterious girl¡¯s identity. Sitting quietly in the dark corner of a pub, an old balding Japanese man couldn¡¯t help but smile wryly and facepalm himself. Sitting across from him at his table was another man who was donned in a kimono and carried a samurai sword as well.

    He was quite muscular and had rugged features. His head sported short black hair and a black moustache. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest and straight backed. He looked well-disciplined and had a rather dangerous aura about him.

    As he watched the screen, he couldn¡¯t help but glance at the old man. ¡°She¡¯s incredibly talented Master ... it¡¯s just she will only ever love the sword. Things that require thinking ... well, if she ever faces a challenge she¡¯d rather just kill it.¡±

    The old Japanese man wiped his face tiredly and poured himself another cup of liquor. ¡°I had hoped she would meet some powerful cultivators in this competition, but so far we¡¯ve been greatly disappointed. Hopefully, after this game of the City Master¡¯s is over, the seeded teams will be more challenging for her, otherwise, she may become too arrogant, and it will impact on her cultivation.¡±

    The moustached man nodded. ¡°Master, I suggested she come here because I¡¯ve fought with the City Master in the arena before. He¡¯s definitely powerful. Although our match was won by me in the end, I believe he was only using me to train his martial techniques. Even then, I felt that he was holding something back. If I had to face him in a true life or death situation, even I might be troubled slightly. That is why I recommended she come for this War of Worlds.¡±

    The old Japanese man looked at his disciple from the corner of his eye as his lips curled into a smile. ¡°Oh? That¡¯s rather high praise, especially coming from you. Is not the City Master just a True Spirit Realm? How could he be a challenge for you? You¡¯ve been in the Palace Realm for decades.¡±

    Moustache just nodded with a stern look on his face as he stared at the table. ¡°I feel that, in another 10 years, I may not be that boys match in battle. If we counted all the strange artefacts his guild produces, I might not be a match for him even now.¡±

    The Master¡¯s eyes widened slightly. ¡°There artefacts are that powerful? Perhaps it¡¯s time that I met this boy. He would surely make a good Junior Brother for you two from the praise you¡¯ve given him.¡±

    Moustache smiled wryly at the thought. ¡°I¡¯m not so sure it¡¯s that easy Master. There is something incredibly strange with this city. Within these walls, that boy is like a god. Not just that, but I feel as if I¡¯m constantly being watched, but I can never pin point where from. It¡¯s almost like I¡¯m being observed from so many directions at once that it¡¯s impossible to discern the location.

    ¡°This is the reason why I left the City so soon the last time I came here, and it¡¯s also why I feel that the City Master¡¯s Guild is powerful beyond the what it¡¯s shown to the rest of the world.¡±

    The moment he finished his discussion, a young man with long brown hair in a ponytail, fit physique and well-defined features, sat down at their table and shuffled over next to the moustached man.

    He then grinned at the moustache man. ¡°You¡¯re intuition is quite frightening Mr Samurai. To feel the ever present gaze of my city, even though it¡¯s not alive and has no will or intention. Very mysterious.¡±

    The Moustache man¡¯s eyes almost popped out of his skull when he realised that the young man who just sat down at their table was the very man they¡¯d just been discussing. He hurriedly stood up and gave a curt bow.

    ¡°City Master.¡± He said as his closed fist was enveloped in his open palm in salute.

    James just waved his hand about nonchalantly. ¡°Cut that shit out. It¡¯s belittling to us both for a cultivator of greater power to be bowing before me, a lowly True Spirit Realm.¡±

    The moustache man sat back down and warily eyed James. Instead of crossing his arms again, he kept them resting on his thighs as if preparing to quickly reach for his sword and defend himself if need be.

    This action didn¡¯t go unnoticed by James, but he ignored it and instead looked over at the Old Japanese Man. Then his eyes narrowed slightly. ¡°Where are you from old man?¡±

    The man looked back at James, seemingly unperturbed by this interruption. His faced remained a light smile the whole time, and his eyes were two slits. He was entirely unreadable. ¡°We came from the Bietsu.¡±

    James¡¯ eyes squinted a little more. ¡°No, I meant, what lab are you from?¡±

    Hearing this question, the old man¡¯s face made a minute twitch for the first time. He then surveyed James again and turned to pour some more liquor. James quickly reached out a hand to stop him.

    ¡°Don¡¯t drink that horses piss. Come, it¡¯s rare for brothers of the earth to meet freely, why not enjoy something a little special. If I had to guess, you¡¯re from one of the labs in Japan. I have something you¡¯ll love.¡±

    Saying as much, James pulled a small bottle from his sleeve. He then uncorked it, and the sweet scent wafted out into the tavern. Suddenly, the entire tavern grew strangely quiet as everyone experienced the moment when they first inhale the aroma of James¡¯ Spirit Alcohol.

    James then conjured a flame and heated the bottle for a short moment, after which he produced three, slightly concave, little saucers no bigger than a palm. Pouring the warmed liquor into the three saucers, James pushed one towards each of the master-disciple duo.

    He then waved his hand encouraging them to try some with him. ¡°Come come. This is something a little special we cooked up here in the lab. It¡¯s called Heavens Six Rice Wine. Which more or less is basically Sake. A drink from your native homeland old man.¡±

    Saying as much, James raised his saucer. The Moustache man, who was now somewhat lost by the conversation the City Master was having with his Master, looked suspiciously at the little saucer. Before he could voice doubts, his Master nodded towards him, then picked up his own saucer.

    After a ¡°cheers¡± the three drank. James watched the old man¡¯s face with some pride as he saw him have a visible reaction and his whole body shook. The man then looked at James with slightly wider eyes, which James assumed was as close as he could get this unreadable old bastard to making an astonished face.

    ¡°Good, no? Well, enough about that. I¡¯m sure you have some questions, but I also have a few of my own. How is it that you are still at the True Spirit Realm, but have a disciple in the Palace Realm? My second question is, where did you get the martial techniques you taught to that girl? Some kind of ancient inheritance you lucked into or perhaps you¡¯re part of a powerful faction?¡±

    The old man chuckled. ¡°Inheritance? Faction? No young man. I developed these martial techniques myself. I was once a rather strong martial artist back home. Thanks to that, I quickly developed quite an interest in martial techniques, and developed my own based on what I learnt back home.¡±

    James frowned slightly then leant back in his chair. After considering it for a moment, he found it was most likely true. After all, using technology from earth, James and his companion had managed to develop some god-like things of their own. It seemed that not just the sciences from earth were useful here.

    ¡°So, you still haven¡¯t told me what lab you¡¯re from.¡±

    The old Japanese man glanced towards his Sake cup. James got the idea, for a sip of his Heavens Six Rice Wine, the man would answer a question. James poured another round and toasted.

    After taking a minute to enjoy the Sake, the old man looked back to James. ¡°Tokyo Lab 2.¡±

    Although this wasn¡¯t much information, it was enough for James to confirm he was, in fact, an earthling. James poured another drink. After everyone had drank, he looked to the old man again. ¡°Old man, what do you say to joining my guild ... actually, never mind. If you wanted to join a faction, you most likely already have. Instead, what do you say to an exchange?

    ¡°If you give us tips on how you developed your martial techniques, or even better, shared your techniques, we can give you useful information of equivalent value in almost any other area of cultivation. Alchemy, Forging, Arrays, Spirit and even Soul cultivation.¡±

    The old man¡¯s already half closed eyes fully closed for a short time as he pondered. Just when James was sure the bastard had fallen asleep, the old man nodded subtly. ¡°It¡¯s not that I don¡¯t want to join a faction. I am well aware how useful it would be in this world. Rather, I have been looking for one strong enough to be worth joining.¡±

    The old man pondered for a little more then finally looked back at James. ¡°Young Man, if you can defeat my disciple in your little tournament, then I will bring my two disciples and join your guild. However, I have one more condition. You need to help me find someone. An old friend of mine that I suspect should have also come through to this world.¡±

    James nodded. ¡°Sure. Although your disciple is powerful, I can tell just from scrying you that you clearly haven¡¯t fully unlocked your Soul Aura properly yet, otherwise you would have either noticed my scrying or I would have noticed yours.

    ¡°If that¡¯s the case, your young lady probably hasn¡¯t fully realised her Soul Energy yet either. As for finding someone. I shouldn¡¯t have a problem helping you out with that. Who are you looking for?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m looking for Dr. Skay he should be from the...¡± The man¡¯s words trailed off not long after he started talking. The moment he said Dr. Skay, he noticed James¡¯ face become very overcast.

    James stood up from the table. ¡°If you¡¯re looking for the Old Mad Man, then you¡¯d best follow me.¡±

    James shot out of the tavern. Behind him, the old man now had what must be the closest his face had come to a worried expression in a long time. His moustached disciple simply looked incredibly confused and appeared to still be trying to process everything he¡¯d just heard his master discussing.

    It didn¡¯t take long for the trio to arrive at the Guild HQ. James led them down through the elevator and then along the winding paths of the Gardens. He then came to what looked like a very normal looking gravestone in the centre of a meadow littered with all sorts of mundane flowers. None of these flowers had spirit properties but were planted here just to make the place more scenic and peaceful.

    James stopped in front of the grave. Marked on the gravestone was ¡®Crazy Old Bastard With a Godly Mind¡¯. As soon as they stopped, Jasmine appeared out of James¡¯ spirit realm and borrowed some of his spirit wine to make and offering at the gravestone before once again disappearing.

    James heard the old man behind him let out a quiet sigh. Deciding to give the man a moment, he told them to meet him after the War of the Worlds, then wandered off to busy himself with other things.

    -Spirit Arena-

    At last, the battles were about to start. James and all the other participants stood in the centre of the huge Tower Realm class arena and observed the surrounding cacophonous crowds which were cheering and screaming.

    Seated in the best seats close to the edge of the arena, in luxurious ¡®royal¡¯ viewing boxes, were the elders and seniors of all the factions that had entered their members into this tournament. Even Artimus had shown up to show his support for his seeded candidate, which was naturally James.

    Some were excited and jubilant while others were quiet and contemplative or confident and aloof. There was no small amount of yelling and taunting going on between some of the factions that had deep enmities with each other.

    The seeded participants and the recent winners of the trials stood tall and proud as if on show to the whole world, which they more or less were. Some seemed quite attuned to the crowd and interacted with them in different ways, trying to hype them up or just greeting some fans and waving.

    Others stood in meditation, and there was even one or two who just stood around seemingly unconcerned with this scene.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Soon, a sound resounded out in the arena, and the crowd suddenly realised they couldn¡¯t hear anything at all. Not even themselves. Everyone thought that they¡¯d suddenly been struck deaf. That was until they heard the sound of steady footsteps and everyone¡¯s attention was focused on a raised platform that sat high above the masses and overlooked the entire arena.

    It wasn¡¯t long before the very rigidly moving figure of Gary strode out onto the platform followed by the Hall Masters of the Guild, McCord, and the Generals of the Guard. This group was the most important group of people in the entire city...

    At least, they were for the moment. With the core council away on business and James being part of the competition, they were the most powerful people in the city.

    Gary, who looked like he was having a hard time adjusting to all this sudden attention, was dressed in regal looking white robes covered from head to toe in exquisite embroidery. What no one would ever have guessed, was that this embroidery was actually a series of powerful array patterns that were so focused and powerful they could protect Gary from the direct strike of a Tower Realm cultivator.

    After some more awkward shuffling, Gary stood at the front of the platform. He gazed around at the crowds and seemed to be on the verge of sweating bullets. He then opened his mouth to start talking.

    ¡°Welcooiu ... Ahem!¡±

    James hid his face in his palms. It was only now made painfully clear to him that Gary had trouble with public speaking and being in the centre of attention. The first words and his voice broke like he was some squeaky little teenager.

    Seeing the dilemma, McCord stepped up next to Gary and whispered something into his ear. Gary¡¯s eye then scanned across the participants to find James glaring death at him. If looks could kill, Gary would have spontaneously combusted from the force of that stare.

    Gary closed his eyes for a moment and collect himself. Then his whole aura seemed to change from the clumsy uncertainty it was, into a strong, noble and courageous aura. It was almost like he¡¯d suddenly become a totally different person.

    When his eyes opened, they seemed to shine with a burning intensity that caused even the more powerful cultivators to avert their gaze when he looked at them. James almost spat blood when this change happened.

    ¡®Just what the hell kind of courage did this guy eat? He¡¯s not even the same guy. Man this Gary really is mysterious.¡¯ James thought to himself.

    Gary finally seemed ready. Suddenly, his voice boomed out through the silent arena like the words of a god speaking from on high. ¡°Welcome everyone, to the Dark Brotherhoods first official War of the Worlds!¡±

    Whatever it was that nullified all the sound of the crowds didn¡¯t seem to have any effect on Gary¡¯s voice as it carried to every ear in the arena seats.

    Gary then flicked his arm casually and in a practised manner. With this flick, a huge screen shimmered to life underneath his elevated platform. At the same time, guild members moved out into the arena with a table and a box.

    Drones zoomed about to here and there showing what was going on up on the screen. Gary started to explain while the members set up the little table and box. ¡°Many of you may not know yet, but today the City Master, and the Founder of the Dark Brotherhood will be competing in today¡¯s event as a representative of the Yori Empire in exchange for the independent status of our city.

    ¡°To ensure everyone that we will be judging and assigning combatants impartially and fairly, each member will use the fairest and most simple form to determine lots. They will each take a lot from this box. Matching lots will compete in the first round and so forth for every consecutive round.

    ¡°I also would like to inform everyone that due to the nature of the rules in this tournament, in which a person may kill their opponent if they wish, Master James has offered a bounty on his own head to any competitor capable of killing him. On his body is a Spatial Ring. If you kill him, the ring and its contents are yours. To prove our sincerity, Master James has agreed to swear an oath to this effect.¡±

    Saying this far, Gary glanced down at James. James repeated the terms of the oath and swore by it. Heavenly law descended onto him in the middle of the arena. If the sound nullification weren¡¯t in effect, the crowd would have been going absolutely wild.

    At the moment, they instead seemed to be shaking uncontrollably trying to hold in their urge to discuss or cheer. Some of them even seemed to be already trying to scream out even with the null field.

    Once this was done, Gary led everyone through picking out lots. As they were picked out, the matchups were displayed on the big screen under his platform. When James picked his lot, he found himself paired up with one of the Seeds.

    Glancing over, he assessed the young man he would be contending with. This young man looked like a monkey and was just as excitable. He had long brown sideburns and sat on squatting on the ground with his knuckles on the ground ... just like a monkey.

    From James¡¯ memory, this fellow was the competitor from Sargie. There were quite a few rumours about sects in Sargie studying wild animal and beast behaviour and creating their martial techniques from these observations.

    Once everything was done, Gary waved his hand again, and seats made of light seemed to form out of nothing behind him on the platform. It all looked truly miraculous. After encouraging everyone to enjoy the show, Gary and the others sat down in their seats.

    The moment Gary¡¯s bum touched the seat, he reverted back to the confused, uncertain man that he had been before. The other thing that happened was the null field disappeared. Without a need for an invitation, the crowd went nuts.

    All the people that had been very patiently holding in their comments, questions, cheers and screams couldn¡¯t hold back anymore and seemed to almost explode when the opportunity to voice themselves came. The shockwave of the sudden huge wave of sound actually made the defensive arrays light up and shudder for a brief moment. Half the crowd was pretty sure they just received major hearing damage ... which coincidentally only made everyone even louder.

    James gave an evil grin as he stalked out of the arena with his hands behind his back to go to the arranged seating area for the competitors.

    This competition had 110 competitors. 50 trial winners and 60 seeds. Of the 110 people gathered to fight today, James had taken note of only a handful. He was tempted to use his scrying to assess if any dark horses who had been hiding their power were mixed among everyone. In the end though, he decided not to.

    After all, this whole thing, the trial, the battles, the prizes. All of it was happening solely for James to meet other powerful cultivators to test himself against. Not only that, but also because he was easily bored and took a great deal of amusement from playing these sorts of games.

    For the short term, as in the next 5 to 10 years, he suspected he would be trapped here in Atsunari until he was powerful enough to move to Gastalous. He could go now obviously, but initial drone probes of Gastalous suggested that the primal energy saturation was about 133 times that of Atsunari.

    At the moment, tech city was generating only 2 times the average saturation of Atsunari. Mind you, that was over the full 100 km area that tech city owned as a free city. If you were talking about just inside the walls, then it was almost 4 times, and if you were talking about the ability of some of the meditation chamber, they could almost draw in 80 times the average of Atsunari in one go.

    Unfortunately, things like the meditation chambers didn¡¯t actually ¡®use¡¯ much primal spirit energy. They just concentrated it into a smaller volume. It was only array patterns burning energy and cultivators refining or using energy that encouraged growth in the primal spirit energy of an area.

    This being said, it meant that Gastalous was promised to be filled with monsters well and truly beyond the tower realm. Being able to cultivate 133 times faster would give cultivators on this continent a huge advantage over the weakest shitiest continent of Atsunari.

    Returning from this digression, essentially James was only doing this to amuse himself. Otherwise, it would be a long boring few years if he had to sit around like the old bastards in closed door meditation for decades at a time.

    Soon, battles began to flare to life in the arena, and the crowd was going off their nut. The quality of disciples that came for this competition were in a class of their own. All of these participants were genius¡¯ in their circles of influence. They stood out above their peers and could even fight above their realm, most of them being able to contend against Palace Realm cultivators.

    It wasn¡¯t long until a battle that drew James¡¯ interest began. This battle was the first time he saw one of the Tillion bug people in combat. He found these humanoid creatures strange because no matter how he looked at them, he couldn¡¯t sense a cultivation realm, so he had no idea if they even cultivated spirit arts.

    Standing in the arena was a competitor from Lokio. He was an aged old man with a grey beard. It was already unusual to see a True Spirit realm practitioner that was old, so he also grabbed James¡¯ attention. Either he¡¯s been stuck in the true spirit realm for a very long time, or he started cultivating very late.

    He wore plain grey robes with the emblem of the Lokio Royal Family on his back. His skin was leathery and wrinkled, and his face was slightly droopy. He had long bushy eyebrows which seemed to cover his eyes, and his grey beard reached down in front of his chest. He carried a straight ebony walking cane carved with countless patterns. The cane¡¯s handle was a white fox with 3 tails.

    His opponent was a very human looking young man no older than 17 or 18. The young man¡¯s skin was shiny and brown, and he had two antennae poking out from his head. He was muscular and fit and only wore a pair of loose fitting long pants.

    Apart from the antennae and smooth, shiny brown skin, he looked every part the human being. If you saw him in the darkness or from a distance, you would easily mistake him for a human.

    James glanced over at the VIP box reserved for the delegation from Tillion Unity. Seated in the front of the box was a woman who looked only 30 odd. Her face was remarkably beautiful and her skin flawless, if not somewhat pale. The only thing was ... she had 6 huge spider like legs that stuck out from her back.

    If James was to guess, she was the ¡®Widow Queen¡¯. From what little he¡¯d learnt, this woman was the leader of the Tillion Unity and was incredibly powerful. She had, more than once, fended off multiple Tower Realm practitioners from the United Islands single handed.

    At the same time as James glanced at the gorgeous women with spider legs on her back, the women glanced over towards him. The two observed each other for a moment, then mutually returned their focus to the fight that was just about to begin.

    The bell to begin rang out with a crisp ¡®ding¡¯ and the crowd began to cheer loudly. The moment the bell rang, the old man whipped his cane out in front and pointed it towards the bug man. With a flick of the wrist, the cane began to spew little head sized fireballs out like a torrential rain.

    A huge explosion sounded out, and a dust cloud rose into the air shrouding the bug man within. Having not seen the man making any movements to dodge or block, everyone assumed he¡¯d just been roasted alive. As the dust settled and the old man returned his cane to his side to lean upon, the bug man was gone.

    Everyone was stunned. ¡®Where the hell¡¯s the body?¡¯ was a communal thought shared by many of them. They didn¡¯t have to wait long before a rumbling began to come from the arena. The ground behind the old man shifted, and the bug man suddenly sprang out like a shadowy phantom.

    The old man clearly had quite some battle experience, never having let down his guard for a moment. As soon as the ground behind him shifted, he spun and whipped his cane down imbued with a scorching flame.

    The bug man seemed surprised by the quick reflexes of the old man and crossed his arms in front of his chest, defending from the blow. The strike connected and shot the bug man back dozens of metres through the air and rolling along the ground.

    Leaving no time for the bug man to regain his senses, the old man quickly shot out in pursuit. As he raced forward with a mirage like movement technique, he made a series of hand motions, each one creating a different hand gesture.

    James remembered that many people created hand gestures with their techniques for two reasons. The first was to help focus their mind and channel their spirit energy properly. The second was because some hand gestures contained elements of natural laws. Similar to how array patterns influence spirit energy in special ways, specific hand gestures can also assist in this process.

    The reason James had never bothered to learn any or create some was that he didn¡¯t need the help. His martial techniques were all rather simple and didn¡¯t require any complex spirit energy control. It was also because he had Goldy floating around up in his spirit realm. Whenever he had to accomplish something complex, Goldy would join in to help out.

    After the old man had channelled his martial art, his body was enveloped in a raging fire, and his speed exploded. He appeared next to the bug man like a mirage in a hot desert. He then raised up his open palm into the air and slammed it down toward the bug man. As he did so, a huge ethereal palm made of fire formed around his hand and descended with it.

    ¡°Palm of the Fire God!¡± Screamed the old man as his palm crashed towards the bug man.

    The bug man, who¡¯d just stopped rolling and started to get his footing was astonished to find the old man only a step away from him unleashing a powerful martial technique. The bug man¡¯s antennae twitched on his head, and he made disdainful sneer.

    From the kneeling position he¡¯d finally landed in, he pulled back a fist and lashed out with a plain simple punch. As he rose up to meet the fire palm, the air began to vibrate and shake. James, with his mind currently running at maximum speed thanks to the Lightning and Soul Energy, watched all this as if in slow motion.

    He noticed that the bug man didn¡¯t seem to have received any damage from the early flame cane he received that had shot him back. James didn¡¯t see him materialise any spirit energy to protect his body and was somewhat surprised. As he continued to watch, his curiosity finally got the better of him and, he very specifically scryed the bug man¡¯s body.

    He didn¡¯t want to ruin the surprise and suspense of all the other competitors, so he focused in his scrying directly onto the bug man¡¯s body. What he saw made his mind rumble. The man had no spirit energy inside his body. He was in every way a completely powerless bug.

    Instead, what he did have was a powerful Soul Energy pervading every part of his body, and moreover, every muscle, fibre, bone and even his blood were incredibly dense. After this short moment of scrying, James returned to just watching from the sidelines.

    An earth shaking ¡®BOOM!¡¯ came from the collision of the duo in the arena. Dust was stirred up and filled half the arena as shockwaves from the collision caused the protection arrays to shimmer to life at the edges of the arena.

    The crowd watched on in a moment of tense silence until slowly the dust settled. The one left standing, to everyone¡¯s great shock, was the Bug Man. He stood proudly with his arms crossed over his broad shiny chest and stared down at the weak old man who was left coughing blood and kneeling on the ground.

    This was an upset! Everyone could tell, from the intuitive sense they had at true spirit realm, that the bug man had no spirit cultivation. Still, the crowds loved a dark horse amongst the ranks of the competition and suddenly stood up with screams and cheers.

    Amusingly, because ascension star had numerous strange and interesting looking races thanks to the numerous gateways, racism amongst the common masses was rare. Everyone had long since adapted to interacting with various strange races. Because of that, they didn¡¯t care that the man was a Bug Man. So, they madly cheered their joy at a good show. Even if it was short.

    The bug man looked down at the old man with a sneer of disdain. He chose not to kill the old man, and instead just walked out from the arena after the old man had admitted he lost the will to fight.

    James was somewhat confused by the bug man¡¯s cultivation. Just what kind of cultivation was this? He seemed to be using his Soul Pressure to temper his body constantly. This gave him very powerful soul from the constant internal practice, and it seemed to also give him a very powerful body.

    Powerful enough to contend with practitioners of Spirit Energy.

    James looked back to the Tillion Unity¡¯s VIP box and noticed the Widow Queen looking at him again with a slight smile.

    It didn¡¯t take long for James to learn just what was going on though, as some of the other contestants nearby started to discuss. The arrogant looking youth from one of the Nahtiro teams gave a ¡®tsk¡¯ sound.

    ¡°Body Cultivators! Those disgusting bug¡¯s body cultivation is too troublesome.¡±

    The blonde girl stood next to him with her little brother Betto. She nodded her head contemplatively. ¡°It¡¯s fine. As long as the City Master has made sure to test that they are only a Stone level body cultivator, then we can still defeat them. From what I saw of that battle, the Roach like man is definitely at the peak of Stone Body. He may even be close to breaking through to the next layer of body refinement.¡±

    James, curious about this discussion meandered over. After some thought, he undid his ponytail and ruffled his hair then ran off and changed into some very plain grey robes. Just this simple act was enough to change his appearance entirely. For these competitors that had only stolen a glance or two at him while he was in the arena for the selection, it would be difficult to determine who he was.

    He then sidled up along the group as they discussed the bug people. When they noticed him approaching, the Girl and Arrogant Youth both mostly ignored him. Betto seemed rather strange already and didn¡¯t appear to care about anything, so it wasn¡¯t unusual to see him continue just standing there staring off into the distance.

    James walked straight up to them then made a salute. ¡°Greetings little sister, big brother. I couldn¡¯t help but overhear you discussing the Bug Man¡¯s cultivation method. Do you think ... you could fill this humble cultivator in on what exactly it is?¡±

    The Arrogant youth was just about to lash out and drive this strange, messy looking man away. He didn¡¯t put any of these other competitors in his eyes and considered them all beneath him. Most especially the ones like him, who looked like they¡¯d been dragged out of some little country town out in the middle of nowhere.

    Before he got the chance, in a rare turn of events and shocking both the young man and the girl, Betto saluted James and began to explain. ¡°Big Brother, the bug people of the Tillion Union have very powerful body cultivation methods. Most of them are born into the world with powerful bodies already. When they start to cultivate, they choose to forgo spirit energy cultivation and instead focus on body cultivation.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you noticed the incredible power of the Roach Man¡¯s body. Without any spirit power, he was still able to directly confront a True Spirit Realm cultivators full power martial technique with his fist alone.

    ¡°They, of course, aren¡¯t the only ones to cultivate body arts. There are many different methods, but they all follow a similar design. By using the power of their soul, they temper every part of their body relentlessly. Some body cultivators even use the power of their soul to draw in spirit energy and fuse it into their body.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know if you know this, but everything that exists creates some kind of spirit energy unique to it. Even two rocks that are made of the exact same earth, can produce their own slightly unique type of earth energy. The body is much the same, and the bones, blood, skin and every other part has its own intrinsic kind of spirit energy that it creates.

    ¡°Usually, we spirit cultivators ignore this unique energy of the body. Body Cultivators, on the other hand, focus almost entirely on this unique energy. Instead of creating a spirit realm in their dantian to channel spirit energy, they just draw it into the bodies and fuse it into their own unique bodily energies.¡±

    Betto then put his finger to his chin in a pondering pose and continued under the shocked expressions of his Sister and Senior Brother.

    ¡°In a sense, they can also be considered spirit cultivators, only on a different path. They also have realms of power similar to us. The initial realms and the only ones I¡¯m aware of are the Mortal, Stone, Iron, Steel and Gold realms. They all correspond to a spirit realm equivalent such as Barrier, True Spirit, Palace and so on.¡±

    Betto then gave another salute to James. ¡°I hope this helps with your understanding.¡±

    James looked at Betto with a strange expression then grinned brightly. ¡°I look forward to fighting you Little Brother Betto.¡±

    With that, James tied his hair back and walked off to change back into his standard light blue robes.

    As he strolled off, the pair that had sat through the explanation in bafflement suddenly turned curious gazes onto Betto. The girl was the first to ask. ¡°Betto? Who was that? Do you know him? I¡¯ve never heard you talk so much to anyone but Master.¡±

    The arrogant youth also had questions in his eyes. Betto gave a nod as he watched James¡¯ back moving off to the changing room. ¡°Mnm. The City Master. He¡¯s very strong.¡±

    As he said this his eyes seemed to brighten noticeably, and a frightening aura of bloodlust began to leak out from him, causing the other participants, and even his sister and Senior to back away slightly.

    As quickly as it had come, it went. Betto returned to the incomprehensible boring looking young man who stared off into space.

    Throughout the first day, 55 competitors got eliminated. Some of the battles were fierce and well fought while others, like the bug man¡¯s battle, held no suspense or ended rather quickly.

    James¡¯ for example, ended almost instantly. That monkey like man was blown away by a spear of lightning the moment the bell started.

    The Bug people¡¯s battles were equally unexciting and just based on his intuition, James could tell one of them was not in the same class as the rest.

    That night, after the first round was finished, he wondered over to the grand hotel in the Central District. After a short elevator ride, with customary coma inducing elevator music, James knocked on the door of the Tillion Unions room.

    Having learned from previous mistakes in dealing with powerful opponents, the hotel tower was surrounded by drones under Jasmine¡¯s control, and James was accompanied by Harvy and another person who was covered in black robes from head to toe and had a dark hood shrouding there face in shadows.

    The person to answer the door was the young Roach Man. Seeing James standing at the door he gave him an arrogant look and crossed his arms over his chest to look more imposing. ¡°We don¡¯t want to deal with anyone else. If you have business with the Tillion Union, then you can go through official channels.¡±

    James didn¡¯t have to say anything. Just the fact that the man was talking down to James, Harvy reacted without a sound. His body seemed to be consumed by a black mist, and moments later he was standing behind the Roach Man, and his scythe was pressed against his neck.

    Harvy¡¯s croaky dry voice sounded out from behind the man. It sounded like Death himself had come to take his soul into the eternal cycle of reincarnation. ¡°Seek Death?¡±

    James waved his hand, and Harvy suddenly disappeared into a black mist and emerged behind James. James gave him a strange look while ignoring the now shivering Roach Man. ¡°Harvy, is that some kind of teleportation technique? It¡¯s quite powerful.¡±

    Harvy gave a curt nod. Although his face was hidden in bandages like a dried mummy¡¯s corpse, it almost looked like Harvy was happy with the praise he received from his Dark Overlord.

    James turned back to the Roach Man who was touching his neck, which had a tiny scratch mark that was starting to bleed. ¡°I am James, the City Master. I¡¯d like to meet with your ... Queen?¡±

    Roach Man, now realising he¡¯d vastly overstepped himself, bowed with a salute and quickly shuffled back into the room so fast he left behind after images. He then quickly returned and bowed again. ¡°This way please, City Master James.¡±

    James followed the man into the main lounge of their conjoined apartments. Seated on a cushion at a little tea table, discussing the most troublesome competitors they may face, was the Queen and the three other Seed members of the Tillion Unity.

    James gave a simple salute to the Queen but ignored the rest. The Queen waved her hand and sent the 4 Seed members of her team off to busy themselves with something else. James¡¯ eyes followed a middle-aged woman whose body was covered in scars. She had a long proboscis nose and a pair of translucent wings on her back.

    Although James wasn¡¯t sure, he suspected the mosquito-like nose could indeed suck the blood from her opponents. More troublesome was the wings. To be able to easily fly at their level of cultivation without a great deal of spirit energy being wasted, was a very useful ability.

    James sat down opposite the Widow Queen at the table. He then watched with some surprise evident on his face, as the Widow Queens 6 long spider like legs retracted into her body and disappeared. As this happened, he noticed the legs slowly becoming a strange energy that sped around her through her blood and meridians and redistributed to other parts of her body.

    Once this was done, James found himself sitting across from a stunningly beautiful, but normal human. The only exception being her white as a sheet skin tone. Also, he noticed the pupils of her eyes were split apart strangely as if they were the eight eyes of a spider.

    James retracted his gaze and, as was customary to him now when he was meeting with someone, produced a bottle of Spirit Alcohol. As he poured his alcohol, the Widow Queen was observing him and the two companions behind him.

    After feeling that she¡¯d gauged their strengths, although shocked in her heart, she started the conversation with a flirtatious smile and coy look. ¡°City Master James, it¡¯s a pleasant surprise for you to visit me so late in the night but I¡¯m not sure how I should respond to such indecent advances.¡±

    Hearing the opening statement of the Widow Queen, James¡¯ face became shy and bashful. ¡°Lady Queen, why not have a drink with me, perhaps I¡¯ll get lucky, and your inhibitions will be loosened.¡±

    The Queen gave a little giggle and raised her cup that James had just poured her. ¡°To loose inhibitions then?¡± James rose his cup as well and echoed her. The Widow Queen, although putting up a brave front as if she was unaffected, was inwardly shocked. This young City Master was only becoming more and more difficult to see through.

    The wine he¡¯d just poured was calling to her very soul. The fact alone, that James could casually produce such a high class wine just for this little social visit, already made her question if he actually had a hidden power from one of the greater continents helping his guild from the shadows.

    To make her sharpen her wits further, she was surprised by James¡¯ quick retort. She knew she was beautiful, and she knew that she was almost irresistible to humans after she¡¯d withdrawn her legs. Even old Tower Realm monsters would find it difficult to resist her charms, let alone calmly tease her back without even a blink of the eye.

    What she could never guess was that James had spent most of his time here with Jessy nearby. That succubus would often wantonly release her lust energy everywhere. She especially did this when she lost control of her temper, which was frequently when she was anywhere near James.

    Thanks to this frequent tempering of his willpower, James had no problems resisting lustful thoughts. Mind you, even if he did have issues controlling lustful thoughts for this ¡®loin stirring beauty¡¯, rascal was his nature. He would never let someone get the upper hand in discussions of sex. He was very much shameless in this regard.

    After their toast, James placed his sake cup onto the table and looked into the Widow Queens Eyes. ¡°Lady Queen, although I¡¯ve no doubt we could tease each other all night long, and I¡¯m certain we could spend the entire night getting up to all sorts of other indecent activities ... that¡¯s not why I am visiting this time.¡±

    He then poured another drink as he continued. ¡°This visit is in regards to your participant with the Iron Realm body.¡±

    The Queen smiled coyly and covered her mouth with her hand as if to suppress a giggle. ¡°But Guild Master, what could be the matter with that. I remember the rules of your competition. You can¡¯t compete if you¡¯re over the True Spirit Realm. None of my team¡¯s members are even in the barrier realm. I hope you¡¯ll forgive me for not understanding.¡±

    James smiled, picked up his cup and toasted the Queen again. Once he was finished, he placed it down again and looked at the Queen. Now, instead of the shy innocent young expression he¡¯d had before, he was frowning. Not only that, but his tone of voice became somewhat more stern.

    ¡°Lady Queen, if you wish to play word games with the rules of my competition, then I suggest you learn the words properly. The rules state that you must be a True Spirit Realm cultivator to compete. The fact that not one of your competitors are even in the True Spirit Realm give me the grounds to simply disqualify all of them together.¡±

    The Queens face finally changed slightly as her smile stiffened and her brow creased. ¡°Do you wish to make an enemy of the Tillion Unity?¡±

    James suddenly returned to the innocent, bright smiling young man of moments before as he poured another drink. ¡°An enemy? Well, let me ask you this? Does a tiger consider a rabbit his enemy? Or a does a dragon consider a dog his enemy? If I¡¯m not wrong, you are most likely the most powerful practitioner in the Tillion Unity. If that¡¯s the case, I could kill you right now, and then the Tillion Unity wouldn¡¯t even be a rabbit in the eyes of a Dragon to my guild. It would become a speck of dust which the dragon has accidently stomped on in its travels.¡±

    Just as the Queens¡¯ face was very quickly changing into rage and indignation, James pushed her cup over to her, and his smile became even brighter. ¡°However, apart from your interesting body cultivation techniques, I don¡¯t particularly care about your nation, or it¡¯s people. In fact, I don¡¯t even care that you have brought an Iron Realm practitioner into my competition. I came here only to let you know, that if our two factions ever do business again, you should avoid trying to play any tricks. This time around, you shall suffer only minor consequences. Next time, your entire nation shall suffer the consequences.¡±

    Finished with his warning, James downed his cup then stood to leave. The Queen, understandably rather upset with the direction this little talk had travelled in, shot to her feet filled with rage. ¡°Just who do you think you are to talk down to me like that you piddling ant! You stand at a mountain but fail to see it! Do you think you can just come here and threaten me as you please!¡±

    James stopped then turned back. His face was now strangely impassive and emotionless. The Queen suddenly felt like she was being stared at like a bug. James cupped his hands into the sleeves of his robe and then spoke. ¡°You seem to be mistaken, I did not come here to threaten you. Nor was my intention to intimidate. It was you who made assumptions and threatened me. I never intended to remove your participants from the competition, but now, because you have angered me, your participants will die in tomorrow¡¯s matches.¡±

    James then turned and left with his two companions, leaving the Widow Queen shaking in rage. She summoned her team and then began lecturing them and preparing them for whatever tricks James might have up his sleeve for tomorrow¡¯s matches.

    The next day the arena was once more filled to the brim. Gary once more stumbled out and got things underway. Because of the uneven number of participants left, he announced that one of the battles will be a 5 way free for all.

    The crowds were shocked by this statement. A five way free for all? Isn¡¯t that just a little unorthodox?

    As soon as this was heard, the Queen sitting up in her VIP room suddenly had a bad feeling. ¡®It¡¯s surely not coincidental. I only have the four Seed Members. However, there shouldn¡¯t be anyone that could stand up to all 4 of them together, so at least one will make it through to the next round of qualifiers. That is most likely when the City Master will move to eliminate him.¡¯

    Although this was her thoughts on the matter, she wasn¡¯t sure how exactly James was going to rig the vote. It would be difficult to rig since everyone was pulling their lot number out of a box under the full view of everyone else.

    As lot¡¯s were drawn, she discovered that her fear had come true. Everyone else in the VIP boxes had realised something suspicious was going on when all four members of the Tillion Unity somehow ended up in the 5 man free for all.

    However, none of them said anything. They had realised the day before that one of the Tillion Unity¡¯s members was clearly the equivalent of a Palace Realm cultivator in Body. If they weren¡¯t punished for that by the hosts of the competition today, then many of them would have risen up in protest.

    At last, the poor bastard who would be trapped in a ring to fight against 4 people for the same side was picked. James pulled out the little ball from the box with his number on it. The crowd, the other competitors and even the dignitaries of the other factions were stunned.

    The City Master was planning to personally take them all on? What kind of madness was this?

    Nonetheless, James showed an exuberant smile. To everyone in the crowds, it looked innocent and na?ve, as if James had no idea what was going on and was just happy to be part of the process. To those who knew him better and had interacted with him a few times, they all grimaced.

    ¡®So this is the smile of the devil?¡¯ they all unanimously thought to themselves.

    It wasn¡¯t long before the second round of qualifiers set off, and the arena was filled with battle after battle.

    With the quality of participants battling this time being slightly higher, the battles were dragged out somewhat more and a great deal more intense. Sword girl, Betto and a few others all easily finished their battles and were showing promise as the most powerful cultivators, all of them not having shown much except fast and decisive victories with simple techniques.

    At last, the most curious battle of the day, and the one with the greatest suspense for the audience was about to get underway. Standing equidistance apart, the 5 participants of the 5 man free for all were preparing for their battle.

    The 4 bug people weren¡¯t too worried. Although their Queen had warned them all repeatedly to be careful in this battle, they felt that she was perhaps just over reacting. After all, as the city Master and host of this competition, he can¡¯t show himself to be acting too unfairly and shamelessly.

    They would just wait for a moment of distraction and kill him before he could take advantage of any arena arrays or other such things.

    Finally, the announcer told them to ready up, and the bell of the arena gave a ¡®ding¡¯ signalling the start of the battle. Moments after the bell sounded, as the competitors were just about to start moving towards James, a huge boom rang out in the arena.

    The crowds watched in shock as the mosquito like cultivator was suddenly turned into a bloody mist. Everyone¡¯s eyes then returned to James, who stood in his starting position holding a Black Arc Cannon engraved with bright golden array patterns that were all shining.

    Although they¡¯d heard about the Arc Cannon, the bug people of Tillion Unity had never seen or experienced them. For this weapon to be able to completely destroy the body of an Iron Realm body cultivator, it was truly monstrous.

    The remaining trio of bug people immediately began taking evasive manoeuvres and pushing their movement arts to the absolute limit, all in an attempt to prevent James from locking on to them.

    James, as if not even worried by them, just flicked his hand and his Arc Cannon disappeared into his spatial ring. He then flicked his hand again, and as if materialising from thin air, a long scimitar came into being in his right hand. In his left appeared his Black Arc Pistol.

    As soon as he started pouring spirit energy into the two weapons, they began to emit shining light and caused the air around him to start vibrating from some invisible pressure. His Black Arc Pistol, referred to henceforth as his BAP, had numerous golden engravings covering every inch of it.

    It¡¯s shape and structure was remarkably similar to an ordinary pistol from earth, only slightly longer. It¡¯s most distinguishable feature however, was the short black blade attached like a bayonet to the front.

    Naturally, the scimitar in his possession was loot from the prior attempt on his life by Hastoel¡¯s border general.

    The moment these two weapons materialised, the Hastoel delegation shot to their feet, filled with indignation and anger. Unfortunately, the crowd had just recovered from the shock of James¡¯ instant kill and was roaring with cheers and enthusiasm, so their protests and derogatory remarks were drowned out.

    With his two weapons in hand, James launched forward towards the remaining trio of the Tillion Unity. Apart from the Roach Man, the remaining two participants looked no different from normal humans apart from strange skin tones, which wasn¡¯t unusual in this world anyway.

    Now that they had begun to engage in battle however, the female stretched out her arms, and they slowly deformed into the shape of grasshoppers scythe like front legs. In addition to this, her eyes began to expand and protrude from her head until she had 300 degrees of vision.

    The man squatted slightly as his legs deformed and soon reformed into a shape similar to a cricket¡¯s. Once he was ready, he made to jump and suddenly disappeared. Clearly, his speed and jumping abilities had been greatly increased.

    A Mantis, Roach and Cricket. With the mosquito dead in the first second of the battle, these three insect people began to use all their skill to make evasive manoeuvres as they rapidly approached James, only to realise that he was also rapidly moving towards them.

    The three of them all made disdainful faces, as if belittling James because he was rushing into his death. In this case, they would probably be right. James acknowledged that the body cultivation of these insect people was beyond his previous fighting experience and because of that he wouldn¡¯t recklessly fight them 1 on 3, even with the assistance of his weapons, which gave him a huge advantage.

    Now that they were aware he had such powerful weapons, naturally they wouldn¡¯t freely stand around and make it easy for him to use them. Proactively locking him down in one spot and then slowly wearing him down would be their best option.

    James, however, had no intentions of fighting the three of them equally. This farce was naturally a punishment, to tell the Tillion Unity, and everyone else for that matter, that he was not to be taken lightly and angering him would have consequences.

    With a wave of the hand, Jasmine suddenly appeared in the arena, seeming like a ghostly visage wrapped around a floating guild seal. As she came into existence, a wave of shock rippled through the onlookers. At the same time, James waved his hand again, and a figure in a black cloak appeared nearby.

    This was the same figure that had accompanied him to meet the Queen the night before. Strangely, this figure made no motions, not even breathing. If you were powerful enough, you would realise that apart from a strange hum, this figure didn¡¯t even make any normal bodily sounds ... for example, a heartbeat.

    This all happened in a split second, and James didn¡¯t even stop as he continued rushing towards the 3 insect people. The appearance of these 2 strange figures in the arena, especially in the middle of a fight, caused the crowds of onlookers to surge into an uproar.

    However, unlike as one would expect, the uproar wasn¡¯t over the fact that James appeared to be cheating by bringing in outsiders to his battle, but at the first action of the beautiful ghost woman.

    Instead of moving to engage the enemies, she turned to the still silent, unmoving figure shrouded in a dark cloak. She floated over to it and pulled back the cloak of the man ... or was it a man?

    What people saw instead was a woman ... or women like humanoid creature. It was female in its appearance but strangely looked more like an artefact. It was a woman crafted entirely from metals and other rare spirit resources.

    Her skin was shiny and metallic, almost looking like polished silver, her hair was long and black, and anyone with some experience could tell that the hair was collected from a tower realm spirit beast. The eyes were like two gleaming red gems. More powerful cultivators could instinctively tell that the metal woman was filled with all sorts of other odd spirit materials.

    Even more bizarre, was the actions of the ghost lady. She walked into the metal woman. The seal, which was usually trapped in Jasmine¡¯s chest, fused into the chest of the metal woman. Just as James was about to reach the insect people, the metal woman jerked, and a strong heartbeat suddenly encompassed everything and suppressed all other noise.

    The three Tillion participants suddenly felt an overwhelming instinctive fear, as if their natural enemy and predator had suddenly gazed down upon them from on high. With that feeling in the pits of their guts, they all suddenly shot back rapidly. Moving as far from James and Jasmine as they possibly could.

    The delegation of Soel was so shocked, they appeared to be on the verge of collapsing. Finally, the Pope, Solaris, couldn¡¯t hold his tongue any longer. ¡°Heart of the Golden Crow! They actually placed the Heart of the Golden Crow into this abomination!¡±

    Just as he seemed to be on the verge of racing out of his VIP Box to destroy this abomination, a shimmering shield came into existence in front of his box, and a huge pressure descended onto him. Gary looked down from his golden chair of light, appearing somewhat displeased.

    ¡°Please do not interfere in the battles, Pope Solaris. Our city hasn¡¯t had any enmity with your Order of the Three Sun¡¯s.¡±

    The Pope, feeling that enormous pressure and seeing the giant hand from the Spire seemingly starting to shimmer to life above him, could only restrain himself and calmly step back into his box. He then glared daggers up at Gary.

    ¡°Guild Master Gary, please excuse me for my rudeness, but that abomination must be killed. Our Order of the Three Sun¡¯s cannot allow such a being to exist that would desecrate one of our sacred idols and a messenger of the gods!¡±

    Before Gary could reply, the Widow Queen, with her six long spider legs extended, also moved to the front of her box. She felt the instinctive fear of her race towards such a creature and naturally, could not allow such a thing to exist. On top of that, she could tell if this woman entered the battle, all hopes of her seed members surviving would be drowned.

    ¡°Guild Master Gary! This is an outrage! How can you allow that ... thing, to interfere in an arranged battle in your distinguished guild¡¯s competition. By your own rules, anyone that interferes is to be killed! Surely your guild¡¯s word isn¡¯t so flimsy as to be broken now. All the great powers of the continent have come to observe this competition, and it would not bode well for your guild if you were to break the rules for your City Master!¡±

    Gary seemed to have stepped into that strange mindset he had the day before, and as he stood up to address the shouts of all the delegates and crowds of people, his body exuded a regal overbearing aura. He looked down at the Widow Queen and Pope, then glanced at all the other VIP boxes that had suddenly come forward to try and pressure him.

    Finally, he waved his hand, and silence consumed everything. ¡°Silence!¡±

    Everyone discovered their voices suddenly falling flat. Even the most powerful tower realm practitioners from the various delegations, felt their voice suddenly leave them. It was almost like some kind of natural law.

    Gary frowned slightly and glanced at James. Naturally, Gary knew more about James than anyone outside of the core group, however, he hadn¡¯t been informed prior to this about what James had been planning for this battle.

    James just stared back at Gary¡¯s stern frown, then subtly nodded. Gary secretly released a tense breath in his heart.

    ¡°Founding Master, please assist this Junior in explaining what is happening.¡±

    James surveyed the angry looking delegates and the excited looking crowds. He then glanced over at Jasmine, who appeared to swishing her arms about and wasn¡¯t paying any attention to the surroundings at all.

    He smiled somewhat bitterly. He had expected some upset over the appearance of Jasmine, but he hadn¡¯t expected it to be so big that almost every delegate was demanding her death. Finally, he could only sigh and turn to explain.

    ¡°This is simply a construct ... I suppose, if you had to liken it to anything created before now, it is most similar to your Golems that many of you use to train younger generations. The only difference is, that I have put a soul into it. From my understanding, this is well within the rules of the competition.

    ¡°As the construct is simply an artefact, it falls well within the limitations for the rules of the competition. I would also like to add, that the soul I have planted into the construct is a part of my spirit realm and therefore, a part of me. This is not the sudden appearance of another contender, but simply me using two bodies.¡±

    Jasmine, hearing her cue, then made a show of launching a simple martial technique from each of James¡¯ 7 elements. Water, Wind, Fire, Earth, Lightning, Plasma and Magnetism. It goes without saying, that Pride still couldn¡¯t be manifested outside of his body, apart from a strange aura that slightly influences other people. Even if he released this power, no one would realise it came from him.

    Everyone was aware that James had numerous powerful elements. It wasn¡¯t a secret, after all, he¡¯d displayed them all countless times in the battle arena of Tech City. Due to the rarity of having so many affinities, everyone readily recognised that it was almost impossible for anyone else to accumulate and master so many spirit energies.

    Either the construct allowed the soul within to wield these elements freely, which was almost impossible because so many pure refined energies would, without doubt, begin to violently clash, or the soul within the construct truly was somehow linked to James¡¯ spirit realm.

    The possibility of which was equally crazy, considering most people believed a person¡¯s spirit realm was a physical location in the body, and not an abstract location like James¡¯ was.

    With the possibility of both being equally unlikely, many people chose to believe the one that was only slightly less unlikely, which was that this female spirit forged into the Guild Seal of the Brotherhood, was, in fact, a part of James¡¯ spirit realm.

    Although a great many people believed James¡¯ explanation, they chose to pretend they didn¡¯t. They naturally couldn¡¯t allow James to bring such a seemingly powerful weapon into the competition. It would drastically reduce the possibility of their own seed candidates winning.

    Unfortunately, they never had a chance to voice their concerns and scream their rhetoric and accusations to confuse the situation, because the natural law of silence pervaded the arena and nothing could be heard that was not allowed to be heard by Gary.

    Gary gave a nod and then cupped his chin for a moment, seemingly considering what he should do. Naturally, Gary already knew what he should do. However, at the moment, James hadn¡¯t given him any direct orders, or told him what he wanted him to do, as such, Gary was in somewhat of a predicament.

    Although, to the outside world, James had left the Brotherhood to the new Guild Master and instead became the City Master of Tech City, Gary was well aware that the guild would never truly leave James¡¯ hands. This then created the problem for Gary of whether to focus on the guild and worry about its interests or to focus on James and his interests.

    It wasn¡¯t long before Gary came to the realisation that these two things were the exact same thing. In Gary¡¯s mind, James was the Guild.

    With that thought, he looked down at the crowds to proclaim his decision in the matter.

    ¡°Due to the nature of this construct, and it being the first time this battle exchange has been hosted, the Brotherhood will consider it to be an artefact under the control of the battle participant. In the future, our guild will manufacture a method to determine the nature of a construct to its master, and all future constructs will be tested before they can enter the arena.

    ¡°At the same time, I can understand everyone will not feel totally reassured that this construct is as City Master James has said it to be, and therefore after this battle is finished, we must ask City Master James to not use it again for the rest of this competition.¡±

    With that said, Gary waved his arms, which was the signal for the AI to release the null sound field. Gary then sat down as almost everyone else was placated. Apart from Widow Queen and the Pope, everyone was content with this ruling. In the end, all they cared about was whether their seed members would have to face up against James¡¯ construct.

    The Pope was dissatisfied by the fact that the Brotherhood didn¡¯t even acknowledge his complaints of the abominations creation, and the Widow was naturally dissatisfied with the fact that all her seed members were most likely about to die.

    Seeing her 3 seed members all cowering away in the corners of the arena, Widow Queen could only sigh. She then stepped forward to the edge of her VIP Box. ¡°The Tillion Unity will be withdrawing its three seed members from this battle, and here on falling out of the competition.¡±

    The Roach, Cricket and Mantis all let out simultaneous sighs of relief as they fled the arena battlefield. None of them wanted to face that construct. The fact that it contained the beating heart of a Golden Crow already swayed their hearts severely. The fact that it could use all 6 of James¡¯ elements completely crushed their hopes of victory.

    James smiled slightly as he gazed up at Gary, who was once again nervously looking about and seemingly completely out of touch with reality. He wasn¡¯t sure how Gary even reached this position, but he was now certain Gary had some strange secrets hidden deep within him.

    Despite his missing arm and scarred face, he still seemed to exude an aura of regal indifference and authority whenever he was forced to step up and assume his position of Guild Master.

    On the other hand, Jasmine was rather upset with the Tillion Unity withdrawing. Seeing as this was her only chance to test out her latest invention, she was incredibly excited to do battle ... now, she was forced to exit the construct and merge back into James¡¯ spirit world, never having gotten a chance to kill something ... err, or test the body.

    With the most anticipated battle event of the day suddenly falling on its face and becoming this spectacle, the crowds of onlookers were slightly dissatisfied. However, there was nothing they could do and so unwillingly accepted the situation.

 Chapter 45: The Arena Upset

    Spirit District Arena-

    The third day of the arena battles came quickly. The number of competitors had been whittled down to only 26. Some of these competitors had managed to sneak into the top 26 only by sheer luck at having lucky draws from the box, while others had stepped into this position through a great deal of hardship.

    Of the 26 remaining competitors, 9 of them were from factions unaffiliated with a nation or super power and weren¡¯t seed members. One of these people was the sword girl, who had basically walked through the competition so far without even raising a sweat.

    The other 17 members were all seed members. Betto, his older sister Baily, and the arrogant youth, Aris, were all from a Nahtiro faction called the Atsunari Sword Sect. That old man that always accompanied them was the vice guild master, simply referred to as Owl.

    So far, none of these three had displayed any significant level of proficiency and seemed to all have had an easy time reaching this point, not even bothering to reveal their elements.

    One member of both the Soel Church and the Hastoel Aristocracy remained. The son of the Pope, also called the Son of the Order, Brightly, was the Soel seed member and from his battles could be considered rather powerful. He wielded the element of light and carried himself with a noble grace customary of a man of powerful position.

    The Hastoel seed member was the son of a very influential member of the Hastoel Council, which essentially ruled Hastoel. He was one of those lucky few that had been matched up with rather weak competitors earlier on and hadn¡¯t needed to display any significant level of power yet, making him somewhat unknown. At the least, everyone knew he wielded the element of wind and was named Gregor.

    The Profit Sect had two remaining competitors, and as far as the standard set so far could go, they were rather weak. However, what they did have going for them was a massive horde of artefacts with all sorts of nasty abilities. They¡¯d achieved their position through the use of an endless horde of artefacts, which actually made them rather frightening. Their delegate leader was the big nosed Feng and another older man dressed in very expensive looking robes.

    James could only smile when he watched Feng and the man he presumed was his master, casting confused glances at the Hall Master of the Blood Gallery every now and then. Naturally, even with his face covered by mist, the duo recognised their most trusted aide and assassin.

    The other two Nahtiro factions were surprisingly guilds. One of them was a dark guild called the Skull Guild. It had two members remaining who kept their face constantly hidden behind masks. They both displayed water element skills and were incredibly proficient in deceptive tactics and assassination techniques.

    The other Guild was called the Hell Pill Guild. As opposed to most other guilds, this guild didn¡¯t focus at all on public services and job requests. In fact, very much like the Brotherhood, it was structured similarly to a sect. The only reason it wasn¡¯t a sect was that members retained some amount of freedom and weren¡¯t bound to the sect for life, which is often the case in many sects.

    This guild was actually founded by Tantsu and was the most powerful and well respected alchemist guild in all of Atsunari. Naturally, a man as aloof and narcissistic as Tantsu wouldn¡¯t deign to come to this little backwater city for some boorish fighting. Instead, he sent his oldest alchemist apprentice, Tier 4 Alchemist Hallow.

    The two competitors remaining from the Hell Pill Guild were similar to the Profit Sect. They didn¡¯t appear to have much personal combat strength, and instead wielded a vast array of pills, potions, poisons, and everything else under the sun that could be derived from alchemy to cause harm or heal damage.

    The remaining 8 were from the various other nations of Atsunari, including James. Because of the number of remaining competitors, the battles today would instead all be 3 way battles, with one two way battle. However, against James¡¯ expectations, weaker members all chose to bow out.

    This was for two reasons. First, they realised that they would most likely not be able to achieve much better than what they had so far and most likely, if they continued to battle, they would get killed instead. They can¡¯t really be blamed for this. After yesterday¡¯s battles, many of them acknowledged that some of these genius¡¯ were like bloodthirsty monsters.

    The second reason was that they had been able to accomplish their goal. For the competitors that entered the top 26, they all received discounts from the Brotherhood and the right to buy equipment and other services that were normally reserved from sale, even to account holders.

    For the smaller factions that they represented, this was already a huge boon.

    In total, more than 8 people backed out of the competition. This left 18 remaining participants. Due to the numbers, Gary decided to only have two three way battles this round. That would result in only 8 competitors next round, which would lead to the semi-finals.

    Lots were drawn, and the battle order was arranged. James somehow found himself trapped in another 3 way battle. This time, his two competitors were both unknown variables. The first was a strangely familiar young man who couldn¡¯t be more than 13 or 14. He was dressed in ragged common clothes, and his faced was still young and immature. He seemed to look on other competitors with some level of disdain.

    The other participant was an old woman, who was a representative of the United Islands. She was dressed in graceful flowing robes and looked quite well off and seemed to be a part of the upper class of the United Islands.

    James hadn¡¯t paid much attention to the boy until the three of them stood in the arena together. He seemed to remain under the radar for most of the competition and had been rather lucky in getting weaker opponents until now.

    The Old Woman had been in a few intense battles, and James could tell that she had taken a similar route to him in her cultivation. Instead of increasing the quantity of her spirit power she instead chose to increase its quality.

    This made her rather dangerous, but not unable to be dealt with. James found himself focusing on the boy¡¯s face, again and again, unable to shake that feeling of familiarity. Just as the bell of the arena rang out, James¡¯ face suddenly changed dramatically.

    Without thought, James flicked his hand and summoned his Arc Cannon from his storage ring. His body swivelled as he raised the Cannon to his shoulder and looked down the sights at the boy. Until now, the only time James had used his Arc Cannon was in the previous round. That said, everyone readily acknowledged it as a serious threat.

    The boy, who had been watching James this whole time, seemed slightly shocked and his eyes widened into two saucers, revealing his surprise. ¡°Woah! Woah! Master James, please give my Master some face and...¡±

    BOOM!

    The resonating boom of the Ark Cannon sounded out just as the boy began back peddling and yelling. The world seemed to slow down to a crawl, and the supersonic slug that had just been fired seemed to be moving at the same pace as an ant.

    Apart from the rapidly backpedalling boy and James, everything in the world seemed to be on the verge of stopping. Then, out of nowhere, a man appeared and plucked the slug out of thin air.

    James¡¯ pupils dilated into pinpoints and he, without reservation or conscious effort, began trying to run. Before he could even turn his eyes away, the man appeared only a few steps away from him.

    This man was very familiar to James. In fact, perhaps for the rest of his life, he¡¯ll never forget the scene this man made when he broke into his lab. Staring at James from only a step away, through relaxed and half closed eyes, was the Old Riddle Speaking Monk.

    ¡°Ho ho! Interesting Interesting! A Dragon is hidden amongst Tigers. It looks like the Fairy Compass was wrong, when it is always right. The thunder booms with a titan¡¯s might and young men will always have to fight.¡±

    James felt powerless ... and speechless. He couldn¡¯t understand a thing this old bastard was saying. He also could tell that right now, he could be squashed by this old man with a wave of his hand. Just as the bell rang for battle, James recognised the young man in the arena as the boy who came to his lab with the old monk.

    With that thought in mind, James acknowledged him as a threat and immediately took actions to nullify this enemy. He couldn¡¯t be sure if that boy was even really a True Spirit Realm Practitioner, and thus took the most immediate route.

    To his chagrin, the old monk was nearby watching the spectacle and stepped in to save his disciple.

    James could only smile wryly as he saluted the prune faced old monk. ¡°Junior James greets Senior.¡±

    After a moment¡¯s thought, James decided to respond like he did last time. ¡°Ahem ... errr ... The sprouting grass sways in the wind under the shade of the great oak?¡±

    This was phrased as a question, mostly because James had no idea what he was saying. He was just making up synonyms and metaphors to express himself.

    Whatever he just said, the prune faced monk liked it. ¡°Ho ho. Good! The strong eat the weak while the weak are eaten. The Tigers prey on the hoppers, unaware of the dragon ... Stop using these toys and fight with my apprentice seriously.¡±

    Then to James¡¯ great surprise, the old monk finally said something understandable. However, just as quickly, he reverted to his usual speech pattern. ¡°A thousand li is a long way to walk without shoes.¡±

    James was now convinced that this prune faced old bastard was just a huge dick that liked fucking with people. Regardless of that, James got the message and simply saluted again after putting his Ark Cannon away.

    The old monk smiled delightfully and then disappeared. Moments later, time seemed to catch up to itself, and James looked over to the distant disciple of the monk. The crowds were stunned when they realised that the boy had traversed half the arena in the blink of an eye. The old Tower Realms that were watching along with their disciples were also stunned.

    Although no one else had witnessed that scene a moment ago, they all realised that something strange had just happened.

    James, on the other hand, hadn¡¯t moved a single step. He looked around at all the crowds for a moment before finally pulling his eyes back and assessing the arena. He saw the old women rapidly moving towards him, while the young boy had also started to move again.

    James gave a slight chuckle when he realised that the both of them had recognised him as the greatest threat and seemed to have come to some tacit agreement. Kill James first.

    He flicked his arms and allowed his Ark Pistol and Scimitar to materialise into his hands. Then without further ado, and under the loud cheers of the people, James rushed towards the old woman.

    The distance between the two rapidly closed until they were only 20 odd meters apart. James raised his Pistol in his left hand and let off a few shots. The moment James had raised his arm and made an aiming action, the Old Women started taking evasive manoeuvres, dodging left and right sporadically.

    Her element was the wind and she seemed like a leaf being blown this way and that on a turbulent gust. The moment she was distracted and began dodging, James rushed forward at full speed. In less than a second, he¡¯d appeared near the old women and swung his scimitar, filled with the power of fire and wind.

    The Old Women, still off balance from her rapid and sporadic movements was stunned when she felt that killing intent. ¡®Just how fast is this boy?!¡¯

    With a practised motion, her body seemed to roll in the air and spin. The chopping Scimitar lightly brushed against her robes and with that simple tiny bit of contact, a massive tornado of flames sprung up engulfing the Old Women.

    James quickly jumped back a few paces to observe. The moment he stopped, he had a strange sensation, deep in the pit of his stomach. It was so odd that even his true spirit seemed to be feeling this sensation. Just as James turned to glance behind him, he saw the shadow of a copper staff.

    With all his effort, James raised his pistol to his left side and managed to block the staff with the pistols blade. What he didn¡¯t realise until the staff made contact, was that the force behind it was like a train. His blocking arms felt a tremendous amount of pressure and almost seemed like it would snap at any moment.

    The staff continued on in its swinging arc as if unhindered and James was launched through the air as if he was being used for batting practice. He flew dozens of metres through the air, and his body spun rapidly and uncontrollably. All he could see was the earth and sky quickly changing place until suddenly it all became earth.

    Thud!

    His body issued a soft thud and then rolled on a few more metres. Just as he was getting his feet under himself, that strange sensation in the pit of his stomach intensified. This time, without even looking, James blurred and shot off another 10 meters.

    Just as he stopped and looked back, he saw the young boy¡¯s staff make contact with the ground, and the entire arena shook. The ground looked like it had been struck by a meteor as it caved in to become a crater.

    James was shocked. This swing had the power of an Ark Cannon behind it. Although so slow it was clear to the visible eye, the power in this swing was enough to level a building. From the corner of his eye, James saw his flame tornado seemingly being sucked up into the sky, and the slightly singed and charred old woman walked out.

    The crowd was shocked by the combat power of these 3 True Spirit realm practitioners. James was also slightly shocked by the duo in front of him. He was already aware that the boy would be difficult, but he only now realised that the Old Women was just as much a pain in the ass.

    Seeing a slight break as the duo eyed him cautiously, James moved his left arm about a few times. Luckily, it wasn¡¯t broken. Otherwise, this battle would be a hundred times more difficult. As he was testing his left arm, the Old Women put her hands into the sleeves of her robes and retrieved a simple Chinese paper fan. It had no intricate paintings or marking and was pure white.

    The Boy also stood up and straightened himself. Strangely, at this stage of the battle, when the duo should have been pressing their advantage, they both saluted James. ¡°I am Cheng, Disciple of Old Monk Hong.¡± ¡°I am Lacy, Vice Director of United Islands Maritime Affairs.¡±

    James¡¯ eyebrow twitched for a moment as the duo respectfully made introductions. ¡®What the hell are you doing? Where in the middle of battle. This is hardly the time to be creating an opening by introducing yourself and bowing.¡¯

    James smiled like the Cheshire Cat then raised his weapons in preparedness. ¡°I¡¯m James.¡± He simply replied, then without further warning he fired his Arc Pistol at the boy and began running forward towards the duo.

    The duo was stunned by his total lack of decorum, but at the same time were grinding their teeth together. They¡¯d both hoped that when James introduced himself, he would also show the proper respect and at least salute, giving them an opportunity to do exactly what he was doing right now. Seizing the advantage.

    What they didn¡¯t realise was, James never bowed, and rarely saluted. He was unorthodox in this world and showed respect only to those strong enough. Needless to say, he obviously did not acknowledge this pair as strong enough.

    With a shot from his pistol fired, James was already a few paces from the Old Woman. The Boy flicked his staff at a rapid speed, which was the total opposite of its slow, cumbersome speed form beforehand, and deflected the bullet from the Pistol.

    Although this bullet was far smaller than a Cannon¡¯s slug, it still packed a huge amount of punch. When the bullet was deflected, the boy stumbled back a few steps. At this moment when he was occupied, James was already swinging his scimitar at the Old Women again.

    As she straightened up from her bow, the fan in her hands flicked out and waved towards the blade chopping towards her from an upwards angle. The moment the two intersected, a huge gale of wind was created which blew back the inferno generated from the scimitar.

    At the same time, the pair was pushed back from the collision. As James backpedalled a few paces, the boy was already racing towards him at an unnatural speed. It was only now that James realised the boy had two attributes. Wind and Earth.

    That explained the strangeness of his two martial forms when wielding his staff. One was quick and agile but lacked significant strength, which was why he was knocked back by the pistol shot just then. The other was strong and forceful but lacked speed and agility, which explained why he¡¯d caved a 10 meter crater into the floor of the arena.

    As the boy approached, James¡¯ left hand flicked out, and 2 consecutive shots were fired from the pistol in the same moment. The moment James had aimed towards him, the boy slowed and spun his staff. It deflected the two shots, but because they were both focused on the same spot and shot in the same instant, it broke the boys balance a great deal more easily than the previous shot.

    At the same time, the Old Women rushed towards James and waved her fan, which now seemed to have a leaf painted on it. James was stunned when his focus returned to the Old Women. He was starting to feel the pressure from the duo and decided to fully release his scrying field, which he¡¯d been holding back because he wanted to test his limits in this competition.

    The moment he released it fully, Gold James and Jasmine both released their own. Three points of focus suddenly appeared in James¡¯ scrying field. One focused on each of the opponents and the last just keeping a general eye on everything.

    As James scanned the old women, he realised that her fan had some strange properties inside it. She swung down and infused her wind energy into the fan. Moments later, a huge gust of wind formed and pushed towards James like a tidal wave. Rocks and dirt sprayed up towards James, and he quickly back peddled.

    As the tidal wave of wind energy was released, another leaf formed onto the fan. James¡¯ mind was spinning rapidly as he noticed the fan retaining some of the wind energy from the attack and instead appeared to be ... eating it to create more free wind energy which was fused into the fan.

    Jasmine, who was the one who¡¯s shared scrying focus was directed at the old women, couldn¡¯t help but let out an; ¡°Oh?¡±.

    ¡°James, that fan appears to be able to multiply it¡¯s attack power the more it¡¯s used. You should focus on limiting her ability to attack. If she feeds that fan too much, it may disadvantage us later in the battle.¡±

    Meanwhile, Goldy was focused on the Boy.Hmm, that boys weapon is also quite disastrous. The staff is filled with both earth and wind element. He doesn¡¯t seem to be able to use them both at the same time, but if he does it may become very difficult to deal with.~

    James wasn¡¯t surprised. He already felt the pressure from the duo and could tell that they weren¡¯t a pushover. James swung out his scimitar filled with wind energy. A similar tidal wave of energy to the Old Women¡¯s was released and nullified the Old Women¡¯s.

    Seeing this action, the old women was slightly stunned. ¡®Did he just use my own martial technique to negate me? Truly as Master Clay said. This man is, without a doubt, a Genius amongst his peers.¡¯

    Without further thought, she lowered her stance slightly and began rapidly approaching again. The boy also rapidly started running towards James from the other side.

    James could only smile wryly seeing the duo attempting to catch him from both sides. He raised the pistol towards the boy and readied his scimitar for another round with the Old Women. The moment the pistol was aimed at him, the boy started darting about as he closed in.

    James pulled the trigger, and this time three rounds were shot in succession. Instead of their previous single trajectory they each seemed to curve off in slightly bent arcs from each other. At the same time, he decided to take things slightly more seriously. He imbued his scimitar with Lightning creating a strange flaming lighting on his blade.

    He then spun and swung it towards the Old Women, releasing a huge arcing bolt of flaming lightning energy towards her. Seeing him using his melee weapon to try and launch a distance attack, the Old Women couldn¡¯t help to let out a ¡®humph¡¯. After all, everyone knows that melee weapons lose a great deal of their combat potential when used to fire projectile martial techniques.

    She waved her fan and created another huge wave of wind. However, to her surprise, James simultaneously followed up with a wind wave. Of even greater surprise to her, was the flaming lightning bolt. Although it seemed to lose some of its power, it continued on through her wind wave mostly unperturbed. If anything, the wind energy had only helped to agitate the fire energy even further.

    She got careless and thought that it would be enough to just block it with a wind wave. What she didn¡¯t realise, was that the very nature of lighting was to travel through the air. Admittedly, if the wave of wind was dense enough and had compressed a strong enough force of air, it could indeed block lighting. Unfortunately for her, she was not powerful enough to achieve such a feat.

    As the third leaf appeared on her fan, the lightning struck her right shoulder, and the fan was flung out of her hand. She was shot back a few meters and rolled.

    At the same time, James launched his wind wave to block her wind wave, he turned and began sprinting towards the boy, and he let off another shot from his Pistol. This time was 4 shots in a row. Even more interesting was that these four shots were imbued with his spirit power. Each one had a different attribute imbued in it.

    This was the speciality of his pistol ... or rather, to be more accurate, it was the effect of his ammunition. Each clip had different properties. The one loaded in the pistol at the moment fired consecutive shots. That being the case, he used this pistol to deceive people. At first, it only seemed like it fired one extra shot each time he fired it, and the bullets were always the same.

    Instead, each of these bullets had a purpose. He purposefully left the first three bullets in this clip as normal pistol arc bullets. Then, as he held the pistol during the combat so far, he imbued each of the rounds for the 4 shot with different attributes. At the same time, he could imbue the pistol to slightly alter the bullet trajectory when it is released.

    It wasn¡¯t just this clip, but all of his clips stored in his spatial ring had different purposes. He even had one that was only filled with paintballs ... It wasn¡¯t unusual to see Harvy walking out of the HQ arena with James, covered from head to toe in paint.

    The young boy, not realising the strangeness of these bullets, did what he¡¯d done since the beginning. He spun his staff infused with wind energy and prepared to deflect the bullets. However, when the first bullet connected with his staff, he was blasted off his feet as if he¡¯d been struck by a bus.

    Following this, the next bullet grazed past his shoulder as he was in the air and a current of electricity filled his body, stunning him instantly.

    The next bullet seemed to simply shatter on impact with his chest and suddenly released a huge concussive blast and raging inferno of flames, shooting the boy into the ground with a great deal of force. Although the boy had managed to protect himself with his earth energy, the concussive force and the collision with the ground both caused his body to ache and he even felt a rib fracture.

    Finally, the last bullet, which had only been a back-up in case the boy managed to block the others, continued on and collided with the distant invisible arena barrier. The moment it made contact, the barrier shuddered to life like a thin ethereal bubble and another explosive concussive force burst to life creating an explosion of flames.

    This whole battle, from the moment James engaged after the duo paused, to now, happened in less than a minute.

    The crowds were astonished and made no qualms about letting the world know with their cheers. The other factions attending the war of world¡¯s and the other competitors still hoping to win first place were all stunned.

    Their thoughts were running wildly as they looked at James with incredulity. They began discussing among themselves as they watched perplexed.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t this too much? Isn¡¯t this too powerful?¡±

    ¡°His weapons are too unique ... and his elements can easily counter other¡¯s elements.¡±

    ¡°Is he really a True Spirit realm practitioner? I¡¯ve seen that old woman battle, and she¡¯s clearly at the top of her class within her realm. How could she be so easily defeated?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s something strange about this battle. There¡¯s no way that senior sister Lacy would be so severely injured just from that attack right? Isn¡¯t that lightning element too powerful?¡±

    As they discussed, and the audience cheered on, James rapidly sped over to next to the boy. Seeing him struggling to fight off the paralysing effects of the lightning bullet, James reached out a hand and placed it on his shoulder. ¡°Good effort young man. In the future, don¡¯t take me so lightly. I¡¯m sure if you¡¯re his apprentice then you should be powerful. However, you were too careless this time.¡±

    After saying this, James shocked the boy again, and he passed out.

    Without giving her time to get herself back under control, James rushed over to the Old Woman. As he reached her, she suddenly released a gust of wind and shot to her feet. Although still numb and in pain, and having a clearly broken and burnt right shoulder, she still managed to stand and face James.

    James smiled like the devil. ¡°Say, Old Granny, you¡¯re rather injured. You should retreat today, and return again next year.¡±

    The old women glanced over at her fan lying on the ground a meter away. She then looked back straight at James and clenched her teeth as she staggered towards it while grasping her broken shoulder.

    James didn¡¯t move to stop her. As far as he saw it, he had basically won already. The old Women picked up her fan then faced James again. She was slightly woozy, and her feet were unsteady, but she lowered her stance a prepared to battle nonetheless.

    James was shocked at the persistence of this granny. ¡°Old Granny, aren¡¯t you afraid that I will just kill you outright? If this goes on, you will most likely die.¡±

    Lacy coughed up some blood, then very unbecoming of her image as an old lady, spat it on the ground. ¡°City Master James, this battle is already a battle for my life. If I forfeit now, I will only die later on. If I can¡¯t win the assistance of your guild, my homeland will be ravaged and destroyed. I can¡¯t afford to lose.¡±

    James then remembered that this granny was from the United Islands and understood that her resolve was fixed. Their nation must truly be in a disastrous state if she was willing to bet her life on it here and now. James thought about it for a while.

    He couldn¡¯t help but praise this old women¡¯s resolve. She clearly loved her homeland a great deal and was willing to put her life on the line for any little bit of hope she could find. She needed to win this competition to save her people, her family and everything she loved.

    James knew that his guild had the power to help their nation. He could easily amass some weapons of war that could turn the tide for the United Islands. Even if he didn¡¯t give them weapons to fight for themselves, he could infiltrate the enemies of the United Islands and eliminate their powerful practitioners.

    With all these thoughts in mind, James looked at the resolve on the Old Women¡¯s face. Even the crowd was slightly swayed by her resolve. Everyone knew of the plight the United Islands was in.

    Then James, without warning, raised his pistol and shot the old women in the head.

    Stunned. Speechless. A great wave of confusion spread throughout the crowds. James lowered his gun and began walking out under the stunned gazes of the crowd.

    James chuckled to himself as he walked out. ¡°Do I look like a charity? I warned you didn¡¯t I?¡±

    He felt no remorse what so ever. In fact, he wouldn¡¯t even defend himself if people accused him of being cold blooded and heartless. He didn¡¯t care. The United Islands could have tried to deal with him through normal channels or back channels. Instead, they tried to take the opportunity provided by this competition to use the opinions of the soft-hearted crowds to influence James.

    Even if he didn¡¯t forfeit the battle, he would surely show some magnanimity. He would at least not kill her and would at least show some kind of sincerity to the United Islands plight. Instead, he did exactly as he said he would. He killed her and then left without even an afterthought of the United Islands.

    The crowd felt their guts turning and their blood boiling.

    ¡°Monster!¡±

    ¡°Murderer!¡±

    ¡°Vile! The City Master is so Vile!¡±

    Everyone was stunned! They felt some little bit of compassion for the United Islands, and seeing James just killing an injured representative of the Islands like that, they were enraged.

    However, strangely enough, after the silence was broken by those curses and angry shouts, a huge cheer erupted. Most of the crowd were visitors who came to watch the competition from other places. What they never realised was ... James was loved by his people. In the eyes of the true residents of the City, James could do no wrong.

    This created a huge divide in the crowd. All the visitors thought him to be a heartless bully and villain, while the other half unanimously and ... blindly, loved him.

    James, who had now left the arena, just chuckled to himself. He saw the faces of the other competitors when he walked past them into the competitor area of the arena. Disgust, hatred, anger, they all had different expressions on their faces.

    Amusingly, the only people who didn¡¯t were those few truly powerful competitors. The sword girl didn¡¯t seem to be occupied by what happened in the arena at all. In fact, she was busily cleaning her sword and didn¡¯t seem to recognise anything going on outside her own little world.

    Betto, the Nahtiro contestant, was looking at James with shining eyes like he was looking at an unclaimed mountain of gold.

    Everyone else seemed to be looking at him in a negative way. James didn¡¯t care. Now that his round was finished, he left the arena.

    -James¡¯ Spirit Realm-

    Gold James was pumping his fist in the air and yelling as he jumped around on the floating rock.Woohoo! Oh Yeah! Another flawless victory! This Godly Young Man can¡¯t be stopped! HAHAHA!~

    Meanwhile, Spirit James and Jasmine were seated at their table enjoying tea as they watched the next battle commencing.

    On the screen was Betto. He looked rather disinterested with this fight and was simply observing the arena. His competitor was one of the Profit Sect¡¯s two remaining seeds. A tall skinny man carrying on his back a huge backpack that dwarfed his body and was stuffed so full it was like a small planet. It almost looked like he could, at any moment, be crushed under his massive bag.

    Goldy, finally having calmed down, re-joined the duo at the table to observe. Of all the other competitors, this Betto fella was the most promising for a good battle in his opinion. When he saw the Profit Sect member standing hunched over with his bag, he couldn¡¯t help but let out a whistle.

    ~Phew. Talk about being crushed by your baggage.~

    James¡¯ eyebrow twitched slightly as he glanced over at Goldy. ¡°Can¡¯t you be ... I don¡¯t know, a little more dignified. You¡¯re supposed to be my pride aren¡¯t you?¡±This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    Then, as if an afterthought, he also added his two cents about the profit sect man. ¡°Besides, the guy¡¯s clearly got the weight of the world on his shoulders.¡±

    Jasmine, always amused by the antics of ... James talking to himself, couldn¡¯t help but cover her mouth as she giggled. This in itself was a rare sight. It was only recently that she started to display any sorts of emotions like mirth or humour.

    As they watched on, the bell sounded in the arena, and the Profit Sect man simply dropped his bag onto the ground and pulled open the top. Moments later he started pulling out talismans, swords, knives, floating shields and all other assortment of artefacts and unusual items.

    James couldn¡¯t help but perk up as he watched Betto simply start sprinting straight towards the man as multitudes of artefacts whizzed past him and exploded everywhere. It almost seemed like Betto was always a step ahead and maneuvered in the slightest of motions to avoid.

    He was so skilled at it that the whole scene simply looked like him running forwards in very obvious zigzagging manner. Although Betto¡¯s profound skill was rather interesting, James wasn¡¯t paying much attention to it. Mostly, he wanted to face Betto while he didn¡¯t know much about his abilities. That would make it all the more exciting for him.

    As a side bonus, he was observing all the artefacts being thrown about his arena like throwing breadcrumbs in the park. He couldn¡¯t help but sigh quietly. ¡°Sighh ... Profit Sect truly is Profit Sect. It must have cost them a fortune to accumulate all those tasty treasures.¡±

    James then looked at Jasmine. ¡°Jasmine ... what happens to all the treasures left behind in the arena? I¡¯m sure Gary¡¯s said something about it at one point or another, right?¡±

    ¡°Certainly James. In the beginning, Gary drew up a simple contract for all the competitors. You don¡¯t know this because you are a guild member, but all the other competitors knew what was expected and had to swear an oath to uphold their part of the agreement for participation. This was done the morning of the first bouts.

    ¡°Also, Gary swore an oath on the Guild Seal that he would uphold the Guilds part of the contract. The terms were rather simple. It just stated the rules of the competition and each parties responsibilities. In the Guild¡¯s case, they will uphold the rules of the competition within their best judgement and with complete impartiality.

    ¡°In the case of the competitors, they agree to risk their lives in the competitions and acknowledge that should they die, no fault will fall on the guild and they accept all responsibility for their death. By extension of that, if a party is killed in battle, all of their items and equipment are forfeit to the guild. The only exception being whatever the victorious party can walk out of the arena with.¡±

    James cupped his chin for a moment. ¡°So what you¡¯re saying is ... If that young lad doesn¡¯t pick up all this stuff after killing that fellow, I get it all?¡±

    ¡°That would be correct James.¡±

    James¡¯ customary devilish grin spread on his face when he heard this. ¡°That¡¯s excellent news. So, does that mean that old women¡¯s fan is now mine as well?¡±

    Jasmine nodded her head with a smile. She knew the only reason he was watching this duel was that he was interested in all the artefacts the Profit Sect¡¯s Seed was throwing all over the place. By this point in time, Betto had somehow gotten within striking range of the Profit Sect man and looked like he was rearing up for a punch.

    Just before the action got good, James waved his hand and made the Screen disappear. He was muttering to himself and rubbing his hands together like a greedy banker as his eyes shone with a mysterious light.

    Back in the real world, James was rapidly moving towards the lab. ¡°Jasmine, have that fan sent to the lab immeadiat...¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve already sent it James.¡±

    James¡¯ smile just became even more disgusting as he sped up his pace towards the Lab Elevator.

    -The Lab-

    James briskly walked past the Spatial Seed Chamber as he moved towards an empty testing room. The moment he entered he saw a single white fan laying atop a single white desk. There was nothing else in the room.

    Like a ghost, James¡¯ visage blurred from the doorway and appeared next to the desk, holding the fan up for inspection. He waved it a few times causing huge gusting winds to suddenly spring up and rattle the room.

    With every wave, the winds got stronger. By the time the fan hand nine leaves, he¡¯d already completely destroyed two of the walls in the room, revealing two similarly empty white rooms with only a single desk inside.

    At this point, he left the now decimated room muttering to himself as he waved the fan about. As if completely oblivious, he destroyed parts of the lab everywhere he went. At one point, some new faced Lackey¡¯s were busily dragging in all the artefacts just scavenged from the arena after Betto¡¯s Battle.

    After a few of them got blown away and became red paint on one of the lab walls, a considerably more experienced Lackey stepped forwards and pulled them all back towards a hidden hallway. He and 5 other Lackey¡¯s patiently stood there until the roaring sounds of winds slowly died away.

    One of the youngest, a boy, could only cower and shiver. He looked up at the more experienced senior with big eyes, scared out of his wits. ¡°Senior Lackey 87. Why is the City Master destroying the lab?¡±

    This Senior Lackey, 87, had somehow miraculously survived the longest out of everyone in the labs, with the only exception being Norman, who generally never left the safety of the alchemist lab ... in saying that however, even the Alchemy lab appeared to be an ancient battlefield of life and death lately.

    87 looked like a grizzled veteran of endless wars. His face and arms were littered with scars and his skin weathered and leathery. His voice was aged and gruff, and he seemed to constantly be alert for any sudden danger. Many of the young initiates who joined the lab for some ¡®quick and easy¡¯ contribution points believed him to be an old time war hero or something. Never would they have guessed that only 8 months ago this man was simply a healthy middle-aged farmer, and all of his ¡®battle hardened experience¡¯ was earnt here on the front lin ... err, the lab.

    ¡°Don¡¯t mind him 192. You¡¯ll soon learn that this is a regular occurrence in the City Master¡¯s laboratory. I remember back when I first started and Lab Master Skay was still around. He was just as bad. It seems after he left, the City Master has picked up some of his bad habits.

    ¡°Let me tell you, back then, you¡¯d know trouble was brewing if you ever saw one of them mumbling incessantly. This should be a warning to all of you, this lab may have seemed like an easy job when you started because the City Master has been busy with his War of the Worlds, but in truth, it¡¯s a constant struggle to survive just a day.

    ¡°If you plan on staying here for any long-term period of time, you must learn the Master¡¯s mood and be prepared to die at any second. Always be on guard at every moment ... and ... If you should ever actually meet Death, don¡¯t speak ill of the Master in his presence.¡±

    One of the younger more brash looking Lackey¡¯s gave a humph. Although he¡¯d been hiding away here with the others as well, he was too proud to admit how frightening the City Master and his lab was. As such, he barely hesitated before putting on a false bravado.

    ¡°Hmph! What¡¯s so great about the City Master anyway. If I had these resources, I could just stroll around swinging an ancient artefact and killing people too.¡±

    The moment the words left his mouth, the grizzled lab veteran 87 turned pale. He spun around to berate the young lab member only to see a strange black smoke materialising in the hallway behind them. Without hesitation, he dropped to his knees and slammed his head into the ground in prostration.

    Everyone was momentarily stunned by this action, until they turned to see a whirlpool of dark spirit energy that stank of rotting corpses and immediately sent a chill down the spine and one¡¯s hands to become clammy with sweat.

    Before any of them could fully register what was going on, a withered hand wrapped in dirty, miserable looking bandages, reached out from the void like the hand of Death himself. It clasped onto the neck of that loud mouthed Lackey then without pause slowly sucked him back into the whirlpool of death energy.

    Despite his kicking and screaming, the man couldn¡¯t even slightly resist. In a matter of seconds, which to the newbies felt like a year, the man¡¯s face made contact with the death energy and his whole body rapidly began to wither and decay in front of the astonished gazes of the others. The only one who wasn¡¯t watching on horrified as the man was slowly mummified was 87, who remained prostrate on the ground.

    Then, as if it had never even been there, and as if there had never been a Lackey 195, the whirlpool sucked the body in and disappeared.

    The bone-chilling sense of chill remained, but the evidence that 195 had ever existed was suddenly gone. 87 slowly climbed up to his feet as he dusted himself off. ¡°Like I said, never speak ill of the Master. Death is around every corner in the City Master¡¯s Laboratory.¡±

    Then without further ado, he turned and continued to push the cart filled with the profit sect man¡¯s artefacts off towards one of the empty testing rooms.

    To 87, this was a regular occurrence in the Lab. Even James didn¡¯t know that this sort of thing happened. Not that it would bother him if he did. Harvy could basically do whatever he wanted. James wouldn¡¯t care. Especially not in regards to the Lackey¡¯s which James didn¡¯t even acknowledge as real people.

    While this had been going on, James had already reached the arena on the 1st level and was still playing with the fan.

    Whoosh ¡®Truly mysterious.¡¯ Whoosh

    By now, James had figured out that the fan couldn¡¯t have more than 9 leaves. He also figured out that with each leaf, the power the fan could display increased by half each time. That meant that at the time there were 9 leaves, the fan could release 38 times the power it initially released.

    On the first few swings, this ability was minuscule. However, by the time it reached the last three swings, it was truly overbearing. The catch of this was that each swing had to be within a set timeframe of each other. Otherwise the leave¡¯s would dissipate.

    Initially, James had thought that it was some kind of unique spirit energy that had been used to forge this fan. Now that he had it in his hand and played with it a few times, he realised it wasn¡¯t just the spirit energy that was unique, but rather the distribution of the free spirit energy inside the fan.

    Normally, when he crafted something, he simply forced out impurities and then fused in new energy for the effects he wanted. Unfortunately, he had been too na?ve. He only now realised that everything he¡¯d made had an uneven distribution of spirit energy. Usually, this was caused by his method of refinement and fusion which generally forced spirit energy to propagate at an edge of an artefact and had poor and uneven distribution.

    He suddenly discovered a new step to forging. Or perhaps not a step, but a trick that he had overlooked. When forging, he can¡¯t simply refine and fuse energy. He needs to properly distribute the spirit particles around the object, so they are mostly uniform or perhaps even distribute them in set places for exaggerated effect.

    Not only this, but he also now realised that because of the method, he¡¯d overlooked a number of other things. For example, forging had 4 major steps at the moment.

    Physical Refinement was used to work out the impurities of the material. This prevents the artefact from building up free energy that isn¡¯t related to the artefact. As an example, if he made a sword from iron, but the iron still had normal dirt scattered through it, then it would slowly begin to build up earth energy in those areas. This would weaken the blade and reduce or interfere with the expected reaction between the free energy and the refined energy of the wielder.

    Purification is the step where the forger needs to remove all the foreign free energy that remains inside the material. For example, no matter how pure a material was, it would still retain trace free energy from the environment it was created in. Wood would still retain trace elements of water and wind, while ores would retain traces of earth energy, etc.

    The only exception to this rule is certain materials that have existed for so long that they naturally force out all other energy. Otherwise known as an Essence. These essences have generally existed for aeons and have propagated so much of their specific type of energy that they affect the spirit energy in their surroundings and even affect the material in their surroundings.

    In the case of Black-Iron Essence, it most likely started out as a single lump of black iron. Over millennia it gradually generates more and more Black-Iron free energy. Once it reaches a certain saturation, it slowly starts to force back weaker free energies, such as earth.

    Provided that there isn¡¯t anything with an equally strong natural free energy nearby, most of the earth energy near the Black-Iron will be forced away. When this happens, the earth material, that has been saturated completely by the Black-Iron energy, will slowly start to be affected until it completely becomes Black-Iron itself.

    This sort of almost parasitic expansion continues, and that¡¯s how naturally occurring spirit materials are suspected to have formed over the millennia. Most of this research was pieced together and elaborated on through endless numbers of texts that Jasmine had been absorbing from the library and other sources.

    Naturally, James had at one point or another had all of this forced into his head by Jasmine.

    Regardless of that, the purification process usually requires the forger to use a refined spirit energy that ¡®agitates¡¯ the free energy in the material. They can then use their soul force to migrate spirit particles that don¡¯t belong out of the material. The problem with this is, any spirit energies that have begun to fuse together or are fused together, generally get sucked out as well.

    The majority of the time, with lesser quality materials, that is a substantial amount of the free energy that the material has. 9 out of 10 times, almost half the free energy will be partly or fully fused. Sometimes, with enough control, a good forge master can separate these energies.

    The other problem, which James has only now realised, is that regardless of how precisely he controls his soul force, it still affects the position and distribution of the native free energy. Generally, it will pull quite a bit of it to one side of the material. This creates a problem in that the spirit energy is not evenly distributed.

    Next, comes Fusion. This process works similarly to Purification, only in reverse. Instead of trying to pull out foreign free energy, the forger is trying to introduce it. This has a few problems.

    Firstly is the method of introduction. Song had taught James that for the best effect, it was better to grind the material that produces that energy to dust and introduce it to the material used for forging.

    The forge master would then need to use his soul force to try and force as much of the energies in the hybrid material to fuse and then would once again re-smelt the material to remove the impurities. This causes the spirit energy distribution to become even more skewed and more often than not a great deal of the foreign energy the forger is trying to introduce, won¡¯t fuse or will be lost in the process.

    Secondly, once the process is finished, there will be parts with elevated energy levels and parts that are completely barren of free energy. Although normal forge masters wouldn¡¯t notice this defect, James could tell when he inspected and looked for it with scrying.

    The final stage is Soul Granting. Which is basically constantly imposing your will onto an artefact until a piece of your soul detaches and merges with the artefact. This creates a brand new soul that is fresh and new. In addition, it¡¯s severely limited by its new ¡®body¡¯. It takes centuries for an artefacts soul to develop to the stage that it can assist with proper spirit power control in battle.

    There is one more stage that is limited only to forge masters with array knowledge. Which is the Inscribing. Generally, in this stage arrays are carved or painted onto an artefact to create certain extra effects or assist in certain ways.

    The two most important things James learned just from this fan, is that proper distribution of the free energy in an artefact can dramatically affect its performance. The second thing was ... that he could create array patterns inside the artefact using the free spirit energy. Which is actually how this fan operated.

    James wasn¡¯t fully certain which master created this artefact, but he was certain it was someone leagues beyond him in ability, or perhaps that had some special method to achieve it.

    With this discovery, James was itching all over to go and try forging something new. Unfortunately, Jasmine, ever the killjoy, reminded him that he often got absorbed in the process and wouldn¡¯t appear for days once he started.

    James didn¡¯t seem to understand why that mattered until Goldy excitedly grabbed his Spirit Body and shook it violently.What about the sword girl! And that strange Nahtiro Boy! I must fight them!~

    Only then did he remember the competition. With that said, he decided to go and rest up and meditate on his discoveries today until his duel tomorrow.

    -Arena-

    The next day, the final 8 competitors stood in the arena to draw lots. Of the remaining contestants, James, Betto and Sword Girl were Givens. Everyone readily acknowledged that it was most likely going to be one of these 3 that claimed victory. One of the profit sect duo, Gregor the Hastoelian and Brightly the Son of the Order all managed to sneak into the top spots.

    The final two were both Dark Horses from the non-seed members. One was an average looking girl with red hair and pigtails. She was covered in freckles and was a powerful water user while the other was a young man who looked sickly pale and on the verge of death. He was constantly hunched over and seemed to always be shivering like he was cold.

    James hadn¡¯t seen any of his matches, so he wasn¡¯t too certain how this fellow made it to the quarterfinals. One thing he was certain of though, was that the fellow was very suspicious looking. Regardless of that, James wanted some surprises, so he limited himself from investigating him with his scrying.

    At last, after a short speech from Gary, the 8 finalists took turns digging out a little numbered ball.

    James somehow ended up being matched up against the sword girl already. He was hoping to meet her in the semi-finals but now was just as good. Amusingly, Gregor and Brightly ¡®somehow¡¯ got matched up together.

    The final two matches were between the pigtail girl and the profit sect man as well as Betto and the creepy guy.

    Unluckily, James¡¯ match was last, which meant he had to sit in the waiting area until the other matches were finished.

    The first up was the pigtailed girl. James watched on with some shock as she simply approached a small stream running through the arena and suddenly half the arena was flooded. Moments after, before the Profit Sect fellow had even managed to prepare properly, a massive wave engulfed him and crushed him against the arena barrier.

    Surprisingly, even the rest area he was in shook violently from the collision. Considering James had diverted the Super Cube from the Spire to power the arena shields for the last 3 finals matches, his mind shook from the sheer force of such a collision.

    ¡®Jesus, that girl must be some kind of deviator. Who rightfully has the kind of power needed to shake the arena while it¡¯s powered by the Super Cube Reactor.¡¯

    James couldn¡¯t help but feel some small amount of fear towards the girl. Even worse ... the stingy bitch took the profit sect guy¡¯s big bag of tricks. James swore that if he met this girl in the next round, he¡¯d kill her for that transgression.

    Next to battle was the Hastoel and Soel sons. James was most interested in this battle. With the recent troubles in the two neighbouring countries, the tension between the two had been slowly rising. Adding on to this, Hastoel had vast lands of lush crops and farms. Which Soel desperately needed right now. Seeing as Hastoel was very quickly approaching civil war, it looked ripe for the picking.

    Just to help add some fuel to this fire, James had accidentally released a little something special in the arena.

    As the two sons squared off, and just before the bell rang, a strange aroma spread out within the confines of the arena. No one outside the barrier could detect it, and the duo both assumed it was some insidious method of the other.

    In a little vent in the arena wall was something special that had been cooked up by Skay way back when he was still kicking around. It was just a simple incense stick, but its purpose was truly twisted and nefarious.

    Within this incense stick was the combined powers of four of the deadly sins. Greed, Envy, Wrath and Pride. It took Skay quite a while to cook these up in the lab, and he had endless headaches with Goldy during that time. The only reason Golden even agreed to ¡®give part of his essence¡¯ to something like this was that he enjoyed chaos only slightly more than the pride of squarely facing off and destroying his enemies in a real battle.

    In the end though, that was just an excuse. He had just been too proud to admit that he had no idea how to impart his pride energy into objects. It was only thanks to the enraged and tireless assistance from Skay that he learnt a method to achieve such a thing ... which he was naturally incredibly proud about and regularly reminded the rational part of James.

    Anyway, as it stood, the two son¡¯s suddenly began to become restless. Brightly grew envious of Gregor¡¯s richly diverse and plentiful crops. This envy then led to wrath due to their total negligence of how good they had it while his own nation was in dire strife thanks to the two Calamities. Naturally, Greed also helped him along and only fuelled the other two on.

    However, he was too proud to admit that with political channels they could easily co-operate with Hastoel to import the food they needed. Similarly, Gregor had a whole different but equally, irrational thought process being fed by the vile aroma of the 4 sins incense.

    Something like the 4 sins incense could both be incredibly powerful but equally useless. It was only because the two sons already felt the weight of their nation¡¯s plights that the incense had the chance to stir up these feelings. Adding onto that, they were both young and easily swayed by their emotions.

    Of course, when young men meet under the effects of drugs, they become even more irrational and difficult to control. As it has gone with such things since the dawn of time ... they started cursing at each other.

    ¡°You greedy Hastoelians! You¡¯re pathetic! All sitting inside your country squabbling like children and stuffing your fat faces. While my people starve you all just yell insults at each other and spend your time screwing each other¡¯s wives. By the Holy Light of the three Sun¡¯s, I will purge your adulterous existence from this world.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re existence is adulterous! Your whole family¡¯s existence is adulteress! Look at you preaching to me about screwing people¡¯s wives! I heard half your country¡¯s wives are all screwing other men just to feed themselves! Don¡¯t act all righteous with me! Prepare to get a fuckin smack down bitch!¡±

    At this point, James was smiling like the devil. Not because of the scene of the two young man trading insults, but the look on the faces of their respective nation¡¯s delegates. Firstly, Brightly¡¯s father, Solaris the Pope, looked like he just ate a handful of dirt.

    The Hastoel Aristocrat was no better. His face had a scowl that looked like it could hold a porcelain plate steady between the creases of his frown. Just at this moment, James triggered the vents in their private VIP Boxes.

    Being significantly further along in their cultivation, the upper echelons of the two powers immediately detected the scent and noticed something wrong with it. The only problem was ... they were suddenly distracted by the bell of the arena.

    Moments later, their two son¡¯s began truly trying to kill each other. Not all parents in this world are as cruel and heartless as old Artimus. The moment the battle started their attention suddenly got sucked into it. The more their respective candidate got a whooping, the more their mind spun.

    By the time the battle had raged on for 15 minutes, the duo in the arena were only covered in scraps of clothing and each panting heavily while covered in sweat, grime and blood.

    They¡¯d traded countless blows and given each other equally as many injuries. They¡¯d gone mad in their endless desire to reap the other¡¯s life.

    Finally, Brightly rose his shiny golden sword above his head and a huge influx of spirit energy began to gather on it. Rays of light shone out like the blinding lights of a lighthouse and spread across the entire arena.

    Gregor lowered his stance and began to rapidly spin the dual wield blades in his hands. Very quickly endless numbers of wind blades started firing off from his dual swords, and great twisters began to form around him.

    This carried on for about half a minute, and the suspense of the audience rose just as quickly as the duo¡¯s martial techniques charged up. By the time they were prepared to strike, the crowd had grown dead quiet and were being held on the edge by the suspense.

    Suddenly, Brightly dropped his sword and slashed towards Gregor nearly 30 meters away. At the same time, Gregor suddenly slashed both of his swords out towards Brightly.

    ¡°Sun Like Beam Thing!¡±

    ¡°Twisty Wind Attack!¡±

    The whole crowd suddenly fell out of their seats and James palmed himself in the face. ¡®Come on guys! At least make some effort in naming your shit if you¡¯re going to yell it out to the whole world.¡¯

    ~What? Like my ¡®Zappy Blasty Shot¡¯?~

    James just buried his face in his hands after Goldy¡¯s input.

    In the arena, the two attacks collided like an immovable object being struck by an unstoppable force. In this case, the immovable object lost because the unstoppable force just punched straight through it like a needle through paper.

    Once the huge light show commotion from their two martial techniques died down, the standing victor was Brightly, while Gregor was on the ground with a big burning slash mark running from the right side of his face to the left side of his torso.

    The Hastoel delegation shot to their feet and rushed down to the arena to check on him. Moments later, the enraged and mournful cry of the old Aristocrat that was Gregor¡¯s father sounded and he suddenly rose to his feet and appeared directly in front of Brightly prepared to throw a punch filled with the power of the Tower Realm.

    Before he could land the punch, huge ethereal shackles materialised out of thin air and bound him in place. ¡°HALT!¡±

    Gary¡¯s authoritative side came out, and his voice echoed like thunder across the arena. Everyone looked up to see his hand pointed down at the Hastoel Aristocrat like he was grasping something invisible.

    Even James was surprised when he saw this. ¡°Holy Shit! Just how powerful is this guy? Jasmine, please tell me that¡¯s an array from the arena restraining that guy?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not any array I¡¯ve ever seenJames. I believe that power is entirely Guild Master Gary¡¯s.¡±

    ¡°Holy Shit! Holy Shit! What kind of monster is that guy! Since when did he have such powerful techniques? I¡¯ve never even seen a martial technique like that.¡±

    Back in the arena, the Soel delegation arrived and pulled Brightly back behind them. Solaris eyed the Aristocrat with a hostile glare. ¡°What¡¯s the meaning of this Halzar?! You dare attack my son?!¡±

    Halzar¡¯s eyes were filled with madness, and he seethed violently through clenched teeth. ¡°How dare you Solaris! This was simply meant to be an exchange between the younger generations, yet you gave your son the Sword of Sun Like Beam Thing?! Was it your intention from the beginning to murder my son at this battle exchange?!¡±

    James, seated in the waiting area watching the show, slapped his palm into his face again. ¡®Good God! They even named a sword like that! I¡¯m glad I chose to have these two nations eliminate each other first. Just their naming sense deserves death.¡¯

    ~Right, right! Why couldn¡¯t they give it a cool name like the Blindy Eye Hurting Sword.~

    James¡¯ eye suddenly began twitching violently. What the hell kind of pride was this? He made the sword sound like a stick some kid walked around with for stabbing people in the eye.

    Solaris stood tall and dignified as he gazed down upon the seething form of Halzar. ¡°This competition doesn¡¯t disallow the use of any artefacts. If I should choose to assist my son by lending him my Sword of Sun Like Beam Thing, then who¡¯s to fault me?¡±

    At this point, a small army of Brotherhood members ran out covered in Mk 4 Combat Suits ... which looked like tight fitting latex suits. They all carried a Mk 4 Ark Cannon and had a holster with a pistol and single black blade on their backs. James¡¯ eye looked like it was trying to start a fire from its twitching.

    ¡®Oh God. Kelly that bitch! What the fuck kind of design is that? The weird bitch. Don¡¯t bring down the image of my guild with your weird fetishes.¡¯ James suddenly had a traumatic flashback to that one night with the ... you know what. No one wants to hear about that.

    Back in the arena, the brotherhood members all aimed their Arc Cannons at the offending party as Gary¡¯s voice echoed out once more. ¡°I would like to ask that you all return to your seats. You all agreed to the rules when you joined the War of the Worlds. If you wish to seek vengeance, then I suggest you seek it outside of the city.¡±

    Suddenly, a huge hand slowly seemed to fade into existence over the heads of the offending parties. ¡°Unless you wish to test the patience and power of the Brotherhood here in our territory?¡± finished Gary.

    Everyone had witnessed the power of this strange god like hand as it smashed multiple sneaky bastards to paste at the entrance to the Spire and even Solaris didn¡¯t want to test it. With that, the excitement of this small interruption ended. Gary released his bizarrely powerful shackles, and the two delegate teams both withdrew from the arena.

    However ... not before Brightly added insult to injury by looting Gregor¡¯s corpse right in front of his father. James¡¯ smile was in full bloom as he watched Halzar¡¯s Wrath simmering right under the surface. He almost couldn¡¯t stop himself from poking this ant¡¯s hill.

    The crowd had so far been loving this. The last battle was filled with excitement and politics which sparked a heated debate between audience members about what exactly was going on with the three great nations lately.

    ¡°Wow! Did you see that! It looks like Soel and Hastoel are at loggerheads now. Has their relationship always been so bad?¡±

    ¡°Oh? Haven¡¯t you heard? Soel is suffering from a strange famine and drought. The whole nation¡¯s been affected by it. I¡¯ve heard rumours that it¡¯s the ghost of a farmer¡¯s wife raised from the dead. Her family died from starvation because of the greed of the church, and so she came back to haunt the nation with famine. Tens of thousands of people have died already. I reckon it¡¯s caused the tensions to rise somewhat between the three nations.¡±

    ¡°Oh, not just Soel. I heard a succubus has infiltrated the great nation of Hastoel. Lust is on the rise in Hastoel, and all sorts of slanderous accusations are flying about. I heard that no small number of nobles have been castrated by their spouses. Not just that, but a rebel movement has formed among the populace, and they¡¯ve been releasing all sorts of damaging secrets about the noble households. The whole nation is on the verge of civil war!¡±

    ¡°I also heard a rumour. But it¡¯s about the northern nation of Baquerro. Apparently, a strange curse has fallen over the entire nation. On the 5th day of the 4th month of the year of the Tiger, the whole nation holds a huge celebration. This year, the capital city sent out millions of badges to every citizen in the nation. That¡¯s not the weird part though. What¡¯s weird is ... they¡¯re all still holding the celebration to this day. It¡¯s like Groundhog Day, and if you ever go there, they¡¯ll make you wear a badge. Whatever you do, don¡¯t wear it. If you do, you¡¯ll never stop celebrating.¡±

    James, being currently tapped into the arena surveillance, was of course busily rolling around on the ground laughing his ass off in his spirit realm. So far, there hadn¡¯t been any problems and he was quite happy with the way everything had been progressing. It was only a matter of time until everyone started connecting dots back to him ... but by then it will be too late.

    When he finally regained control of himself, he returned his focus to the next battle. Betto vs. Creepy Guy.

    Betto was, for a strange change, focused on the opponent. Clearly, he felt something off about this guy as well and was wary enough to focus his attention on him. Creepy Guy was instead busily scratching at the sleeve of his robe vigorously ... so vigorous, that blood could be seen staining his robe and dripping down from his hand onto the ground.

    It wasn¡¯t just his arm he scratched at. He scratched away at every part of his body like he was trying to get something out from under the skin. It was a very odd and disturbing image.

    James couldn¡¯t help but squint his eyes slightly as he observed. There was something about this guy that didn¡¯t sit right with him, and now that he¡¯d started scratching himself so manically, James¡¯ suspicion of him only grew deeper.

    James didn¡¯t have to wait long before the bell rang and Betto flicked his arms, revealing his weapons for the first time since the beginning of the competition. Two short swords fell from his long robe sleeves and effortlessly slid into his palms.

    James began to wonder just how much these people could hide inside their robe sleeves. Every time he fought someone it seemed like their robe was some kind of storage treasure and had everything from daily necessities to artillery hidden away in them.

    Betto¡¯s short swords were both different colours. One was a deep black crystal sword filled with shining little floating lights like glimmering stars. The other sword was even stranger. It was white but looked ethereal, almost like it was just a ghost of a sword. It had a strange misty opaque energy floating around it and seemed to shimmer in and out of existence.

    James immediately perked up at the sight of this. Then, just as quickly, he waved his hand and caused the screen in his spirit realm to collapse into dust. Without a word, James just sat there in meditation.

    Goldy didn¡¯t say a thing and also returned to the centre of the lightning nucleus to begin meditation. Jasmine looked at them both quizzically.

    ¡°James, it seems those weapons are quite profound. Are you certain you don¡¯t want to watch this battle?¡±

    James just shook his head. ¡°Jasmine, what¡¯s the point in living without a little mystery? If Betto wins and I have to face him in battle, I want it to be a complete surprise. Besides, I can already guess what his spirit affinity is just based on the appearance of those swords.¡±

    Jasmine considered for a moment then just returned to drinking her tea and whatever else it was that she did in her free time.

    Meanwhile, James was considering his options for his battle should he face Betto. ¡®Space-Time spirit energy. I¡¯m certain of it. How the fuck do I fight against something like that? Moreover, what sorts of attacks would I create with that sort of energy? Heh, this battle should be interesting.¡¯

    As James remained locked away in his spirit realm and ignored the outside world, the outside was in tumultuous chaos. The crowds were stunned by this battle. With every slash of his sword, Betto caused strange spatial tears or flickered in and out of existence. Every time a sword moved he would cause destruction.

    This wasn¡¯t what astonished everyone though. Space-Time experts were truly rare but what shocked the crowd the most was that the creepy guy was able to keep up and even appeared to be barely suppressed. Even stranger was his spirit energy. No one really paid attention to him until the finals, but they now realised that was a mistake.

    All the major powers were barely restrained sitting in their seats. They wanted to rush out and slaughter this calamity. That was because they could all feel the creepy guy¡¯s spirit energy was incredibly vile and evil. He was undoubtedly a demonic cultivator of some description.

    Although deviators were frowned upon in the Ascension continent, they were still considered people most of the time. On the other hand, Demonic cultivators were hated with every fibre of every being from east coast to west. That was because their cultivation methods generally relied on some kind of sickening practice like sacrificing innocents or devouring corpses and similarly disturbing things.

    It was rare to meet a demonic cultivator that was still so young and weak. Normally, demonic cultivators only appeared at frighteningly higher levels. Most people weren¡¯t aware, but that was because most spirit beasts would often become demonic cultivators when they failed to become human.

    That¡¯s not to say that only beasts can become demons, after all, not many creatures are eviler than humans anyway. It¡¯s not unusual for some poor fool to stumble on some ancient artefact or ruins that contained the soul of a previously deceased cultivator. More so than that, it was rare for these people to escape the lures of demonic powers and inevitably becoming possessed.

    This was the case with Creepy Guy. He was only a boy when he stumbled on an ancient black bead. After he joined a sect and started cultivating his spirit energy awoke the demonic bead, and it lured him into practising it¡¯s evil cultivation methods. At this point in time, although the boy had become a man, he hadn¡¯t reached a high enough level to release the demon¡¯s soul and become fully possessed.

    This was why everyone felt an increasing desire to jump down and kill him without hesitation. If he got to a high enough level to release the sealed demon¡¯s soul, he would completely become possessed, and a huge calamity would drown the entire continent in blood.

    Unfortunately, every time someone moved to try and get into the arena, they were blocked by the array patterns and Gary, who stood above everyone in a very imposing manner. Solaris, who had just been gently pushed back by the giant finger pointing hand, looked at Gary enraged.

    ¡°Guild Master Gary! What are you doing?! That creature isn¡¯t human, how can you allow it to continue to exist? If we aren¡¯t allowed to destroy such an abomination, then your guild will surely be marked by others as a demonic cult and culled by the powers of Atsunari!¡±

    Gary glanced at Pope Solaris and the other representatives from all the nations present. Then let out a sigh. ¡°I¡¯m afraid, you all are underestimating the power and integrity of the Brotherhood. Although we may take any job, good and bad, we have never broken a contract and never will. You all know that we agreed to be impartial in this contest and cannot simply kill a person because we dislike them.

    ¡°In addition, our founder often stressed to me that there is no such thing as good or evil, only the intention of others. Even if this man is a demonic cultivator, so what? As long as he doesn¡¯t offend my guild, I couldn¡¯t care less what methods of cultivation he has. He can slaughter entire cities of people if he wants. As long as he doesn¡¯t offend my guild.¡±

    With that said, multiple huge array hands appeared all over the arena and gently ¡®persuaded¡¯ everyone back to their VIP Box seats. Although the tower realms and palace realms felt that they could contend against the power of these arrays before, they only now realised that within Tech City, they were powerless.

    Perhaps the only power level that could contend against a hand of that sort of power was a Core Realm expert. None of which were in attendance. By now, the battle had raged on for quite some time. The Creepy guy¡¯s attacks were growing more and more ruthless, and he was clearly now suppressing Betto.

    Even though Betto¡¯s spirit attribute was almost godlike in its power, such a powerful attribute would take aeons to properly get accustomed to and utilise fully. Right now, the young Betto, even with his powerful artefact swords, could only display a smidgeon of their true might. At this level, he was greatly limited by the huge amounts of spirit power he had to use just to keep up with the endless onslaught of thick demonic spirit power that now filled the arena in the form of black flames.

    It soon came to a point in which Betto could feel he¡¯d already surpassed the limit of his ability. He was now being completely repressed and could barely keep up with the lashing black flames as he slashed out spatial tears and strange time anomalies that reversed or froze time in places for a brief moment.

    Despite how drawn out he felt and the danger of the situation, he was actually incredibly happy and continued to smile and laugh as he pulled out just a little bit more of his power and continued to surpass his limits to survive this trial.

    Unfortunately, it was inevitable that he couldn¡¯t hold out forever. Finally, a lance of black flames shot out from towering demonic flames and pierced into Betto¡¯s left shoulder, flinging him back and causing the sword in his hand to be flicked out and stab into the ground.

    As soon as this happened, the old man who accompanied Betto from their Sword Sect calmly stepped to the edge of their VIP Box. ¡°Our Atsunari Sword Sect¡¯s disciple withdraws from this battle!¡±

    Despite the chaos of the crowd and the arena, the old man¡¯s voice still rattled out to every corner of the arena and overpowered every other sound. In the arena, the Demonic Creepy Guy was standing over Betto with another lance of black flames in his hand.

    He looked over to the old man, then glanced back down at Betto. Slowly his face formed into an evil grin and he stabbed down towards the heavily injured Betto. His lance stopped only a few centimetres from Betto¡¯s heart as shackles suddenly came into existence on his limbs.

    Before the Creepy Guy could urge his spirit power to shoot forth that last little distance and slay Betto, a massive overpowering pressure descended on the arena, and the demonic energy seemed to be like an ant under a foot as it was suppressed into nothing.

    Gary frowned as he looked down at the demonic cultivator. ¡°Please show some respect for this competitions rules. If you wish to kill someone that¡¯s forfeit, you can do it outside the City¡¯s limits.¡±

    Creepy Guy just gave a ¡®tsk¡¯ and then turned to leave the arena after the shackles released him. Everyone watched as he slowly began to hunch back over and quickly became sickly looking again with every step he took.

    ¡®Demonic Possession. So the boy really is carrying something with a demon soul on it.¡¯

    ¡®He must be quite a powerful demon to already be capable of possessing that man for a short period of time.¡¯

    As he walked out of the arena, the vigilant eyes of Atsunari¡¯s powerful factions followed him. Although Demonic cultivators popped up rarely, they still had heard enough about them to know some of the characteristics of their types of cultivation. In this case, from that battle where the creepy man had unknowingly become a completely different person at some stage, they could all at least tell the man was in possession of something that had a demon sealed in it.

    The arena slowly calmed down after this huge upset, and finally, James was notified that his battle was about to start. He was rather surprised to see the state of the arena when he arrived. Due to the black flames of the demon cultivator, the arena had become a dust bowl and was flat as the surface of a calm lake.

    Clearly, whatever power was used in the battle before his, had obliterated the little stream and the various shrubs and torches that were scattered around the arena.

    Although water was still slowly pooling in over from one side of the arena, there was no stream to follow, so it just started slowly soaking into the ground and spreading out from the outlet in the arena wall.

    Mind you, at this level of combat, most practitioners only received some small benefits from using the free energy of naturally created materials. Most practitioners with the power to fight in the finals would be capable of utilising just their spirit energy to materialise what they needed.

    As James walked out, he saw Sword Girl standing a few hundred metres away at the other end of the arena. She carried her sword sheath with her and just stood there staring off into space. James couldn¡¯t help but give a wry smile when he noticed how disinterested the Sword Girl was.

    He was, however, hopeful that she wasn¡¯t looking down on him. If that was the case, she was going to end up like the old monk¡¯s disciple. James knew that the old monk¡¯s disciple was definitely more powerful than he seemed in their battle. It was simply because he¡¯d been negligent and received an attack from James¡¯ stunning lightning bullet.

    After James stopped and faced the Sword Girl, he flipped his hands and pulled out his sword and pistol. Without delay, the most anticipated battle of the day started.

 Chapter 46: Possessed

    The arena was quiet and still. The growing invisible pressure was already at a staggering level. The spectators were sweating in expectation and excitement. It almost seemed that the viewers of this battle were even more anxious for it to start than the duo standing in the arena.

    James stood in a very relaxed manner, half facing Sword Girl, with his scimitar and pistol just dangling at the side. The Sword Girl lowered her stance with her left hand sitting on the sheath and the thumb touching the hilt of her Samurai Blade. Her right hand hovered over the top of the hilt as she stared directly at James.

    Although her face was void of all expression, the fact that she was actually looking at an opponent at the beginning of the battle showed how dangerous she expected James to be. As the two people eyed each other from across the field, a gentle breeze, almost looking staged, blew across the arena and lifted the fine dust creating a haze of dust between the two.

    At that moment, James flicked his hand again, throwing out a little box into the field. Moments later, it began to emit sound. The song Thunderstruck by AC/DC began to play. After a short time, the bell rang. The dust haze settled. Two figures suddenly disappeared.

    For a full second, the arena was empty. Before the crowd could register what was happening, James and Sword Girl reappeared in the centre of the arena. The scimitar and katana intersected each other and a huge ¡®BOOM!¡¯ rattled the defensive arrays and could be felt even by the crowds seated around the arena.

    James let the force from sword girls strike spin his body as a kick like lightning spun around to axe her in the neck. Sword Girl lifted the hilt of her sword to block, then countered with another strike that looked like a cold ray of light.

    James moved back a step and then fired his pistol towards the ground directly below Sword Girl. The earth cracked and rumbled as a huge spike drove up from the earth trying to pierce through her. She blurred again and reappeared beside James striking out again.

    James¡¯ scimitar, as if by its own accord, split the air and deflected the strike. A wave of flame poured out trying to engulf Sword Girl. Sword Girls katana blurred and water formed along the edge of the blade sizzling and turning to steam.

    James began to grin. His own water energy poured into the scimitar and steam engulfed the arena. The crowd was stunned by this development. Even more stunning though, was that the collision of swords continued even once visibility was lost.

    It seemed like, even without being able to see one another, the duo could still attack. Soon, the cloud of steam covering the arena started to billow and surge like great waves. Huge tornados of flame blazed up, and a massive serpent formed from water reared its head and roared out from the steam.

    The temperature around the serpent began to drop rapidly and it slowly formed into an ice serpent. It coiled around hundreds of meters and was as thick as a tree. It looked down at a certain spot in the arena and let loose another roar. A storm of ice shards and slushy ice water spewed from its mouth, freezing everything it touched. The sudden drop in temperature caused the steam to begin to rapidly cool and condense back to water.

    The arena grew still again, for a short while nothing moved. Slowly, all the steam condensed into moisture and fell to the arena floor wetting the dirt and causing everything to become muddy. Revealed in the centre of the arena, was the Sword Girl.

    She was surrounded by the Ice Serpent and behind her was a hundred meters of the Ice Serpent¡¯s long thin body, coiling and rising about in the arena. The tail of the Ice Serpent ended at her sword, and the head sat high in the air above her, staring at James with a ruthless gaze.

    At the other end of the arena was James surrounded by 5 pylons of spinning raging flames. His scimitar was rapidly spinning in circles in his right hand and feeding more and more flames into the pylons. His gun was raised and aimed at Sword Girl still in the centre of the arena.

    As this stalemate continued for a few more seconds, the ammo clip in the pistol seemed to dematerialize and then a new one rematerialized in its place. James finally stopped feeding his flaming pylons and slashed out towards Sword Girl.

    The pylons formed into raging flame tornados and sped across the arena in zigzagging patterns as they raced towards Sword Girl. The Ice Serpent roared in indignation and spewed slushy ice and shards onto a tornado. Unfortunately, although it managed to drown one of the tornados with ice, the other four approached it too fast.

    It took a defensive posture and curled around Sword Girl. Like a huge palace of ice, it completely enclosed Sword Girl. James blurred and reappeared like a phantom in and out between the flame tornados, using them as cover to approach.

    Seeing the Ice Serpent curling around Sword Girl to protect her, James grinned like a savage and started firing off shots from his pistol. Each bullet was filled to the brim with wind, fire, plasma and lightning energy. As they left the gun, James¡¯ magnetic energy increased the spin rotation to unimaginable speeds while at the same time, poured water element into the pistol to keep it from overheating from the berserk power of his elements.

    4 bullets struck the same spot on the serpent consecutively and unleashed a storm of fire, plasma, lightning and wind that was in the shape of a spear. The spear spun rapidly and buried into the ice until it was a few meters in. Then, it exploded with a raging firestorm.

    Moments later, the flame tornados all made impact with the serpents weakened area, melting the ice like butter on a hotplate. The Ice Serpent let out a ground shaking roar until it was split in half by the tornados. At the moment a gap was exposed, James shot into the centre and was met with a ruthless sword arc from Sword Girl¡¯s katana.

    Thanks to the Ice Serpent, the confined area James and Sword Girl was in was difficult to see thanks to refraction, and even if they could see, most of the crowd would only be able to witness two blurry shadows clashing and retreating at unfathomable speeds.

    Soon, another boom rang out, and dozens of towering earth spikes shot up from within the Ice Serpent, penetrating through its dead frozen body and shattering it like glass being struck with a hammer. A blur shot out backwards along with the huge shards of ice and rolled through the wet, muddy ground a few times until getting its feet under it.

    The blur was Sword Girl. Only, she now looked much worse off than before. There was a long deep gash on her right shoulder and arm. One of her thighs was spilling blood out at a prodigious rate and was clearly a wound from James¡¯ pistol. Just based on how she was standing, it could be seen it was paralysed.

    Her hair was in a disorderly mess, and her clean white robes were caked with blood, mud and burn marks.

    Seeing her in this state, everyone¡¯s gaze suddenly went ¡®swish¡¯ as they, by some unspoken agreement, all looked to see what condition James was in. In the centre of the arena, where the Ice Serpent had been coiled up, was a cloud of dust from the dozens of earth spikes that now filled the area.

    James slowly walked out from the dust area. His blue robes were in tatters and barely enough to cover his lower half. His bare skin was covered in blood from tens of gushing wounds and stab marks.

    Lotus like flowers made from ice were blooming from his injuries. However, in comparison to Sword Girl, he was smiling widely, like he¡¯d just gotten the best present he ever could.

    His eyes were filled with arcing lightning and raging fires. His scimitar was spewing flames out endlessly and his every step caused the ground to crack and shatter. The wind seemed to rage around him picking up the dust from the arena and creating a subtle storm of dust and wind around his body.

    He looked even more demonic than the demonic cultivator that had battled Betto. As he slowly strode towards Sword Girl, he raised up his pistol and fired. A bullet pierced the air followed by the cry of a sword being released from its sheath.

    Somehow, Sword Girl was still in good enough condition to deflect that bullet. However, James just continued marching towards her like a demon as he fired shot after shot. Every shot was imbued with every single one of his elements. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that his bullets were imbued with his pride energy, which naturally carried each of the other elements with it.

    Each bullet glowed like a golden pallet dropped down from the heavens themselves. Although every shot used up James¡¯ already mostly depleted energy, they just got more and more powerful with each passing bullet. Every time Sword Girl blocked or deflected a bullet, Goldy¡¯s rage grew. In James¡¯ Spirit Realm, Goldy was roaring into the sky and he was slowly becoming smaller and more invisible with every shot.

    But each time, he poured more and more of himself into every bullet.

    In the arena, Sword Girl could no longer fully deflect and was grazed by a bullet. The moment it touched her, it exploded with a vortex of different energy and space itself shuddered under the onslaught of so many energies fighting and contending to fill the area at once.

    Lighting surged, and fire raged. Water sprayed out, with each droplet like a bullet itself. Metal fragments from the bullet itself were warped and shot about at high speed from the magnetism, and the wind created a huge shockwave. Tiny sharp needle-like fragments of rock formed into the storm. Enveloping all of this was the pervasive golden glow of pride energy.

    Sword Girl couldn¡¯t retreat fast enough as the side of her body was peppered with shrapnel and burnt by the raging flames. The lighting filled her body and almost stopped her heart for a short moment. With this amount of damage, even she couldn¡¯t remain calm and let out a loud scream. Her body was blasted away by the shock wave and then after rolling a few times, finally couldn¡¯t stand up again.

    James, like the devil himself, bathed in blood and with a sinister grin, stood over her frail, broken body. He raised the flaming scimitar in his hands, but then his face became strange. He nudged Sword Girl with his foot. Seeing no reaction, he actually let out a sigh of disappointment.

    ¡°Looks like, I broke it...¡±

    James lowered his scimitar, let all his energy slowly settle down from the heated battle state he was in, then like a tree, fell backwards rigidly and passed out.

    The arena bell gave a customary ¡®ding¡¯. Finally, someone in the crowd reacted. It was too stunning of a performance for Spirit Realm cultivators. This kind of battle, shouldn¡¯t this be a battle between palace realm cultivators?

    A clap sounded. Then another. Then the entire arena exploded. Staff from the Brotherhood moved out to start cleaning up and move the two injured contestants out from the arena. Although the crowd was roaring with enthusiasm, the VIP boxes were eerily quiet.

    Only those old tower realm experts from the big factions were aware, this sort of battle, was beyond even palace realm cultivators. Although at tower realm they had a great deal more power, they were aware that their control over their elements wasn¡¯t half as precise and easily wielded as these two juniors had just displayed.

    It seemed that, although these two juniors were still only at the Spirit Realm, their level of control was equivalent to a tower realm cultivator. After all, hardly any of them could brag that they could create a life like serpent with their element. Even that final shot from James. In theory, it¡¯s easy to shoot something with lots of elements at something.

    The problem is that those energies should have rejected and clashed with each other just while imbuing the projectile. In other words, even if they had the means to try it, none of the tower realm experts present could claim to be able to imbue a projectile with that much energy without it exploding in their hand.

    Soon, with the final main battle of the day finished, ranking battles started. These battle were a means to properly rank everyone in the competition and were still watched by many factions interested in trying to recruit the younger unknowns that weren¡¯t a part of the Seed teams.

    While that was happening, James and Sword Girl were rushed to the HQ lab were Jasmine personally took on the duty of fixing them up.

    Without delay, the two were pumped full of all sorts of stupidly expensive drugs and potions. When James finally awoke, it was already night time. Like every time before this, James woke up in a white operating room. Strangely, unlike other times, he felt even better than before he¡¯d started the battle.

    After inspecting himself for a while and then inspecting his spirit realm, he could only smile wryly. It appeared, the massive exhaustion of spirit energy had given him a boost in his cultivation. He was aware that overdrawing his spirit energy and going into energy deprivation would help him cultivate faster, but it also carried the risk of causing permeant damage to his cultivation, so he avoided using it in training normally.

    After his brief inspection, and watching Gold James rushing about his spirit realm excitedly and shining even brighter than ever, he left the room and went to visit another operating room in the lab. In that room was Sword Girl, covered in immaculately clean white robes and quietly sleeping.

    Although she looked like a sleeping beauty, lying there quietly, James wasn¡¯t fooled for a second. During the battle, she was ruthless and intense. Her sword skills were phenomenal and put James¡¯ skill with a blade to shame. Which wasn¡¯t hard since most of his sword skill came from just fumbling along himself.

    James readily admit to himself, that without his multitude of elements allowing him to counter her, and his use of the pistol, he¡¯d very likely be unable to defeat her. Even her speed was beyond his own. He wasn¡¯t sure how her speed was so fast. After all, as a lightning expert, there shouldn¡¯t be many that can keep up with him.

    He also could tell after scrying that her only abilities were in water, earth and what he was for the moment calling ice. Which would actually be more like some kind of backwards exothermic reaction. Instead of energy leaving a high energy system to low energy system, she somehow created a spirit energy that forces energy out of a low energy system into a high energy system.

    For now, he wasn¡¯t sure how else to explain the sudden creation of ice. Even he himself wasn¡¯t certain he could achieve that sort of accomplishment. He knew he could probably control ice, but creating it was different.

    Or perhaps, he was just overthinking it, and it was more a rare or abstract element and didn¡¯t rely on the actual science that he observed most of his elements with. If it were like pride or death, then he wouldn¡¯t even try to explain it yet. For those strange elements, he just chose to accept them as they were.

    As he stood outside the door of the room and watched the girl sleep, that old Japanese man and his moustached disciple walked up next to him. The old man put his hand on James¡¯ shoulder with a bright smile on his face as he looked in at his young disciple.

    ¡°Your spirit girlfriend said she¡¯d be fine. You did well young man. It¡¯s been a long time since she got such a well-deserved ass whooping.¡±

    James was slightly stunned by the old man¡¯s somewhat vicious statement.

    ¡°Oi? Old man, isn¡¯t that girl your apprentice? Why are you so happy she lost?¡±

    ¡°Heh. That¡¯s obvious, isn¡¯t it? How is she going to get stronger if she doesn¡¯t have a direction? Now, she¡¯s met someone near her own age and at a power level that she can¡¯t overcome. She¡¯ll have to forge ahead and become even more powerful so she can defeat you. Adversity breeds strength.¡±

    James turned back to look at the quietly sleeping Sword Girl. He then felt a shiver run up his spine as he remembered their battle. Without any warning, he just turned and started striding off towards the elevator.

    The moustache man looked at him quizzically but said nothing until the elevator closed and left. ¡°Master, he¡¯s rather rude don¡¯t you think? Are you sure we should have agreed to join this guild?¡±

    The old man chuckled as he stared through the door window at Sword Girl. ¡°I don¡¯t think so at all. Most likely, right now, he¡¯s gone to train. He¡¯s become aware that he let a tiger into his backyard. If he wants to stay ahead of her, he¡¯s going to have to push himself as well.¡±

    Just as he¡¯d guessed, James was already in the arena practising with his scimitar and pistol in hand.

    -Arena-

    The next morning all the spectators piled into the seats of the arena like well-behaved lemmings and cheerfully discussed their expectations for today¡¯s matches.

    The semi-finals. 4 contenders remained. James, Demon Guy, Pigtails and Brightly. Of them all, Pigtails was the most shrouded in mystery. No one knew where she came from or what faction she represented. She also didn¡¯t make any effort to reveal that to anyone and was actually rather quiet despite her outgoing appearance.

    She was also the one that managed to reach the semi-finals with the least amount of effort. Having blown all her opponents away with a single massive wave. She also happened to be James¡¯ opponent in today¡¯s match. Naturally, that left Brightly trying to keep his pitiful little life in front of Demon Guy.

    James and Pigtails both walked out into the arena and faced each other in preparation for battle. James appeared to be somewhat distractedly waving his arm about as he walked out into the arena and mumbling to himself.

    Pigtails was dressed in a thick sweater and short shorts with suspenders and high laced boots. If James wasn¡¯t wrong, she was most likely some kind of sailor. Regardless, now that he¡¯d taken a better look at her, she wasn¡¯t as average looking as he first thought.

    Her red hair tied up in pigtails made her look quite adorable, and her proud chest forced the two suspenders straps to the side only helping to perpetuate the size of her breasts. Her legs were toned and smooth and were very tightly hugged by her short shorts, which were pulled up by the suspenders to the point her muff was clearly visible through the fabric.

    As they stood there in readiness, Pigtails made a salute and bowed slightly. Her voice rang out across the arena and was projected to James clearly with her soul force.

    ¡°Greetings City Master James, I¡¯m Imogine of the Red Hearings. Please enlighten me.¡±

    James continued to swish his arm about and mostly ignored her. Although he was tempted to bed her, he was momentarily occupied with testing something.

    Seeing the city master ignoring her, Imogine¡¯s face blushed with anger and shame. Her cute little face scrunched up into a pouty frown and her fists clenched onto the hem of her shorts tightly as she bottled up her rage.

    Only when the bell tolled did James finally look up at Imogine. When he finally looked up and could see her rapidly sprinting towards him with anger apparent on her face, he was somewhat confused. However, he didn¡¯t put it to heart and decided to try his latest discovery.

    In his spirit world, Gold James and Spirit James stood abreast each other and simultaneously stepped forwards. For a brief moment, the spirit realm shook violently, and the pervasive golden light of Goldy shone even brighter than ever. Moments later, all that remained was a single James.

    Unlike like before, when his spirit body was somewhat illusionary and shadowy, or when Goldy was all gold, and it was difficult to make out his features, the remaining James of their fusion simply looked like a completely normal, corporeal form of James.

    For this brief moment, his True Spirit had achieved fulfilment and was complete. In the arena, it had appeared as if James had just stood there staring at Imogine as she rapidly closed in on him. Just as she was within a few tens of meters, James whole body lit up like a small sun and shockwave suddenly came from his body.

    The arena shook violently, and the defensive arrays lit up brighter than any time they had in this whole competition. Imogine was blasted back by the shockwave and rolled numerous times along the ground until she managed to get back to her feet.

    When she finally got her bearings and looked up at James in the arena, her jaw fell slack, and all she could do was stare at him agape.

    James hadn¡¯t moved an inch since the start of the battle, but for 30 metres in every direction, the ground had been flattened and crooked fissues spread out in every direction as if he¡¯d suddenly weighed a few hundred tonne.

    In addition, a slight golden radiance shone from his body like a godly aura and a huge golden illusionary giant standing 12 metres tall rose up behind him. This golden giant resembled James in every way, except for the strangeness of having two heads and 4 arms.

    Without warning, James suddenly moved. Like a mirage in the desert, he disappeared, and almost simultaneously reappeared. Only this time, he reappeared behind Imogine. James placed his hands together like a monk and then made a hand sign. With that, the giant behind him formed a palm with one hand and thrust towards the back of Imogine.

    Imogine had still been trying to figure out where he¡¯d gone when a swelling killing intent came from behind her, and every hair on hair body stood up on end. Just as she started moving to escape, a force like a mountain struck her back, and she was forced into the hard ground like a rock into soft sand.

    Without warning, without suspense, and in only a few seconds, James had established complete dominance and taken victory in this battle. Most of the crowds hadn¡¯t even realised what had happened until it was over. Even those ancient old tower realm cultivators were shocked by what they saw.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    The two James¡¯ split apart again in his spirit realm, huffing and puffing and looking miserable and weak. As James looked around his spirit realm, he noticed that almost half his spirit energy from every element had been sucked dry by that short attempt.

    After his fusion split, James in the arena also released a breath and the giant golden apparition behind him slowly faded away. As if a huge pressure had suddenly been released, everyone let out a simultaneous breath and then erupted into cheers.

    Down in the underground markets, Kelly was eating noodles at a dingy little side shop while she watched the screen. Seeing this scene, she smiled like a fox, slurped down the rest of her noodles and left for the gamblers den so she could collect her winnings.

    Before the battle, she¡¯d purposefully asked James how long he thought it would take to win a battle against the other three finalists. Without thought, he said he could defeat them all in less than a minute.

    After some begging and pleading, Kelly managed to convince him to agree to completely obliterating his next opponent. She then raced here to the underground and bet every penny she could find on James winning his first match in less than a minute without the use of any artefacts.

    As she pushed her way through a crowd of ne¡¯er-do-well¡¯s and vagrants, a hand covered in scars and withered old skin reached out through the crowd from and alley and clasped onto Kelly¡¯s neck. Moments later, she was gone.

    This wasn¡¯t an unusual sight in the underground markets of Tech City. After all, most of the scum of the city resided here, and it was rare for there to be a day gone past when there wasn¡¯t a mugging, murder or robbery.

    The moment that Kelly disappeared, the AI was alerted. In 5 minutes, a dodgy little shack on the outskirts of the town was surrounded by an army of drones. When James finally returned to the lab, Jasmine filled him in on the situation. James scratched his chin for a moment as he glanced around the lab.

    ¡°I was wondering why I hadn¡¯t seen Kelly anywhere today. So, what do these abductors or whatever want?¡±

    ¡°From the gibberish they¡¯re yelling at the drones, I can only assume they want you to forfeit the next match, James.¡±

    James scratched his head as he dawdled through the lab back towards the elevator. ¡°How powerful are they and who are they?¡±

    ¡°One tower realm and three palace realm cultivators. They appear to be from the guild that previously captured and enslaved Kelly.¡±

    James stepped into the elevator and pressed a button. ¡°Oh? Interesting. Patch me through to Kelly.¡±

    In a barely standing little shack on the outskirts of the city, 3 old men donned in expensive black robes were yelling and screaming at the drones outside. On the dirt floor in the middle of the shack lay Kelly, who appeared to be knocked out cold ... until a loud snore alerted the world that she was actually having a nap instead.

    Suddenly one of her earrings buzzed and she sat up drowsily before speaking to the air half asleep. ¡°When are you coming to rescue me? ... Like hell! ... Fine! ... Not a chance ... I don¡¯t know, I guess ... How should I know? ... Whatever.¡±

    She then slowly stood up from her laying position and rubbed her eyes sleepily. ¡°What an asshole.¡±

    The three masters of the ¡®Shadow Men¡¯, the dark guild responsible for enslaving Kelly when she first came to Ascension, all looked at her angrily. ¡°Bitch you better get on your knees and beg forgiveness. I don¡¯t know how you broke your oath and lived, but once this is done, you¡¯re going to the chamber of sin.¡±

    Kelly looked at them in a rather bored manner. As if by design, at that very moment, a huge pressure descended onto the little cottage. Kelly simply walked out from the door and meandered off towards the city.

    Back at the cottage, the hundreds of drones all had their little chests opened up revealing their Cube Reactor, and were building illusionary arrays in the sky. Finally, after a few minutes, all the arrays fused together in the shape of a giant bronze bell. The bell slowly lifted one side then dropped and rang out.

    A thunderous ¡®dong!¡¯ rang out across the entire city. At the same moment, those old bastards stuck in the little cottage house turned into a fine bloody mist. Not only them, but for about 500 metres around the cottage, everything was disintegrated into fine powder. The shock wave of the bell ringing carried on for another kilometre or so and levelled the entire little town outside the city walls.

    Hundreds of ignorant visitors were pulverised by the colossal wind wave, and the debris of the town painted the city wall. All the residents of Tech City who¡¯d noticed the bronze bell forming in the sky had long since evacuated into town and dragged as many people with them as they could. They had lived here long enough to know that the City Master was absolutely ruthless when it came to people being idiots.

    With the entire little town completely demolished, the west gate of the city returned to being a flat empty area with only dirt. Within an hour of this happening, drones swarmed in like bees and cleared the entire area.

    The three competing Construction guilds in the city all raced out of the gate under contract from the City and started compacting dirt for foundations and roads. By the same time tomorrow, the city will have claimed all the land in the immediate area outside the gate and built all sorts of fancy buildings like taverns, stables and all kinds of other amenities.

    Seeing this scene, the 3 other townships at the north, south and east gate all evacuated then sent requests for the city to develop their areas as well.

    With this, Tech City slowly started expanding again. On the same day, a small armed force from the Brotherhood, outfitted with the latest in tech, along with a squadron of drones, all shot off on hover boards towards the west.

    By tomorrow, whatever is left of the ¡®Shadow Men¡¯ will have been completely obliterated.

    -Arena-

    Tomorrow came rather quickly. Naturally, Brightly was beaten into a coma by the Demon Guy. This time around, when Solaris jumped to his feet to concede the fight, Demon Guy simply glanced at Gary somewhat unwillingly, but nonetheless decided not to anger that unfathomable fellow. Even the Demon Soul he carried on him was somewhat afraid of Gary.

    At about midday, James and Demon Guy stood in the arena. James had heard some of the rumours about this guy and read up on the legends and stories of demons. Now that they stood in the arena, face to face, James had a strange feeling as he looked over at creepy guy.

    He unrestrainedly released his Scrying field. At the same time, he touched his space ring. After some thought, he decided on what he was going to do. The moment the bell rang, Creepy Guy suddenly changed.

    Huge waves of black flames billowed out of his body and began to fill the stadium. His posture straightened out and his face twisted into a snarl looking very demonic.

    In his scrying field, James saw the visage of another spirit overlapping the Creepy Guys body. This foreign spirit had two long black horns on the crown of his head and thick grey skin. His mouth had two long fangs, and his hands were adorned with long fingers filled with razor sharps talons.

    James watched the scene of this spirit suppressing the Creepy Guys until it took control of the body. It appeared to only have a very loose connection to the body of the creepy guy and couldn¡¯t fully integrate, occasionally jittering and phasing in and out.

    In only a short while, the entire arena was filled with raging black flames, and the temperature inside rose to a terrifying degree like being trapped in an oven. Seeing James just glancing around at the encroaching flames, the Demon sneered disdainfully, and Creepy Guy¡¯s body shot towards James through the flames like a missile.

    A long black lance of flames formed into his hands and he thrust out towards James¡¯ throat the moment he was in range. James¡¯ spirit realm shuddered and began to rotate wildly. His asteroids started orbiting faster and faster, his ocean began to generate crashing waves, and his Nebula started to seethe in and out like it was breathing.

    His plasma tornado started to speed up its already rapid rotation, and his lightning nucleus lit up like a blazing blue sun. The flames in his spirit realm grew into raging infernos, and his magnetic energy began to rapidly expand and retract causing even the space of his spirit realm to shudder and vibrate.

    Even Goldy seemed to disperse into a pervasive golden light that filled the entire spirit realm.

    In the arena, James activated his Fleet Feet and disappeared from sight. The demons lance pierced through nothing and his disdainful sneer turned into confusion. Suddenly, a strange sensation filled him, and he turned around to see James standing behind him with a stern look on his face like he was getting ready to reprimand a junior.

    The Demons black flames raged around him but didn¡¯t seem to affect him at all. It was like he was completely immune to them.

    ¡°Little Demon. Are your squinty little demon eye¡¯s blind? Are you not aware you¡¯re standing on the precipice of death? You think you¡¯re safe hiding away in that shitty little Rabbit¡¯s Foot?¡±

    The demon was stunned for a moment. ¡®How did he know? It¡¯s impossible! He must be guessing.¡¯

    With this thought, the demon made no change in expression and stared hard at James with a very oppressive scowl. ¡°Filthy little human. Is it not you who¡¯s blind? I am the Demon Sheetoo. Son of the Legion Commander of the 3094th horde...¡±

    James waved his hand as if shooing a fly. ¡°Let me stop you their little demon Shity...¡±

    ¡°Sheetoo.¡±

    ¡°Yes, little demon shity, isn¡¯t that what I said? Now be quiet. I¡¯m going to give you a chance to reconcile for your impudence. Join my guild, or join the samples. These are your only options.¡±

    Sheetoo, having been thoroughly insulted by James¡¯ deliberate mispronunciation of his name, just growled like an animal and charged towards James while thrusting his lance. James sidestepped easily only for Shity ... Sheetoo to suddenly make a hand gesture with his other hand and his thrusting speed rapidly increased.

    Blurry images of James and Sheetoo began to start jumping about all over the arena, and lance afterimages filled the sky like rain. If you think that James was clearly too overpowering all of a sudden, you would be wrong.

    It¡¯s not that he¡¯s overpowered, it¡¯s rather that he¡¯s cheating. On his body were no small number of artefacts that repelled the heat of the black flames. In fact, even if that lance was to directly strike him, it would simply be dispersed like a cup of cool water striking a stone wall.

    Not only that, but because of the nature of the Demon¡¯s possession, the creepy guy¡¯s body moved a split second after the motion of the Demon¡¯s spirit. Thanks to that, James could read him like a book and act accordingly.

    With all that in mind, James and Sheetoo danced around the arena for a few minutes until Sheetoo finally got the ¡°sheeto¡± ... got the shits with it and pulled out the big guns. He started forming thin disks of flames and launching them at James from a distance.

    Normally, these disks could slice an Iron Body cultivator in two without any difficulty. They were unreasonably fast and powerful. Unfortunately, even with these, Sheetoo couldn¡¯t damage James in the slightest. For starters, he¡¯d have to be able to hit him.

    James slowly formed a smile on his mouth as he flittered around the arena dodging those flaming disks. As he jumped around, Jasmine was busily scanning the Rabbit¡¯s Foot that hung from a chain on the man¡¯s sleeve. After a while, she started giving James some instructions.

    James¡¯ dodging became even more bizarre as he started appearing all over the place and even making an effort to dodge in a strange way just to appear in a certain spot. Once this had gone on for a while, James suddenly stopped.

    Sheetoo¡¯s eyes were filled with hatred and red from frustration. Now that James had suddenly stopped about 40 metres away from him and was just smiling at him innocently, Sheetoo suddenly had a bad feeling. He almost felt like when he was still on the demon plane and met the overlord of the 10,000 legions.

    In his eyes, James suddenly appeared to be even eviler than Sheetoo himself. In his vision, everything was starting to have an eerily dark vibe to it. Almost like all the joy and pleasure was sucked out of the world and the only thing left was James.

    When he realised his mental state was being affected just by the presence of James staring at him so calmly, his heart clenched, and he made to jump back and create distance. The moment he made to move, James clapped his hands together, and strange ethereal shackle launched out of the ground hidden below the flames to latch onto Sheetoo¡¯s hoofed leg.

    Not Creepy Guy¡¯s leg, but actually Sheetoo¡¯s spirit was the one that it latched onto. As the body of Creepy Guy was following his intent and jumping backwards, Sheetoo¡¯s Spirit suddenly started to split from the body were that ethereal shackle was attached.

    Suddenly, James took a step forward and clapped again. Another shackle shot out from the ground below the black flames and clutched onto one of Sheetoo¡¯s pointy demon horns. Having his spirit trapped in place, the Creepy Guy¡¯s body that was moving through the air suddenly froze in place in mid-air like it was gripped in someone¡¯s spirit pressure.

    James started to clap rapidly and then tens, dozens, hundreds of chains started whipping out everywhere and latching onto Sheetoo. One of the chain cuffs even latched onto Sheetoo¡¯s nut sack causing him to scream out in agony.

    Although the rest of the crowd couldn¡¯t see or hear his spirit while he was still connected to Creepy Guy, they could see all those strange ethereal shackles latching onto something. When the last one that latched onto Sheetoo¡¯s balls shot out, they all could have sworn they heard someone crying out like they¡¯d just suffered severe damage to their manhood.

    Though, if anyone asked them, they would only remember it as if it was a long way away on the very edge of their hearing.

    By now, Sheetoo was aware of what was happening. With his entire spirit body shackled, the spirit energy he¡¯d fostered inside the Creepy Guy was locked down, and his connection to Creepy Guy¡¯s spirit realm was severed. The black flames filling the arena began to die down, and everyone was amazed to find the entire arena was filled with little array patterns everywhere.

    They were all obviously recently created, and by the looks of them, it was obvious someone had used earth energy to create the pattern on the ground. When this realisation struck, everyone looked at James in a strange light. It¡¯s one thing to be able to carve an array pattern with your spirit energy, but to carve so many, in the middle of battle, and with only a simple touch.

    It was a truly monstrous talent.

    Even all those old goats from the different factions who specialised in arrays couldn¡¯t claim to have this ability. After all, forming proper arrays required large amounts of precision with both spirit energy and soul force. If he made even one mistake, it could have been a catastrophe.

    James walked forward, unconcerned with the burning gaze filled with hatred that the demon was glaring at him. If looks could kill, this stare would have melted James into a puddle of goop. When he reached Creepy Guy¡¯s body, James reached out and clasped the Rabbit¡¯s Foot.

    His plasma energy suddenly filled the little foot, and amidst the muffled screams of the demon, the little Rabbit¡¯s Foot burst into flames and disintegrated.

    The crowd watched on horrified as Creepy Guy¡¯s body simply fell to the ground like a bag of rice and an ethereal spirit body in the form of Sheetoo the Demon, suddenly emerged wrapped in those chains from the ground.

    The crowd was stunned. ¡®Great Heavens! Is that the demon¡¯s soul?! The City Master is too powerful!¡¯

    The VIP¡¯s were stunned. ¡®Demon Sealer! The City Master is a hallowed Demon Sealer!¡¯

    Gary was stunned. ¡®I think I left the stove on! That reminds me, I need to put the trash out tomorrow.¡¯

    James stood in front of the spirit of Sheetoo with a shit eating grin on his face. Sheetoo tried to scream out his forfeit only for the chains already muffling his voice to tighten even further. Once the chains started wrapping around more and more, all that could be seen of the spirit was his glowing eyes filled with hatred and his pointy black horns.

    James¡¯ smile grew more disgusting as he flipped his hands and witnessed the terror that filled Sheetoo¡¯s eyes when he noticed what James was holding.

    In James¡¯ hand, was a small clear translucent gem. About the size of a fingernail and very much resembling a diamond. That was because this was a diamond. Interestingly, diamond had some rather strange properties in this world. No type of spirit energy could permeate a diamond. It also didn¡¯t generate any unique spirit energy of its own.

    Instead, diamonds were called soul gems in this world. This was because they greatly assisted in the replenishment of soul force when meditating, as well as being able to trap soul force and a great many other soul related things. Mostly, diamonds were all about the soul.

    When it comes to trapping a Demon, in the Atsunari continent there¡¯s no better-known method.

    With that in mind, James held out the diamond and placed it onto Sheetoo¡¯s forehead. He started reciting some ancient sounding language and making hand seals. With every word and hand gesture, one of the hundreds of arrays James had placed around the arena would light up.

    Slowly, a strange fog began to emerge from these array patterns and rapidly float towards the centre where James had trapped Sheetoo. After a while, all the arrays had lit up and began forming a strange nexus and connections between each other.

    The ancient language recited by James grew even more incomprehensible, and his voice slowly began resonating and creating a strange vibration throughout the arena. Everyone¡¯s ears started ringing loudly, and soon they couldn¡¯t hear anything but a loud ringing sound.

    The wispy white fog that had been congealing onto Sheetoo¡¯s spirit body began to glow with light and soon formed behind Sheetoo into the visage of a beautiful angel bathing the world in light. Her black hair fluttered in the non-existent wind, and her wispy white dress seemed to be made of pure white clouds.

    Two huge golden wings spread out from her back and a glorious sacred aura spread out through the entire city.

    The angel who was shrouded in golden light reached out a hand and placed it on Sheetoo¡¯s back. Another blinding flash filled the entire city. It wasn¡¯t until nearly a minute later when the strongest people present, the tower realm experts, finally regained their eyesight. When they looked into the arena, they could see James laughing like a mad man holding a diamond up in the air.

    In the little diamond was the figure of a Demon with black pointy horns, two fangs, grey skin and goat legs, screaming and yelling at the top of his lungs, only for no sound to come out.

    Shock?

    Awe?

    Bewilderment?

    No one was exactly certain what they should feel right at the moment. This kind of scene, it was something that happened only once in an age. The birth of a demon sealer. The kind of power and fortune a person needed to accomplish such a thing was nigh on impossible to achieve.

    The scene that everyone just witnessed, that everyone was a part of, was something that you could only read about in ancient stories or hear in ancient tales.

    James put the diamond away in his spirit ring and then looked up at Gary expectantly. Gary waved his hand and a ¡®ding¡¯ resounded in the arena waking everyone from their shocked states. A huge outcry of cheers and screams resounded in the arena as the entire audience rose to their feet and cheered.

    This was all a little too much for them to handle and the only way they could express themselves was through screaming their throat hoarse and clapping until their hands were red and sore.

    James soaked up their admiration like a sponge and smiled like the devil. All this admiration was like a tonic for Goldy and was feeding his pride to absurd levels.

    After this event, Gary announced that the competition was over and that the awards ceremony would be held at night. Everyone left to spread the news of this miraculous event and to calm down a bit from the spectacle.

    James immediately returned to the lab and entered a little room that was still having little bits and pieces added by floating drones. In the centre of the room was a single pole with three little prongs adorning the crown.

    James hurried up to it and placed the diamond with the demon in it between the three prongs. After a while, the room was finished up by the drones and cleared out. All that was left was the single stand in the centre holding the demon.

    The moment the room was emptied. James waved a hand through the air. A series of array screens appeared out of nothingness and began displaying all sorts of strange symbols. After some poking and observing, James pressed a few symbols, and all sorts of arrays began to come to life in the room.

    As he walked out of the room looking satisfied, a handful of arrays started firing condensed streams of pressure onto the diamond. Other arrays started pouring strange lights onto it and even more began to emit odd hums.

    Inside the diamond, the spirit of Sheetoo started to split apart violently then reconstitute itself. Or perhaps it was forcefully reconstructed. Just from the face he was making as this happened, it was clearly incredibly painful.

    As this continued, some arrays disappeared and then even more with even stranger effects began to pop up in their place.

    Sheetoo had become James¡¯ first soul experiment subject since Harvy. With all the strange arrays they¡¯d been building up over time, he needed someone to test them on. Unfortunately, most souls of humans and creatures that he could get his hands on were rather weak and frail.

    Because of this, they often completely dispersed from the severity of the tests before he had a chance to collect much data from them. Now that he had the soul of a demon, which by its very nature is supposedly immortal, he could do as much testing as he wanted.

    Naturally, this research was top secret and was entirely overseen by Jasmine and James personally.

    As James wandered down to play with something in the alchemy lab, his true spirit was having tea with Jasmine. While they were chatting, James couldn¡¯t help but think back to that incredible show they¡¯d just put on for everyone.

    ¡°Jasmine, where did we get an array for sealing demons?¡±

    Jasmine sipped her tea with a sly smile. ¡°Who said it was an array we got from elsewhere. I created it myself.¡±

    James was momentarily shocked. ¡°So what was the point of all that hullaballoo with the angel and the chanting?¡±

    Jasmine combed her black hair with a hand and smiled. Seeing this coy smile, James suddenly came to a realisation.

    ¡°You mean that angel was you?¡±

    Jasmine didn¡¯t say anything and just laughed in her heart. Before she could enjoy James¡¯ shock and awe for long, Goldy woke up from meditation and he and True Spirit James suddenly ¡®synced¡¯.

    James then understood everything that had happened. Jasmine apparently needed to leave the spirit world and make contact with the Demons spirit body to use the force built up by the arrays and the heavenly law from the chanting.

    The method for sealing that she designed actually hinged on using a spirit body to collate the deferent forces because any other method was less powerful and could potentially rip a normal person apart.

    Since she was bored from always being in the spirit realm, she decided to have some fun with it and appear in the form of a heavenly angel. Goldy also had to come and help out, so he used the fusion technique with Jasmine. Appearing on her like a set of angelic wings.

    James was slightly amused by Jasmine¡¯s antics but equally upset at being so easily duped. He especially made sure to give Goldy a meaningful glare for hiding it from him for so long.

    Back in the real world, James had arrived at the lab and noticed Norman passed out on the floor with a gourd in his hand. Loudly snoring in a very drunk manner.

    Stepping over his body, which smelt like a distillery, James continued on into the lab to find his Master.

    Sully was busy right down at the end of the lab in a relatively quiet unused area. He had thousands of different apparatus set up all over the place taking up room on dozens of benches and all operating at the same time.

    It looked somewhat like a huge theme park for chemistry equipment.

    In the centre of this setup, Sully sat cross-legged between three very ancient looking cauldrons, each giving off powerful spirit energy waves. They even appeared to have some rather old souls fused with them.

    Sully¡¯s focus was almost inhuman as he watched tubes from all the apparatus dripping bit by bit into each cauldron. There were dozens of tubes going to the top of each cauldron and they each seemed to drip in a very specific frequency and order.

    Finally, a slight reaction happened in one of the cauldrons and Sully waved his hand causing the little taps on the chemistry apparatus to switch off.

    Sully then focused his gaze onto that cauldron, and with another wave of the hand, a blazing green flame came to life under the cauldron. Strangely, unlike with a normal fire, this flame had a constant fixed temperature. On a little digital screen, Sully watched as the temperature stabilised at exactly 113.635 degrees Celsius and a little timer started next to it.

    As the timer started counting down, James felt Sully¡¯s spirit pressure envelop the cauldron and started making very fixed and specific motions. Like he was splitting something, then forcing something together.

    Then simultaneously, Sully started the same procedure on another cauldron while still controlling the flame and pressure on the first one. Finally, he also did it on the third one.

    James was stunned by this. It was almost unbelievable. James could barely even get his soul force to activate within only a meter range, and that was only in one spot and a single direction. Sully, on the other hand, was able to control three different areas of soul pressure simultaneously, in tiny areas no bigger than a fist, while all doing different actions.

    To say that the gap between their abilities in regards to soul force was huge would be an understatement.

    While Sully was in the middle of his refinement, he glanced up to see James watching. ¡°Finally here you ... you ... Hmph! Here!¡±

    Sully was too distracted to come up with something derogatory and so just flicked his hand out. Three little manuals landed in James¡¯ hand. Ancient old characters read; ¡®Soul Refinement - Mastery¡¯, ¡®Thousand Spirit Hands¡¯ and ¡®San¡¯s Inner Eye¡¯.

    James glanced at the contents and was at first slightly confused. After flipping back to the introduction of each book he almost couldn¡¯t contain his joy.

    ¡®Soul Refinement - Mastery. This technique is a secret soul cultivation method passed down from the ancient Balso Clan of the Pixies. Contains the 10 refinements of the 5 layers. By mastering this technique, a cultivator can increase the power of their soul tremendously, granting soul powers on par with the Ancient Dragons and the Titans that existed before time.¡¯

    ¡®Thousand Spirit Hands. A soul technique that helps a cultivator master control of their spirit pressure. By using this technique, it¡¯s said it¡¯s not impossible to create a thousand hands from your soul force and even control soul force to the point you can create almost anything.¡¯

    ¡®San¡¯s Inner Eye. This soul technique was first designed and invented by the greatest known soul warrior San. His inner eye was said to have mastered the powers of scrying to the point that he could see through the mysteries of the universe and every universe before and thereafter.¡¯

    James¡¯ hands were shaking from his excitement. Although this world had endless amounts of martial techniques and powerful cultivation methods for the spirit realm, he¡¯d rarely seen anything pertaining to the soul. In fact, it wouldn¡¯t be wrong to say that he¡¯d seen little to nothing of soul cultivation arts.

    Now, with these in hand, he was able to stop blindly groping at methods to increase the power of his soul and scrying, and instead had something he could study to help him.

    If nothing else, the methods in these books should be enough for Jasmine to derive some new methods more suitable to James, or even more powerful than these original texts.

    Without thanks or comment, James turned around and left. Sully had a sly grin on his face as James wandered off back to his training room. ¡®Ha! Stupid brat! Let¡¯s see how well you¡¯ll do with these techniques. My master risked life and limb for these techniques and some of the greatest figures to ever exist contributed to their creation. It¡¯s unlikely you¡¯ll even understand them, let alone be able to practise them!¡¯

    He actually began chuckling to himself as he imagined James coming back crying and pleading for him to help him learn these techniques. After all, he had to do the same thing when his master gifted these techniques to him as a disciple.

    While he was chuckling and imagining the sweetness of his coming victory, his concentration slipped, and one of his cauldrons suddenly shuddered. Very quickly Sully¡¯s face changed.

    James hummed and whistled happily as he wandered towards the elevator. On his way out, a bright light flashed behind him, and a rumbling ¡®boom!¡¯ shook the alchemy lab and woke Norman from his drunken slumber.

    James didn¡¯t even acknowledge the massive lab accident that had just happened and skipped over the slowly awakening Norman, continuing on his way to the elevator as he perused a manual.

    All the while, whistling loudly and feigning ignorance.

 Chapter 47: The Gears of War (END)

    The award ceremony that night was brief and uneventful. Hundreds of prizes of various qualities were handed out. Thanks to the numerous deaths of competitors both during the main competition and the ranking matches, a great many factions managed to step into higher positions and receive rewards beyond their capability to earn.

    The ranking matches were mostly just for the purposes of filling all the positions from 1st to 26th, which were the only individuals to receive any compensation for their efforts in this trial. That¡¯s not to say that everyone else received nothing. They were granted the opportunity to be awed by James¡¯ magnificent visage, which he believed would be more than enough reward for them.

    The top 26 contestants all received various prizes varying from martial techniques, to weapons, to trade opportunities. It wouldn¡¯t be wrong to say that the top twenty-six prizes were very well received and everyone believed them to be of inordinate worth.

    Naturally, the top three prizes were the most lusted after. However, two of them, the Brotherhoods assistance and the Velocity, both remained firmly in the hands of the guild. This was because in the ranking matches, Sword Girl overcame Betto¡¯s powerful space magic and took second place.

    Thanks to this, apart from the small spatial ring that was the third prize, the only other prize that James had any concern over was the 4th place, which happened to be his promise to custom make a weapon for said contender.

    It just so happened that contender was Pigtails, whom James had flattened with a single strike in the semi-finals. After a huge party that spanned three nights and two days, Tech City gradually started to calm itself down again.

    Or at least it calmed down slightly more than during the War of the Worlds. As a parting gift, each of the contenders that stepped into the top 50 received a golden ticket to become Seed members in the next War of the Worlds.

    A week after the competition finished, James was receiving reports of small skirmishes happening between the borders of Soel and Hastoel. James wouldn¡¯t let a chance to stir trouble slip by and set some infiltrators out to these areas to help raise tensions.

    After having received reports from all of his minions ... err ... companions, efforts out in the field, James started putting a few more plans into action and laughing deviously for hours while he did so.

    Imogine, the Pigtails girl from the Red Hearings faction, which even Jasmine had no knowledge of, had a strange expression on her face when she¡¯d witnessed James just suddenly burst out into sinister laughter now and then.

    She¡¯d come to try and discuss something important with James only to rebuffed every time she brought up something unrelated to the artefact she wanted. Over the course of a week, James had sat down with her regularly to take her thoughts on what type of artefact she wanted.

    Other than the occasional disturbing laughter and the spirit artefact, he didn¡¯t seem interested at all in her origins. James was, of course, interested in the girl¡¯s origins, after all for her to reach the heights she had in cultivation, naturally he was curious where she was from.

    The whole time he¡¯d been rebuffing her attempts to discuss other things with him, he¡¯d actually been waiting for Jasmine to find out something about her background. At least then he¡¯d have something concrete and have a better idea what her deal was. After all, the girl was a complete stranger and turned up out of apparently nowhere.

    It was only when he was nearly completed her weapon, which was modelled as a chain sickle, did Jasmine finally locate information regarding the Red Hearings. James wasn¡¯t surprised to find out that they were a Guild from the Gastalous Continent and they specialised in operations in and around the sea.

    According to Jasmine, they had a rather interesting spirit artefact in the form of an ancient Galley, moored at a rather prosperous port city in the United Islands. With this in mind, a few rockets were launched from Tech City and quickly found their way over the coasts of Gastalous.

    Although Jasmine had been doing some initial probing and mapping of Gastalous, this was the first time the Brotherhood had made any real effort to begin exploring the continent. As the Rockets fell to earth near the shores of Gastalous, everyone simply mistook them for meteors.

    In actual fact, these few rockets were filled to the brim with drones. Inside were three types. The first being the standard flying Mk IV Drone that was now like a symbol of Tech City and could be found every 30 kilometres in Atsunari.

    The second was a new prototype drone called the Cluster. It was actually more akin to thousands of little drones the size of flies, all stacked together inside a floating ball like hive cluster. These were the best for close reconnaissance and intelligence gathering in and around cities and towns.

    The third drone type was the Mole. This drone is almost as common in Atsunari as the standard type. The only difference is that no one even knows that they exist in Atsunari. This drone spends all of its time digging around in the ground and probing for interesting minerals and other rare resources.

    The most frightening part about all these drones is that, under the guidance of Jasmine, they¡¯re basically fully self-sufficient. Within 3 months they¡¯ll have created at least 3 ¡®hives¡¯ to reproduce more drones. By the time James even arrives in Gastalous, Jasmine will probably have mapped out the entire continent and have notes on every interesting secret from coast to coast.

    As this was happening, another new drone prototype was silently being deployed into the oceans on Atsunari. James was well aware that only a small portion of the world is up here on the surface. All the most useful and interesting resources are most likely buried away deep under the earth or at the bottoms of oceans.

    With this in mind, James would, without a doubt, begin exploring these places using drones. By the time James had completed Imogine¡¯s chain sickle, all of these new drones had been deployed and were busy propagating and spreading as they fed back massive amounts of data to Jasmine, who strangely didn¡¯t even seem to notice this huge increase in workload.

    Also by this time, the port city that was home to Red Hearing guild had long since been infiltrated by an infestation of little metal flies.

    -Guild HQ-

    James sat opposite Imogine at his round table as he presented to her the finished product of the chain sickle he¡¯d been working on for her. It was, in her opinion, a masterpiece in its own right. Even Imogine, who had met people far above her in cultivation, had never seen such a mystical spirit weapon.

    This was James¡¯ first product since he¡¯d understood the mysteries of the folding fan and so it was filled with a great deal of effort on his part. The sickle blade was sharp enough to cut through damn near anything, and the chain had a simple cudgel style handle that could suddenly become as heavy as a mountain.

    The most mystical part was the chain. Through trial and error, James had discovered a means to allow the chain to extend or retract infinitely. In its primary form, the chain sickle didn¡¯t even appear to have a chain and simply looked like a sickle with a long handle.

    Also, its ability to magnify water based skills was almost demonic, and at times it displayed truly bizarre properties when it magnified water attribute spirit energy. Often creating an unstoppable wave and other times a tiny jet stream powerful enough to slice through an entire city.

    That was only the tip of the iceberg. James was rather proud of this artefact and was almost regretful that he had to give it away. He knew, however, that this was barely the beginning. Now that he¡¯d experimented with new forging methods he had to consolidate his experience and master the new skills he¡¯d learnt.

    When that time came, his mastery of artefact crafting would reach a whole new level. Beyond anything the piddling little continent of Atsunari had ever witnessed.

    After some brief comment and introductions to her new weapon, James sat down and looked at her expectantly.

    Imogine was slightly startled when she realised that James was looking at her like a wolf preparing to devour a fat sheep. She frowned lightly and tightly gripped her brand new sickle, thinking that he was going to extort something from her despite this being a prize for her efforts in the competition.

    ¡°City Master James. Many thanks to you for your efforts in the creation of this weapon. I promise to take good care of it in my travels.¡±

    This was more or less her way of saying, ¡®It¡¯s too late to take it back now. Mine!¡¯.

    James had a confused expression for a moment before he leant forward slightly and rested his chin on his hands.

    ¡°Miss Imogine. I¡¯ve no interest in taking advantage of you over some trifling spirit artefact. I think it¡¯s about time, you tell me why you came here.¡±

    Imogine was momentarily surprised at his mention of such a powerful weapon as being trifling, but quickly regained her calm. She looked at James suspiciously for a moment, curious as to why he rebuffed all her attempts to discuss this before now only to suddenly bring it up at the end.

    ¡°It¡¯s clear as day that I didn¡¯t come here for your competition. City Master James, you¡¯ve built yourself a rather powerful little guild here on Atsunari, but I¡¯m sure that with your position you¡¯ve come to realise that your powerful guild here is woefully incomparable to everywhere else in this world.

    ¡°I came here to recruit you. My Red Hearing¡¯s Guild is the only one capable of crossing the vast ocean. It will most likely come as a shock to you, but my guild is actually from Gastalous.¡±

    At this point, Imogine paused to watch the shocked reaction James had when he discovered he was being recruited by a Guild from one of the most powerful continents on the planet. However, the one to end up shocked was Imogine, when she realised that James hadn¡¯t reacted at all.

    ¡®He mustn¡¯t be as profound as Senior Brother thought he was. He isn¡¯t even aware of my continent or the difference in power. What a country bumpkin. It¡¯s true what they say, you can teach away ignorance, but there¡¯s no cure for stupidity.¡¯

    Thinking this far, Imogine went into a long explanation about Gastalous and all its virtues. She didn¡¯t even need to play it up and exaggerate it because Gastalous really was a haven for cultivators in comparison to Atsunari.

    After almost half an hour, she refocused her gaze onto James only to realise he wasn¡¯t even slightly shocked or moved by her speech and was busily pouring himself some tea. It was like he wasn¡¯t paying attention to her at all.

    ¡°City Master James! I¡¯m not sure you realise the gravity of this situation. This continent is...¡±

    James finally broke her long winded speech with a wave of the hand and a chuckle.

    ¡°Miss Imogine. I¡¯ve been polite and cordial and let you ramble on and waste my time for almost an hour. My time is precious. Do not take me for a fool or some random lout. I am not ignorant of this world¡¯s geography. Nor am I ignorant of the inherent differences between places like Atsunari and Gastalous. In fact, I would go so far as to say my understanding far surpasses yours.¡±

    James sat back at the table with his cup of tea and in a very regal manner took a sip. Before Imogine¡¯s embarrassment at being talked to in such a fashion could become anger, James continued.

    ¡°You may have been so polite as to act humble and gracious while you were here. But the total indifference and lack of sincerity are as obvious to me as the pages of a book. I can tell, that even though I beat your pretty little ass into a patty cake in the arena, you still look down on me as a lesser being because your background is so lofty and ideal while mine is non-existent.¡±

    When he said this, shock registered in her eyes. James smiled like the devil as he calmly stirred his tea.

    ¡°Oh yes, Miss Imogine. I¡¯m well aware of who you are and where you¡¯re from. I also know that your purpose here isn¡¯t just to recruit me. Your real purpose here is to try and pressure me into becoming a branch of your guild so that you have a new base of operations in Atsunari. I¡¯m even so well informed that I know exactly what such a mighty and prestigious guild of the Gastalous continent wants in my backyard.

    ¡°Unfortunately, you can only act covertly like this, and come here to make promises and whisper me sweet nothings, so I¡¯ll join you. If anyone above the palace realm leaves your ship, your competition will become suspicious. They¡¯ll know that someone is trying to break the ancient treaty and is planning on stepping onto Atsunari once more.¡±

    By this point, Imogine was shaking slightly. Her anger was rising like the tide, and her embarrassment was fuelling it to rise faster. The only thing keeping it in check at the moment was the memory of being smashed by James and flattened in a single strike. As well as the fear that he would start telling people what their true intentions were before they¡¯d even started the initial steps of their plans.

    ¡°How do you know all this?¡± She couldn¡¯t help but rasp out with a dry throat.

    James¡¯ smile grew wider, and he glanced over at her. ¡°I know a great deal Miss Imogine. I suggest you go back and get on your boat. Atsunari is mine, and I¡¯ll not let anyone trounce over here from another continent and start poking their nose in where it doesn¡¯t belong.¡±

    After saying this, James stood up and began to leave. Just before he walked out the door to the office, he turned back with a disgusting smile on his face, to see a thoroughly infuriated Imogine.

    ¡°Imogine. There is one last thing. If your Father can manage to survive the anger of my reply to your invitation nearly killing him, let him know I have a counter offer. If he offers you up to me on a silver platter, I¡¯ll allow him to join my faction and become the first foreign offshoot of the Dark Brotherhood. In addition, no one will ever know that he had been setting up such a devious scheme.¡±

    James then disappeared out the door. Just as he reached the elevator to head down to the lab, he heard the enraged scream of a wild young women coming from his office. He couldn¡¯t stop himself from chuckling merrily.

    -Port Charlton- Great Galley of the Red Hearing -

    BOOM! BOOM!

    The fierce sounds of huge blasts rang out in the port town and many bystanders watched on as parts of the giant Galley, moored offshore from the port, were blasted away. The loud incoherent ravings of someone echoed across the water and shook the windows and rattled the doors until they shattered from the force of the shockwaves.

    It seemed the madness of the raving lunatic was directly affecting the atmosphere. Storm clouds started brewing overhead, and the waves of the ocean started violently seething in rhythm to the man¡¯s rantings.

    ¡°The fucking punk! Fucking hick from the backwoods! Fucking...¡±

    And so continued the rantings for a good hour. By the time his voice trailed off, lightning was cascading through the sky and rain was washing over the island in an endless violent torrent.

    The waves from the ocean were so brutal that half the cities port had been washed away, resulting in thousands dead. The harbour had an ominous red tinge to the waters and was littered with corpses being rolled along in the waves like deadwood.

    In the huge Galley ship, a large man built like a bull, with a barrel-like chest and bulging muscles, stalked back and forth in his captain¡¯s quarters. Seated at the captain¡¯s table were three men and a girl. Each of the men were dressed in the uniform of ranked captains, and the bulging muscled man was tightly squeezed into an admiral¡¯s attire.

    The girl was naturally Imogine, and in case it was difficult to guess, the admiral was her father, and the head of the Red Hearings. Of the three men, one was young, one was middle-aged and one was old.

    Imogine sat in silence at the table, with her head lowered in embarrassment. The youngest captain seethed with anger while the middle-aged and oldest captain remained slightly more composed than the rest. Although it was easy to see that even they were frowning slightly at the dilemma they were in.

    As he paced back and forth with a face filled with anger, the Admiral finally broke the tense silence of the cabin.

    ¡°How did he find out? I want to know exactly who leaked this information to him.¡±

    As he said this, he swatted an annoying fly away and continued pacing back and forth. Due to his anger, the fly was disintegrated by the force of his blow. In response to this attack, another fly buzzed over and started flying around him.

    Finally, the Admiral paused after swatting another fly. ¡°Prepare the Raiders. We can¡¯t let our intentions be leaked. Have them march to this free city and raze it to the ground. Bring me that boy¡¯s head. Samson, I¡¯ll leave this to you.¡±

    The youngest of the three captains stood and made a salute. His face had a sinister smile plastered across it as he imagined slaughtering this stranger¡¯s entire city. More so than that, he had longed after Imogine since childhood. For some swine from the lesser continents to demand her hand in marriage, he would never allow it.

    ¡°Admiral Shirl. You needn¡¯t worry. Such a pathetic little backwater country. Even if this free city was filled with tower realm cultivators, they could never hope to oppose our raiders.¡±

    The Admiral gave a curt nod, then sent Samson out to prepare his troops. He then looked to the eldest of the three captains.

    ¡°Sonsam. It¡¯s impossible for anyone above palace realm to leave the ship, but that doesn¡¯t mean our hands are tied. I want you to take the Maroona class frigate and return to the Guild. If this attack on the city fails for some unforeseeable reason, then we will invite him back to Gastalous and...¡±

    BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

    Before his thoughts could be finished, huge explosions started to ring out and the ship began to shudder and shake violently. In a matter of seconds, 8 massive flaming holes had appeared all over the ship.

    This Galley was a spirit artefact refined by masters in forging. Not only that, but it was covered in array formations from head to toe protecting it and making it into a fortified floating castle. For something to deal enough damage to create a hole in the ship, let alone a hole nearly 100 metres in diameter it would need power equal to or even greater than a core realm practitioner.

    James was actually rather surprised as he watched this in his spirit realm. He¡¯d expected those 8 drones he sent in for suicide to create a great deal more damage than that. It just goes to show how powerful the Gastalous continent is.

    Especially considering that the Red Hearing¡¯s Guild is really just a small fry in Gastalous. It¡¯s the equivalent of a guild created by true spirit realm and barrier realm cultivators in Atsunari. As attested by the fact that the Admiral is only a core realm practitioner himself.

    James was greatly enjoying the show in his spirit realm as he watched the people from the ship running all over the place like panicked ants as they tried to stop the flooding of the ship and searching the horizon for their enemies.

    The Admiral¡¯s face was a sight to see as he received reports from the deck crew regarding the damage. When he heard that the majority of the explosions were focused on the Raiders that were preparing to depart the ship, a tight feeling enveloped his chest.

    -Hastoel/Soel Border-

    ¡°Bring your arms to bear! Keep in formation! Arcane Cannon ... FIRE!¡±

    KABOOM!

    ¡°Charge the cannon. Cavalry to the fore!¡±

    On the border between the Soel and Hastoel nations, hundreds of thousands of lives were in a vicious struggle for life and death. Palace realm cultivators were locked in battle, releasing powerful techniques that churned the earth and split the sky.

    Blood flooded the battlefield and coagulated into a sticky mess, slowly the march of the Soel forces.

    Standing on a platform floating in the air was an Archbishop donned in the regal robes of the Order of Sun¡¯s. The power of his peak tower realm cultivation carried his voice across the battlefield to every ear.

    Down below hordes of spirit realm practitioners moved like a well organised machine in various formations. Cavalry donned in shining golden armour charged through the fields of blackened, charred earth and bloody mud.

    Every wave of their swords brought forth death as the glorious three Sun¡¯s light washed over them through the brewing storm clouds.

    The Hastoelians were pushed back with every movement from the well-formed and disciplined armies of the church. The few Palace Realm generals that stood at the walls of a giant fort not far from the battlefield were too busy fighting and trying to one up each other for their orders to properly galvanise their men.

    It was a one sided slaughter. This was just one of many incursions that had come without precursor or warning. More than 10 such battles were being waged across the western border of Hastoel.

    Making everything worse was that the more people they conscripted to be marched to the border to their death, the more riled up and agitated the populous became. Due to the constant leaking of vicious acts and dirty secrets of the leaders and upper classes, the lower classes of Hastoel were already showing signs of an uprising.

    As powerful as a cultivator at tower realm or palace realm is, they can¡¯t escape the inevitable death that will follow if they¡¯re swarmed by millions or billions of ordinary commoners. Making things even worse is that an underground resistance has been stirring in the shadows of the nation for months. They¡¯ve been feeding endless propaganda to the civilians and worse still, equipping the entire nation with cultivation methods.

    If it takes millions of commoners to kill a palace realm cultivator, then it would only take 10,000 barrier realms to achieve the same effect. Worse still, the cultivation techniques being fed to the masses are powerful and fast. In a matter of weeks, it¡¯s possible for a regular nobody to reach True Spirit realm.

    While the entirety of Soel was a well-oiled machine, with the church and populace working in harmony to achieve a single goal, Hastoel was a single incident away from civil war. The upper echelons were at each other¡¯s throats, and the populace was verging on riots.

    The only thing they had going for them in this sudden war, is that Soel doesn¡¯t have the resources to maintain their armies. Half their casualties are just from starvation alone. Even a Palace realm cultivator can¡¯t survive without any food forever. In fact, although cultivation can lower the bodies needs such as sleeping and eating. It can¡¯t eliminate it entirely.

    Perhaps the only cultivators that can escape those needs are the legendary immortals told of in fairy tales.

    Soel has been starved almost half a year now. Although a palace realm can survive without sustenance for a few months, they aren¡¯t gods. Worse still, only a few thousand of their army was actual even in the palace realm.

    As this border war was kicking off, hundreds of thousands of civilians and cultivators were being enlisted by the Emperor of Yori. Everyone in their army passed through Tech City like an automated factory line.

    Walk in one end an ordinary cultivator in daoist robes and humble bearing. Walk out the other side of the city decked to the nines in Mk2 Combat Armour, Mk3 Arc Cannon, Mk2 Arc Pistol, various protective talismans and other assorted items.

    There were even regiments of armed combatants riding in vehicles with tacked tank like constructs sporting huge cannons and railguns. Hundreds of Imperial soldiers left the city on air boards and tens of thousands piled into Mk3 Big Berta¡¯s being piloted by Brotherhood guild members.

    These Big Berta¡¯s were bristling with rail guns and had the endless hum of a powerful shielding array. There even managed to be 3 Velocity Gunships crews. Although these ships and their crew were only on loan to the Empire, they instilled fear and awe in anyone who witnessed them.

    Among them, was two Gunships of a different design. This Gunship was smaller than the velocity but maintained a similar shape. One had the symbol of a skull with a scythe on it and was painted pitch black. The other was white as white can be and had a Knight on a golden steed wielding a lance.

    All these forces were equipped and sent out to the borders of Yori Empire over the span of a month. They didn¡¯t do anything. But they sat there looking like an ominous threat towards anyone stupid enough to attack the empire.

    Seeing this action, Hastoel and Soel both began to have a strange feeling deep in their gut. Being led by tower realm practitioners, they had with them the wisdom of thousands of years of experience. By the time they realised there was something suspicious going on in Yori, it was already too late.

    -Excerpt of Master Historian Gilligan- The History of Ancient Religions -

    It was a dark day in the history of Order of Suns when the Demon King¡¯s loyal dogs stood at the border of what was called, at that time, The Yori Empire. In all of its ancient and powerful history, the Order surely never believed that their downfall would come at the hands of what everyone believed then to be a ¡®mere boy¡¯.

    It was the year of the Dragon in the ancient calendar. 17th Day of the 2nd Month. The drums of war had already rung out along the Hastoel and Soel Border for months. Although it has never been proven, it¡¯s now believed that the Demon King was the curator of the sinister plot to starve Soel to the verge of extinction and the unrest within the Ancient Nation of Hastoel.

    This lead to the inevitable battle fed by the primal instinct and need for food which threw the Order of Sun¡¯s and the Hastoel Aristocracy into a heated war; inevitably wasting their resources and manpower.

    When the Demon King finally unleashed his dogs, they rushed out into the fields of these two Great Nations and filled the earth for three hundred kilometres in blood. Thanks to the Demon Kings mastery of artefact forging and his ability to automate the process, his army was nigh unstoppable.

    At first, the great Order of Suns was filled with disdain for the actions of a piddling little nation like Yori. It was their lack of foresight that led them to underestimate this opponent initially. It wasn¡¯t until the battle of the City of Orphans that they realised their mistake.

    The powerful war artefacts of the Demon King rolled over the established battle front of the Order in a matter of days. When Saint Merry, renowned at the time for having a heart of gold and rescuing an endless number of war orphans, rose to hold back the tides of the invading army, she was instead torn to pieces by the very orphans she saved, when the Demon King offered them food and benefits in exchange for the Saint¡¯s life.

    The city of orphans later got the name of City of Little Devils, when the Demon King established a school here that trained and brainwashed these young children into vicious warriors and assassins.

    It was only after this battle that Soel finally took the invasion of its lands seriously. They pulled back their forces in the territory of Hastoel, which was at the same time being invaded by the Yori Empire, and assembled a grand army near their capital city. The City of Light!

    Before the Pope could announce a Holy crusade to purge Atsunari of the Demon King, the Yori Army had already pushed the battlefront onto their doorstep.

    -City of Light- Yori Camp -

    James ran for his life. He rapidly sprinted through the empty command camp as sweat poured from his brows. His face was locked in a tense scowl, and his blue robes were in tattered disrepair. The light of various torches scattered around the camp flickered in his worried eyes.

    A horn sounded in the distance, and the rumbling of hundreds of pairs of feet stamping the ground echoed out from every direction.

    James froze for a second and assessed his surroundings. In a wooden spotting tower off in the distance he saw the glare of the moonlight from of a pair of binoculars peering back at him over the railing of the tower.

    ¡°Tsk! Those bastards! Who¡¯s been teaching them all these tricks?¡±

    James started running again. Another horn sounded out and shadows flickered in every direction. Behind him nearly a hundred meters away, torches were blown out by a mysterious wind bathing the camp in darkness.

    James glanced back and grimaced. ¡°Jasmine, how far is it?¡±

    ¡°400 Hundred Meters James. It appears you¡¯re in a bit of a bind this time.¡±

    ¡°Like hell! If they catch me, even if I regret every day for the rest of my life, it¡¯ll never be enough regret.¡±

    James broke into a sprint. Shadows on every side flickered, and torches went out in every direction. As he rounded a tent, he saw the command tent only a few hundred meters away. Without delay, he sprinted for his life.

    The horn grew more and more frantic, and the rumble of feet hitting the ground increased its tempo. Rocks began to launch out from the shadows as they shot towards James with a whistling sound.

    James dodged a rock, spun and deflected another. He ducked and rolled forward before sprinting forward again.

    ¡®Only a hundred meters. I¡¯m nearly there!¡¯

    Just as he stepped forward to the last hundred meter stretch, another rock whizzed out from the darkness. James sidestepped to avoid it, and as his foot touched the ground, the earth started to give way.

    ¡®Fuck! It¡¯s a trap!¡¯

    Before his weight was fully on his stepping foot, he dropped his weight and launched himself to the side with his other foot, jumping over a hole nearly a meter wide.

    He wiped his brow with some worry then jumped up and continued running. More rocks came and every second step was a trap. 30 meters. 20 meters. 10 meters. He was almost safe.

    Just as he was reaching out for the flap of the tent, a shadow blurred from the side. James raised his arms up to block the unexpected attack. Then remembering something, he grinned slyly and just fell back like a block of wood before it could touch him.

    Like a plank, he shamelessly hit the ground on his back as a little girl with long green hair shot over him. She was dressed in a black tank top and shorts. Her feet were wearing a pair of rugged looking boots, and her face was filled with shock as she passed through the air over top James.

    Just as she hit the ground and turned back to grab at him, he even more shamelessly started rolling through the dirt like a worm as he disappeared under the flaps of the command tent.

    ¡°Damned shameless uncle! Stupid old man! Have you no shame! Crawling around in the dirt just to win a bet! How is that befitting your stature?¡±

    James¡¯ voice resounded out from the inside of the tent. ¡°What¡¯s shame?! Can I eat that? Can I sell that? You lost fair and square. Now round up your little army of trouble makers and scram back to your tents, or else Uncle¡¯s gonna come out and we can play the game who screams ¡®uncle¡¯ first.¡±

    The green haired girl pouted with an angry face and stamped her foot in the dirt. ¡°Damned stupid Uncle!¡±

    With that, she spun and started marching off towards the darkened area of the camp. As she walked towards the darkened area, hundreds of baby-faced youths from every age between babies, and young teenagers walked out of the shadows comforting the green haired girl with pleasantries.

    James released a tense breath and finally relaxed on a chair in the command tent. All the generals and commanders in the tent, nearly a dozen of them, all watched James with wry smiles on their faces.

    ¡°Those little devils are going to take a hundred years off my life. Jasmine, how could you let me make such a gamble with them? They¡¯re going to follow me around like a shadow for the rest of my life.¡±

    After James said that, he glared fiercely at the generals from the Yori Empire seated in the command tent.

    ¡°And you lot aren¡¯t making it any easier! Who the hell taught them all those tactics? Huh? Spotters ever hundred meters! Pitfalls! Leading me into traps with rocks! Don¡¯t try and deny it! I know it was you lot!¡±

    As if by some pre-discussed agreement, the generals and commanders all gave a simultaneous cough and pretending to be discussing something of great importance.

    James¡¯ eyebrow started twitching violently at this scene. Before he could rouse himself up from his chair to start meting out punishments, Jasmine poured cold water on his flames of ire.

    ¡°It¡¯s your own fault, James. If you hadn¡¯t made all those promises to those orphans just for the amusement of watching them shred that old saint women, then you¡¯d not be in such a tight situation.¡±

    James had no choice but to smile wryly and accept that he was the maker of his own demise. Back at the city of orphans, because of his sick sense of humour, he¡¯d made all sorts of promises to the thousands of orphans that the old saint had taken in to feed and protect.

    One of those was a bet. If even one of those orphans could catch him outside, he¡¯d adopt them all. To sweeten the pot he¡¯d even boasted lavishly of his position and everything he could offer them. He even said that whenever they wanted to challenge him they could come find him and he wouldn¡¯t even use any spirit powers.

    Thanks to that, they ripped that sweet old granny to shreds and then followed the army for 50 kilometres in an effort to try and catch him. Making the situation worse, the Empire¡¯s forces all took a great deal of joy in the competition and were feeding these kids and teaching them all these dastardly tricks to try and catch him.

    What James hadn¡¯t counted on was that girl with green hair. She was the descendant of some ancient elf clan and had a little experience with cultivation. Although she was still in the barrier realm, and was only 12, she was stronger than a man not using any spirit energy.

    The reason James could maintain an advantage over her was that he¡¯d just started body cultivation. His method of body cultivation was derived from all sorts of data compiled by Jasmine and was without doubt rather profound.

    Unfortunately, he¡¯d only started a few weeks ago when he realised he was going to need it to escape these little devils without using spirit energy. Even worse, because of its profundity, it was incredibly difficult to cultivate quickly. This meant that the elf girl¡¯s cultivation was going to be faster than his bodies.

    If he lost this bet, he was going to suddenly be the father of a few hundred orphans.

    ¡®Hmm. Should I just cheat? They¡¯d never know if I used my spirit energy.¡¯

    The moment he had this thought, Gold James refuted vehemently.

    ~You want to cheat against a little girl?! Have you no shame? Have you no conscience?~

    James¡¯ True Spirit looked at Goldy with an odd face. Moments later they both burst out laughing madly like Goldy had just told a hilarious joke.

    -City of Light- Battlefield -

    Outside the City of Light was a vast field that was once filled with crops and grazing pastures of every kind. After the great calamity however, the area around the city for as far as the eye could see, was only dirt. In the six months since the beginning of the great famine, the area around Light City had been turned into a barren wasteland covered in dry dirt.

    The parched earth was filled with cracks formed from the earth drying up and splitting like aged skin. What few rivers and streams that ran through the landscape were now both murky and polluted or completely dried up.

    It seemed as if nature itself had turned its back on this land and condemned it to purgatory. Only James knew that this wasn¡¯t the case at all. This was the result of very precise and targeted bio-warfare. In less convoluted terms, this was what happens when huge amounts of pesticides were poured over an area of land every day.

    No one ever realised that every time it rained the grass would die and the trees would wither. They also never seemed to realise that heavy rains followed the appearance of the Ghost of Famine. This was why they prayed for rain to bathe the land, rejoiced when it came, and then cried themselves to sleep at night when everything just seemed to keep getting worse.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    Just for some amusing plot, James had poisoned the earth of an entire nation.

    Nonetheless, the damage is already done. In the centre of the barren lands stood a tall and proud city. It spanned for kilometres in every direction around a central point. This point was a Cathedral that stood out from the city like a great stone mountain.

    Its size and majesty loomed over the lands and put to shame every building beneath it. Seated as the throne of this nation, the Cathedral dwarfed everything. Even the real mountains and valleys seemed to be put to shame by the presence of this building.

    It seemed ancient and resplendent at the same time. The walls were clean and well maintained. The windows reflected the glory of the three Sun¡¯s high in the sky. The entire structure looked like it was carved from a single stone.

    In the barren wasteland, east of the city, was an army with tens of millions lined up in a single mass formation. Their praying and chanting rumbled across the landscape like a single voice.

    Opposed to them was an army that was a midget by comparison. It sported only a few tens of thousands of troops. Barely enough to be considered a Corps. This Corps wasn¡¯t set up in a big elaborate formation like the army from the Order, but instead somewhat ragtag and separated into various battalions.

    On a war of this scale, it was almost unheard of for two armies of such disproportionate sizes to meet like this. However, it could be seen that one army was frightened and somewhat nervous, while the other was simply standing there staring at the opposition like a tiger eyeing a fat sheep.

    Among the Yori Empire¡¯s army was various tank constructs that hovered a few meters off the ground along with buggy¡¯s sporting railguns and thousands of men mounted on hoverboards.

    James stood at the fore-front of the Yori army surveying the formations of the Order of Sun¡¯s army.

    ¡°Jasmine, have you figured out what their formations can do yet?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid not James. I can only tell that it draws a huge amount of spirit energy from the sun. My best guess is that it uses light spirit energy to increase the power of the troops.¡±

    ¡°I see. Well then, let¡¯s take away the suns shall we.¡±

    James tapped his earpiece and simply said; ¡®Go.¡¯. With this command, two velocity gunships shot through the sky far above, trailing long jet streams and spewing a mysterious green gas from behind.

    The faint booming sound of the sound barrier being shattered could barely be discerned from the landscape, but to the tower realm practitioners of the Order, it was like someone clapping next to their ear. They all looked up at the same time to see the little black dots that were the Gunship¡¯s as well as the thick green gas pouring out of them.

    Although they hadn¡¯t the slightest idea what they were doing, just the fact that those flying death machines were here was a precursor to an uncountable death toll. Feeling that the enemy had already made the first move, the Arch-Bishops and the Pope all started their rousing speeches to get the morale of their army up and prepare for battle.

    Seeing this, James smiled like the devil and tapped his earpiece again. ¡°Mechanised Infantry, say hello.¡±

    Earth shattering booms rang out as the few hundred tanks among the Yori Army all raised their cannon barrels to the sky and fired the opening salvo.

    Back in the Order¡¯s camp, Pope Solaris had just gotten to the height of his speech. He could see the fanatical light gleaming in the eyes of his men as his brainwashing sermon pushed them to new heights and brought out their courage and killing intent.

    Unfortunately, just as he was getting to the part about the Light of the three Suns shielding them from harm and how even if they die they¡¯ll be embraced in the next realm by the three sun¡¯s ... massive explosions started ringing out overhead their formation and drowned out his voice.

    The ammunition from these tanks wasn¡¯t designed for creating a single large explosion. It was instead designed to wreak havoc on the battlefield and cull lives by the thousands. They exploded about 100 meters from the ground and rained razor sharp shrapnel for hundreds of meters in every direction.

    With everyone distracted by the Pope¡¯s stirring sermon, the controlling nodes of the formation had failed to react in time. The formation was too late to protect them, and thousands of soldiers were slaughtered by the spinning shrapnel.

    The lines of the Order¡¯s army were filled with screaming and crying. Even a few palace realm cultivators had taken hits and were out of action. In this single attack, James had snuffed out that spark of hope and fanaticism that had been growing in the hearts of these men.

    After this, the battlefield grew quiet for a short time. The Order¡¯s army was filled with indignation at this dirty sneak attack. Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do to dispel the shadow of doubt that it created in the hearts of their men.

    As such, they decided to strike fast and hot. They would march forth and decimate this pitiful little army from Yori. With the power of their formation, there was nothing that could stop them. Even if they were facing a few ancient core realm practitioners, as long as the formation held, they would be victorious.

    Seeing the Order marching towards them like toy soldiers, James almost fell over from shock. He called over a few generals from the Yori Army.

    ¡°What are they doing? They¡¯re just going to march towards us like lemmings?¡±

    The generals all gave James a strange look.

    ¡°City Master James, what else could they need to do? The power of the Formation of Light is as ancient as the Order itself. It¡¯s a heritage from great figures back in ancient times. What else would they need to do?¡±

    James just looked at them like idiots.

    ¡°Sighh ... I suppose in an age of cold weapons and ancient formations, these sort of tactics are all these people really needed.¡±

    James peered out across the wasteland to the rapidly approaching army. It was clear that they were moving quite fast considering they were mostly made up of True Spirit and Barrier Realm cultivators. He suspected that this speed was part of their formations power up effect.

    With this in mind, he decided to probe the formation again. He fired another salvo from the tanks. As he expected, the moment the shrapnel made contact with the enemies, a bright flash would appear about 5 meters above their heads and the shrapnel was disintegrated.

    With that in mind, James just stood there watching. Seeing James just standing around watching the enemy rapidly approach, the generals were getting rather worried. Unfortunately, every time they made to give orders to the men, James would override them.

    Every now and then, he would have them fire some tank shells at the oncoming hordes of angry churchgoers. By the time the Order¡¯s army was less than a kilometre away, they felt assured that the Yori Empire had simply over-estimated themselves.

    They thought to take advantage of Soel¡¯s weakened state from the recent famine, only to come here and be devoured. However, it was at this time when their fighting spirit was slowly climbing back to its peak, when something completely unexpected happened.

    ¡®BOOM!¡¯

    ¡°ARGH!!¡±

    ¡°Oh heavens! Save me! Someone savarghh!!¡±

    ¡®BOOM!¡¯

    ¡°GARGHHhhh...¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a trap! It¡¯s a trap!¡±

    ¡°Fall back! Retreat!¡±

    ¡®BOOM!¡¯

    The army of the Order was being engulfed by huge implosions and explosions from front to back. Thousands of explosions resounded across the landscape and engulfed nearly half the Order¡¯s army in an instant.

    During the last few days, before the Yori Empire had even reached the City of Light, Mole drones had been digging away in this huge barren landscape, filling it with spirit bombs. James had just been waiting this whole time for the Order to properly position their troops right in the middle of this minefield he¡¯d been setting up before he detonated them.

    With the Order now in disarray, James gave the order to attack. By this point, everyone noticed a strange phenomenon occurring in the sky. That weird green gas had been slowly forming clouds, which were now forming monstrous storm clouds.

    It was only now that the process seemed to be knocked into overdrive and the clouds formed at a tremendous pace. The three Sun¡¯s glorious light was slowly blotted out.

    Rain began to fall as the army of Yori charged into battle. Arc Cannons filled the battlefield with their resonating booms, and rail guns spewed death in every direction. Small pockets of the Order tried to pull together and reform their formations only to discover the formation working only half as well as normal.

    The handful of Tower Realm monsters that sat at the top of the food chain in Soel could no longer sit back. They rose into the sky like great deities and started firing off martial skills like dance moves. Tanks were split in half by laser-like beams of light, and hundreds of Yori¡¯s troops were crushed under a manifestation of a godly palm with the weight and size of a mountain.

    Waves of flame billowed out and washed over the skies, sending troops with air boards falling to the earth like flaming meteors. The battlefield was now a mutual slaughter as thousands died from the Yori Empire for every ten thousand that died from the order.

    Seeing this scene, James finally called in his champion.

    One of the tower realm Arch-Bishops was rearing up to release a giant spear of flame towards a company of Yori Soldiers when he suddenly exploded in mid-air. As his battered, broken corpse fell from the sky, a black gunship shot past with an ear-splitting sound in its wake.

    A few of the buggy¡¯s sporting rail guns passed through the muddy battlefield in a zigzagging fashion, mowing down enemy troops as they passed. All the while, the rail gun mounted on the buggy was honed in a tower realm cultivator trying to evade the fire from the multiple buggers in the sky.

    It only took a brief moment of distraction before he was clipped by a molten slug and then moments later his body was shredded to pieces and rained down a blood from the sky.

    James didn¡¯t seem to be paying too much attention to this for the moment. Instead, he was focused on the City of Light. Like he was waiting for something. His face was stern and his arms crossed. His finger was tapping at his elbow betraying his impatience.

    The battle carried on for nearly an entire day. The rain grew heavier, and by nightfall the mud was a mixture of blood, earth and water. The last few remnants of the Order¡¯s army were being hunted like animals for sport by the Yori army¡¯s air board riders.

    James stood on the battlefield and surveyed the quiet city in the distance. Finally, he turned around and his gaze landed on the very indignant looking Pope Solaris, who was staring death back at James. This once powerful and regal pope was now in very sorry shape. He was missing an arm and his body was filled with wounds seeping blood into the muddy earth.

    ¡°You¡¯re a monster! The Order of the Sun¡¯s shall exist on forever. No matter how hard you try, our religion is as stable as the Sun¡¯s themselves. You are but a single trial, and the ancient powers of our belief will eventually return you to hell!¡±

    James didn¡¯t seem even slightly fazed by the Pope ramblings. He glanced back at the City again with a frown then looked down at the kneeling Pope.

    ¡°Old man. Where is your Dao Protector?¡±

    Solaris seemed slightly surprised that this young pup knew what a Dao Protector was. By his standards, James had barely dipped his toe in the ocean that was the world of cultivation, how did he know about Dao Protectors?

    Solaris¡¯s face became tinged with a hint of madness as he looked at James.

    ¡°Heh. The Pious Saint, Markus The Bright. He was here. However, the great famine struck the nation too quickly. Too severely. He left for Gastalous to visit the floating City of Three Sun¡¯s. The holy land and originator of our sacred texts.¡±

    James cocked an eyebrow as he tried to remember if they¡¯d discovered any information on this place yet. After a while, he only found a few notes of rumours and conversations from the drones in Gastalous. The drones had barely even covered one ten-thousandth of that massive continent yet, so James wasn¡¯t surprised that he had no concrete information on them.

    Seeing James¡¯ odd expression, Solaris seemed to think that James had grown worried. His madness grew slightly more exaggerated.

    ¡°Hahaha! Fool! You might have conquered our nation for now, but when the Pious Saint returns he¡¯ll bring with him the anointed armies of the Holy City. Armageddon will come to Atsunari, and you will be the focus of all enmity! HAHAH!¡±

    James looked at Solaris like he was an idiot. ¡°Jasmine, start monitoring for that old Core Realm fellow¡¯s return. Let¡¯s lay a few traps for him.¡±

    James then walked up to Solaris with a sinister grin.

    ¡°Old fanatic. I don¡¯t mind being the one to tell you. But your Dao Protector most likely understood that the situation was beyond his control and chose to flee. You clearly haven¡¯t learnt of the secrets of Atsunari yet. You see, Atsunari was once a very crowded and prosperous continent.

    ¡°It has secrets hidden on it that even the most ancient and monstrous existences of this world covet. However, because of that, the outside world warred over this little rock in the ocean for aeons. Millions of generations warred like children in an attempt to take sole ownership of Atsunari.

    ¡°In the end, they realised that as long as everyone covets it, no one will be able to claim it. As such, the greatest powers of Ascension stepped in and formed a pact bound by an oath of heavenly law. No faction, no power, no entity may move onto the continent of Atsunari unless they were born here.

    ¡°There are some trivial rules and conditions for this pact, but essentially, anything above the palace realm can never step foot on Atsunari unless they are a resident. If your Protector ever returns, then he will most likely be returning here to die.¡±

    By now, James had been standing in front of the rather distraught looking Solaris for a while. He then reached out a hand and placed it on Solaris¡¯ head. After shocking him unconscious, James had him transported back to the lab for ... reasons.

    After which, a very short siege on the city began. Out of spite for religion in general and the creation of monuments to any sort of religion, James obliterated the Holy Cathedral of the Order. Due to its sheer size, the monstrous building brought down half the rest of the city with it.

    -Hastoel- Capital City, Sunderoaf -

    When the war between Soel and Hastoel started, an uprising in the shadows of Hastoel began to gain a great deal of momentum. The aristocracy was too busy dealing with the war and flinging shit at each other that the endless numbers of citizens disappearing from their territories was overlooked.

    Once forced conscriptions started and even the regular commoners were forced to march off to war with nothing but some crappy leather garments and pitchforks, the rebellious elements gained a huge amount of support from the people.

    Strangely, they never moved out to act. Though the voice of dissent towards the aristocracy rose, the rebels remained in hiding. The aristocracy only realised what they¡¯d been waiting for when Soel suddenly pulled out from the war at their borders and troops from Yori began marching across their lands towards the capital.

    The rebels rose up from the shadows and marched out with the Yori Invaders proclaiming that the Yori Empire would annex the people from the suppression of the aristocracy. Apart from those that were actually a part of the aristocracy, the people threw down their weapons and welcomed the Yori Empire into their towns with wide arms.

    The march through Hastoel was rather short, and only a few pockets of resistance were met. By the time the Yori¡¯s army was on the doorstep of the Capital City, Sunderoaf, millions of irate citizens had banded together to support them.

    The Council, which was the ruling body of Hastoel and made up of the oldest and strongest aristocratic families, was forced to rally their own houses into action to force back the invaders and quell the rebellion.

    Like a mighty giant among men, Goliath stood at the fore-front of the Yori Army alongside the alluring beauty Jessy. When thousands of palace realm cultivators surged out from the capital with blood lust in their eyes, Goliath simply charged forward to meet them.

    He wasn¡¯t as much a scheming and shameless tactician as James had been. In addition, because the Hastoel aristocrat families weren¡¯t even remotely as united as the forces from Soel, it was much easier to handle them with the overpowered fire power from the Yori Army.

    Nonetheless, unlike the battle at the City of Light, this battle lasted for days. Blood was shed from both sides like rain and washed through the surrounding land like rivers. Of everyone, Jessy had the easiest and the hardest time in this battle.

    Every time someone was about to gang up and attack her, it somehow devolved into a gang rape. Or more appropriately ... a gang being raped. Her cultivation soared during this battle as palace realm after palace realm cultivator was sucked in by her allure and sacrificed their cultivation to her.

    Even if they knew, the desire she spurred on in these cultivators was like an invisible shackle, taking away their free will and forcing them to submit to their baser desires.

    On the other hand, Goliath was the most powerful component of the battlefield. His Wrath aura seemed to pervade the entire battlefield like the sickly hands of madness. The millions of citizens that followed the Yori Empire into battle were fed by their rage and indignation at the aristocracy.

    Being in the range of Goliath¡¯s wrath energy, it only fuelled their madness more. They became completely unstoppable. For every one that died, two more rushed forward to take their place.

    Goliath¡¯s aura alone reduced these normal people to beasts without common sense. They simply threw themselves into the battle like meat shields, as they mobbed cultivators like a horde of zombies. Goliath himself wasn¡¯t any less frightening.

    With every swing of his massive war hammer, someone died. Even the tower realm cultivators that joined the battle much later were somewhat dubious of that hammer.

    Overhead, a single man velocity with a knight wielding a lance painted on the side, shot through the air and targeted any tower realm or palace realm cultivator that was stupid enough to try and take flight to use height as an advantage.

    This battlefield was far more gruesome and brutal than the Soel battlefield had been. The Yori Empire suffered severe casualties as they pushed the battlefront forward closer and closer to the city.

    Finally, on the 5th day of battle, something changed. An incredibly oppressive aura burst out from the city like the walls of a dam collapsing. The fighting spirit of the Hastoelians rose to the highest point and the madness inducing Wrath energy that had been floating through the battlefield was washed away like dirt in a flood.

    The rebels all felt fear grip their hearts, and the Yori Army all had solemn expressions. Everyone realised that this was most likely the Core Realm Dao Protector of the Hastoel Nation. Actually, it wasn¡¯t just one, but two core realm auras could be felt weighing down on the battlefield.

    Goliath looked off into the distance and noticed two glowing silhouettes rising up over the city. The light of the sun seemed to dim slightly under the radiance of their auras. When he realised the Hastoelians had finally made their move to eliminate the Yori Army, he tapped his earpiece.

    ¡°James, they¡¯ve come.¡±

    No reply came on his com implant. Goliath¡¯s face grew grim and tense. The grip he held his war hammer with grew tighter.

    Overhead, the two silhouettes rapidly flew towards the battlefield from afar. It took less than a minute for them to cross the distance to the battlefield. They were both old men. One with a bald head and thick tanned skin. The other with long white hair flowing down his back and a weathered, wrinkled face.

    Their eyes were like a perverts as they surveyed the battlefield and everyone felt a chill run up their back. It was like they were stripping everyone bare with their eyes. As they looked about, they both enjoyed the feeling of power they had as everything became quiet. Both sides began to pull back and the fighting began to stop.

    That was until they both heard a sound that didn¡¯t belong on the battlefield at all. They both looked in the same direction only for their face to slowly form into a frown.

    ¡°Oh God, YES!! Don¡¯t fuckin¡¯ stop! Pump harder you little bitch!¡±

    In the middle of the battlefield, a young woman sat on a strange pink bed, sandwiched between two palace realm cultivators pumping in and out as if their lives depended on it. The scene was completely out of place in the middle of

    war.

    The two core realm experts were baffled. On the other hand, all the warrior from the aristocracy were eyeing the vigorous humping of the young woman with very mixed expressions. They all knew that it was a honey trap. Anyone that approached that floating pink bed would be engulfed in their lust and eventually consumed.

    Jessy had her legs and arms wrapped around a very robust and strong looking middle aged man whose huge dick was pumping in and out of her sopping pussy. Behind her was a dark skinned Hastoelian that was wearing the armour of a general. His hips were like a blur as his dick rubbed in and out of her tight little ass. She was covered in sweat and had a look of ecstasy covering her face.

    In contrast to her look of bliss, the two men looked slightly gaunt and like they were very, very worried. They both felt their cultivation starting to leave their dantian and pool into their nut sack were it was strangely converted into something else.

    The more it changed, the more frantic the need to cum became. Their bodies were completely out of their control as their cocks and balls swelled well beyond normal. Finally, they couldn¡¯t control it anymore. Jessy¡¯s cunt and asshole both tightened like a vice and almost seemed to be making a sucking action.

    The two cultivators felt their cocks being sucked in like they were fucking a vacuum and then blissful release finally came. Their dicks unloaded for almost an entire minute as Jessy screamed her satisfaction to the whole world.

    This process was short, but with the battlefield in a silent face off and everyone¡¯s attention focused on this spot, it seemed to be drawn out from a minute to an eternity. Everyone watched on somewhat horrified as the robust, strong bodies of the two men seemed to become thinner and weaker with every pump of the hips.

    Finally, they both fell back and off the bed looking like two sacks of skin and bone, completely empty of everything, even their life. Jessy slowly stood up from her delirious joy and started looking for her next target as the cum from the previous two still dribbled down her legs.

    Only now did she realise, as she stood before the eyes of everyone on the battlefield, in all her glory that something strange was going on. Her slightly murky eyes became clear as she looked around. Then her eyes stopped on the bald core realm cultivator up in the sky.

    She smiled bashfully and bit her bottom lip as she looked him directly in the eye. A strange smell permeated the battlefield as every man and women for 1000 meters felt their loins stirring. Anyone who made direct eye contact with Jessy felt their knees buckle and they fell into the mud and dirt with their hips thrusting uncontrollably.

    The Core Realm cultivator felt his dick grow hard just from that look alone. He almost couldn¡¯t control himself as he started moving towards Jessy. Before he made it even a few meters, the old white-haired Core Realm cultivator shot in front of him and blocked his sight of Jessy.

    At this moment, Baldy suddenly came back to his senses. His heart almost burst as is went into overdrive and filled his body with adrenaline. ¡®Great Heavens. What a powerful soul attack. I was almost sucked into the illusion and consumed by my lust. What kind of evil perverse power is this?!¡¯

    He let out a sigh of relief at his companion¡¯s quick reaction and assistance.

    ¡°Old Jerroh. My thanks. That little witch is truly some kind of demonic cultivator. I¡¯ll kill that bitch first.¡±

    Only when he finished talking did he realise that Jerroh, the white-haired Core Realm expert, seemed to be having trouble breathing. As he moved forward in the air to grab him, he saw a heart-stopping scene from over his shoulder.

    Jessy was on her knees with her face and breasts pushed into the bed. Her right hand was reached back through her thighs and vigorously pumping her fingers in and out of her snatch as her moans echoed across directly towards Jerroh and Baldy.

    ¡°Please, I need it so bad! Ohhh. Pleaasee ... fulfil me!¡±

    Everyone on the battlefield watching this scene felt their blood surge. Their sex drive suddenly went into overdrive as every nipple, clit and cock suddenly became as hard as steel. Even those old core realm bastards couldn¡¯t control their bodies¡¯ reaction to this little play.

    Suddenly, Jessy rolled over with her legs spread wide open as she continued to play with herself and massage a breast while her hips pumped up into thin air.

    ¡°I need someone! Anyone! Please!¡±

    Suddenly, another strange aura seemed to fill the battlefield. A light blue velocity slowly descended from the clouds up in the sky, as Exsue¡¯s Envy spirit energy sprinkled down like rain. Suddenly, despite the deterrent of the Core Realm cultivators presence. People started madly rushing towards Jessy.

    Suddenly, Goliath¡¯s wrath energy spread out like a red blood mist over the battlefield again. Everyone felt their anger rising.

    Those old Core Realm cultivators that thought they¡¯d quelled the battlefield were baffled. They were suddenly feeling all sorts of strange emotions. For a cultivator of that level to so easily be swayed by their emotions is incredibly difficult.

    Before they could fully figure out what was going on, the black and white Velocity gunships shot out of the clouded sky like two needles. They both came from different directions at supersonic speeds. Those old Core Realm cultivators weren¡¯t dead logs. They had lived for a long time, and as soon as they felt the killing intent pouring off these two strange flying artefacts, they moved to split apart and do battle.

    The 6 railguns on the two gunships honed in and fired. Huge booms rang out in the sky as the positions of the two old cultivators were filled with smoke and flames. The two gunships suddenly pulled up and shot away back into the clouds.

    Jerroh, the old white-haired man, shot out of the sudden explosion in mid-air like a missile and smashed into the ground. Baldy was a little better off as a few defensive artefacts fell from the sky and shattered like brittle old parchment.

    The blue velocity flown by Exsue started firing off precise shots at the still air born Baldy. Seeing the situation in the sky suddenly becoming very dangerous, Baldy rapidly fell back and moved to reach the ground, so he had better mobility.

    Jerroh slowly rose up from the dusty crater he¡¯d made when he was blasted into the ground. His body was peppered with red burns and bleeding holes from the magma and shrapnel of the railguns shells.

    He was covered with dirt, and his hair was a mess. His intricate robes were ripped and in tatters, and his eyes were red with madness. Unlike Baldy, his rage was almost palpable, and he launched back into the sky to try and destroy those flying artefacts that had surprise attacked him.

    His rationality was already being affected by the strange auras covering the battlefield.

    James stood on a hill off in the distance as he watched the battlefield devolving into a one-sided slaughter. The Hastoelian army was out of sorts from the three auras. Many were driven mad and began to slaughter their comrades.

    Thanks to the huge amounts of backstabbing and public ridicule of one another, many of these aristocratic families already had very poor relations. With the sudden onset of the Sins on the battlefield, they lost all reason and began to attack each other.

    James smiled like the devil as the Yori Army once more began their march towards the capital, slaughtering everyone. The effect of the sins auras on their comrades was slightly less severe. Instead, it was more of a bolstering, and all these negative feelings were focused on the enemy instead of everyone.

    Jessy was having the time of her life as a mountain of people swarmed onto her floating pink bed. Almost as quickly as they reached her, they fell back onto the ground as a withered empty husk of their former self.

    James turned his attention back to Jerroh who was shooting into the sky like a comet. Just as he was rapidly approaching Exsue¡¯s orbiting gunship while dodging a stream of railgun fire, a black gunship once again emerged from the clouds above.

    Before Jerroh could react to its immense speed and sudden appearance, he was once again blown out of the sky. This time, before he even reached the ground, the white gunship swooped down and shot him in mid-fall.

    James was stunned by the resilience of these old Core Realm cultivators. Even that giant Golden Crow was blown out of the air with a single volley of a gunship. For this old white-haired fellow to resist three volleys in a row was astounding.

    Unfortunately, his foolish actions and loss of reason was his downfall. As his body once again collided with the ground like a missile, Exsue¡¯s gunship zipped overhead and dropped something. From the distance James was standing at, that object just looked like a glittering little dot.

    However, the moment it made contact with the ground, a huge explosion suddenly shook the battlefield. Everyone watched on stunned as giant flaming meteors seemed to form out of nothing in the sky and plunged into the crater made by Jerroh¡¯s fall.

    Dust billowed out in huge clouds and filled the war front. Baldy, who had watched this from a distance as well, was shaking with rage. ¡®How is this possible?! Just what power has stepped onto the Atsunari continent and granted all these strange and powerful artefacts to such a weak little guild? They even have the capability to kill a Core Realm cultivator! What the hell¡¯s going on here?!¡¯

    Finishing this thought, Baldy made a very tough decision. He decided to abandon Hastoel and return to his guild in Gastalous and report this information.

    Before he even turned around to flee, he felt his groin aching again. His dick was like a spring trap almost making an audible sound with the speed it rose to attention. Baldy smelt a strange smell, and suddenly fear gripped his heart.

    He slowly turned around to see a pink bed floating only ten or so meters behind him. His eye¡¯s suddenly locked with Jessy. He then had the strangest feeling. A feeling that he hadn¡¯t had since he was just a little tower realm cultivator and first travelled to Gastalous.

    It was the feeling of someone seeing through him. Looking into this soul. Unlike with meeting those ancient cultivators on Gastalous, this wasn¡¯t as invasive and oppressive. Instead it felt like it was just an invitation. A flirtatious wink and a promise of things to come.

    Without his control, a little piece of his mind was unintentionally opened up like a book to those beautifully clear green eyes. He felt all his dirty fantasies and secret lust¡¯s pour out through his eyes and get gobbled up by Jessy.

    Baldy was now very frightened. Just as he was moving to run, a flash of light appeared in his peripheral vision and Jessy was suddenly dressed in a very tight leather one piece. In her hand was a long black whip and tied to her waist was a thick riding crop.

    ¡°Come!¡± commanded Jessy.

    Baldy felt his will and resolve deteriorating and fading away like sugar in hot water. He fought it with all his willpower and made to run again.

    ¡®CRACK!¡¯

    The loud cry of the whip striking the air sounded next to him. Jessy wore a serious frown and like a master rebuking a slave began poking at Baldy¡¯s secret longing.

    ¡°You little scumball! You dare disobey This Mistress!¡±

    Baldy couldn¡¯t stop the subconscious groan that escaped his lips as his knees nearly caved in underneath him. He wanted so badly to kneel down and beg this lady mistress for his punishment.

    He was frozen in place. No matter how hard he willed himself to run he couldn¡¯t move. His most secret and most powerful desire was right in front of him. He knew he had to run, but he just couldn¡¯t bring himself to leave.

    Jessy continued to play the role of the strict mistress.

    ¡°Do not continue to disappoint This Mistress you pathetic little slave toy! Come here now and receive your punishment!¡±

    As she said this, a huge amount of lust spirit energy suddenly exploded out from her like a heavenly law. Baldy couldn¡¯t stand it anymore. Even though he was an ancient and powerful expert at the Core Realm, even he couldn¡¯t completely deny his soul¡¯s most powerful weakness.

    His knees finally failed him as he stared at Jessy¡¯s feet and started crawling towards her like a dog.

    James, who was watching this from far off in the distance shivered. ¡°Holy crap! How fucking powerful is that crazy bitch?! She¡¯s even pulled a Core Realm down into the depths of depravity!¡±

    In his spirit realm, James looked very seriously at Goldy. ¡°If she ever tries that shit with me, do you think you can counter it?¡±

    Goldy glanced at him from the side of his eye.Hah! Counter it? Would it even be called countering it? If she tried that with me, I would craft a chastity belt that even the gods couldn¡¯t take off. I¡¯ll make her beg me to forgive her indiscretions. In front of me, the King of Sin, what is a little bit of lust going to be able to do?~

    James considered it for a moment then nodded with a sly grin. ¡°I¡¯m actually half tempted to see her try me now.¡±

    With the very unexpected submission of the Core Realm Expert, and appearance of James, Exsue and Harvy at the battlefield, the war started very quickly winding down.

    At last, almost 5 months after the war of the worlds, Both Soel and Hastoel were stomped out from the face of Atsunari like weeds.

    Everyone in all the other nations and alliances were shocked! At first, they¡¯d thought that even if the Yori Empire had the assistance of the Brotherhood, which everyone readily acknowledged as a major player on the continent now, they¡¯d only be able to push for a few tens of kilometres in every direction, barely expanding their territory.

    Even if they were able to somehow reach the capitals of Soel or Hastoel, no one believed that they would be capable of clearing the final threat, being the Core Realm Dao Protectors that hidden away under the capitals of these nations.

    Everyone was instead slapped in the face with surprise when news came that the two great nations had fallen.

    The smaller nations that were along the outer borders of these two great nations started assembling their armies to push out and claim some land for themselves. Like starving wild dogs seeing a dying cow. What they forgot to realise though, was that these big fat cows didn¡¯t just suddenly die. They were slaughtered by a mighty tiger.

    Luckily for them, Artimus made the decision not to make enemies of all these other nations right now. First, he needed to settle on a little less land and consolidate his forces. Like a wise leader, he chose to forsake the immediate gain of more land under his banner and instead finish digesting everything he¡¯s already got.

    Besides, he was more interested in all the land to the north. During this very tumultuous period, everyone had expected Baquerro to rush to the aid of the other two great nations. Instead what they witnessed was Baquerro remaining strangely quiet.

    When people went to investigate this matter, they came to discover a horrible truth. Baquerro had already long since been consumed by the Yori Empire. It was as if it had happened overnight. Even the residents of the country didn¡¯t realise.

    One day they were celebrating a great festival of the nation, the next it almost an entire 12 months later and every grand and influential individual that once sat at the top of the power structure of Baquerro had mysteriously disappeared.

    In their place rose up the banners of the Yori Empire. All over the major cities were well armed and equipped Yori guardsmen. It goes without saying that this sort of shocking change caused huge waves of turmoil and rebellion to rise up from the populace of Baquerro.

    All of which were very ruthlessly and cleanly wiped out before they had a chance to grow. Every city and town of Baquerro no longer had a leader in charge of everything. Instead, a great black cube structure was flown in by Big Berta¡¯s and dropped from the sky, squarely smashing apart whatever building had previously acted as an office of governance.

    It would then release hundreds if not thousands of drones, depending on the size of the city. Once that happened everything quickly began changing. Commoner and cultivators alike started begrudgingly relinquishing any feelings they had for the previous overlords of their nations.

    The Black Cube was like a gift from the heavens. It spewed out cultivation and martial techniques. Its drones completely refurbished cities and towns from scratch. Once the cube came, it controlled everything to a very exacting degree and brought endless benefits to the towns.

    Every one of these black boxes was an individual AI. They became almost as important for a city as the monoliths. This little program was something Kelly had thought up. This was because the idea of being able to control an entire nation solely through the use of computers gave her a thrill that was almost sexual in nature.

    Artimus, knowing that it would be difficult to completely rule so much land, and well aware he can¡¯t trust many people to control the governmental side of things, reluctantly agreed for James to trial these ¡®Controllers¡¯ in Baquerro.

    He, without even a second thought, restricted James from dropping these things in the central area of Yori Empire. Last thing he needs is for everyone to become enslaved by James¡¯ nefarious machines in his own backyard.

    It was alright up north where his control was tentative for such a large area, but in the central part of Yori were his control was firm, he definitely wouldn¡¯t allow for these outside influences to appear.

    What he didn¡¯t realise was, not only did these AI¡¯s control everything in the city, they also acted as a Dark Brotherhood Guild Hall.

    Naturally, in the aspect of the being a controller for the Yori Empire, these boxes maintained the law of the empire. Which was that the controlling party, as long as its allegiance is to the Empyreal Family, can dictate whatever laws it pleases inside its zone of control.

    Therefore, every single one of the towns and cities in what was once Baquerro, and is now Northern Yori, was following the law as per Tech City¡¯s Guidelines.

    -Guild HQ- War Room -

    James stood in the war room as he surveyed the latest updated map of Atsunari¡¯s national borders. Upon review, he concluded that the general situation of the nation would need some drastic remodelling.

    However, that wasn¡¯t his problem. He was more than happy with his little City and for the moment didn¡¯t long for the conquest of the entire continent ... That would come later.

    However, he realised that due to recent events, as well as the location of his city, they were very much associated with Yori Empire. Which James didn¡¯t like at all. He preferred to be considered a free agent.

    It became blatantly obvious that Old Artimus, the crafty fox, had been using that perceived relationship to strong arm other nations and boost his own reputation. Something James most certainly did not appreciate.

    Therefore, he started throwing out some ideas to Jasmine to see if any of them were feasible. In the end, Jasmine didn¡¯t reject any of his ideas, only relentlessly shooting them down based on the cost or lack of resources.

    So, James decided that it was about time he went on a little trip. By now, the Dropship/Mobile Base had been mostly completed and was missing only a few key components. After five months, although the Spatial Seed had produced a great deal of spatial spirit energy, it was insufficient for the quantities James felt he would need for the Dropship.

    He also didn¡¯t want to prematurely pull any of the energy out of the seed because he was hoping it would eventually become an Essence. Which by its very nature, would grow more space stone over time.

    Thus, he assembled his team and went to visit the Black Lands.

    As Exsue¡¯s blue Velocity shot through the sky at supersonic speeds, James looked down and surveyed the black lands. Black flames filled his vision for as far as the eye could see. They lashed out and rose up like tempestuous waves of a stormy sea.

    The further they travelled into the Black Lands, the higher and more violent the flames grew. Even with the protection of the Velocity¡¯s shielding, James could feel the temperature rising. At last, they reached a rocky area with huge boulders scattered about like small hills. The moment the Velocity touched down, drones poured out from it and assembled shielding arrays to protect the ship.

    As James climbed down from the ships, hanger door, he pulled out a spirit cube about the size of two fists, filled with complicated patterns that glowed brightly. Passing through the shields of the drones, a little bubble shield sprang to life around him and seemed to be sucking in the black flames.

    Releasing his scrying field, James discovered little pieces of spatial stones scattered all over the place. Some far off at the edge of his ability to detect, while others were close by. None of them were near each other, and it almost seemed like they were fragments from a very large piece of spatial stone being blown to pieces.

    As he travelled around collecting stone fragments, Fatty, Kelly and Jasmine also departed the ship and in a similar manner began to scry and collect spatial stone fragments.

    Ever since landing, James felt a strange feeling in his gut. Like he was being watched. Even odder was that in his scrying field, the fire energy was nothing like any naturally appearing free fire energy he¡¯d ever seen. It possessed strange properties that even James couldn¡¯t guess at.

    The further he travelled in the Black Lands, and the more he studied these flames, the stranger he felt they were. After almost a day of running around collecting rocks, James had almost 50kg of stones in a big sack over his shoulder.

    As he watched the sun slowly preparing to settle onto the horizon, he decided it was about time to return to the City. Just as he turned around, he glimpsed something in his scrying field. It was almost indiscernible, but with the practice of San¡¯s Inner Eye, James¡¯ scrying had become a great deal more intuitive and accurate.

    His body swivelled back to look behind him, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Just as he was turning back again, it flashed for a moment in his scrying field again.

    ¡°Jasmine, Goldy. Did you guy¡¯s see that as well?¡±

    ~Hoh yeah! That was definitely a face, right? A spooky ghost face in the flames right?~

    ¡°I too saw a face, James. You were not mistaken.¡±

    James inspected the flames surrounding him for a bit longer then finally gave up and returned to the ship. Jessy, Kelly and Fatty were all waiting for him already. Their gains weren¡¯t as extravagant as James¡¯, but when it all adds up, it was almost a hundred times what they had back in the lab.

    Just as James walked through the drones protective force fields, another face appeared in the flames. This time, it stayed there. Even as James turned around and looked at it with his eyes.

    There, formed out of the flames themselves, was a ghostly face. Its eyes were empty and lifeless, and it just stared at James with a slack, empty expression. James felt a chill run up his back and cold sweat suddenly forming on his neck.

    ¡°Everyone in the ship, NOW!¡±

    Fatty, ever the conspiracist and perpetually afraid of these sorts of alien ghostly things, didn¡¯t even make a noise as his fat body seemed to jitter for a moment and then reappear in the ship hiding behind the bulkhead. It was the fastest anyone had ever seen him move.

    Kelly and Jessy also didn¡¯t have any intention of playing with some freaky spirit face and were quickly aboard the ship. Just as James set foot on the hanger door, he heard a strange low moaning sound from behind.

    As he turned, with a blank expressionless face betraying his confusion at this situation, the ghostly faces expression slowly turned for disinterested and empty to agony and rage.

    The sound grew stronger until it became an ear piercing scream. Slowly, another face formed from the flames. It too began to scream at James. It was then like a tide as more and more faces began to form from fire and scream at the ship from every direction.

    James decided this would be worth investigating later, but right now it was just way too freaky. Especially with the sun¡¯s setting and darkness starting to fill the sky. Without any more hesitation, he stepped onto the ship and was quickly followed by the drones.

    The moment the drone¡¯s shielding collapsed, the black flames started trying to reach out like tentacles and wrap around the ship. Hundreds of flame faces were now screaming at the ship, and the black flames became like a tidal wave trying to engulf it.

    Exsue didn¡¯t stick around to find out which of the ships shielding or the black flames would win in a struggle and punched the accelerator like a Mario Kart addict. The Velocity¡¯s huge turbines became blurs and sucked in countless of those flaming faces as the gunship shot out with a supersonic boom, dispelling the flames around it with sheer force.

    Everyone on board let out a little sigh of relief as they quickly gained some altitude and raced back towards the city.

    Back in the area they¡¯d just left, some of the black faces were gathered around watching the ship shooting off into the distance. A few of the faces that had been sucked into the turbines were slowly reforming.

    ¡°AHH!! Great fuckin¡¯ Heavens! ARGH! My fuckin¡¯ face! They broke my beautiful face.¡±

    Slowly, the flaming faces seemed to coalesce bodies from the black fire and formed into flaming black spirit bodies. A few of them seemed to be having some trouble as huge amounts of flame were used to repair their disfigured ghostly faces.

    One of the flame spirits had a rather solemn expression as she stared in the direction Exsue flew off in.

    ¡°Do you think they know?¡±

    Another flame spirit with a big flaming beard stepped forward and placed his hand on the woman flame spirits shoulder.

    ¡°Kasarli, I doubt they are aware of anything. We¡¯ve watched them all day. Apart from their incredibly powerful artefacts that protected them from the flames, they seemed very ordinary and were only interested in the spatial stones.

    ¡°Now that they know we¡¯re here, they will most likely be more cautious coming back. If they return, we can drive them out. Just as we have for the millennia gone by since back then.¡±

    Kasarli¡¯s eyes remained trained on the distant skyline. She couldn¡¯t help but feel that these ones were different. She wasn¡¯t sure how. If anything, it was simply intuition. Her intuition also told her, that they were incredibly frightening.

    Especially that brown haired youth. His eye¡¯s when he looked at her didn¡¯t contain the fear she¡¯d seen in the face of everyone else that had been scared off from the black lands. Instead, they were ... beastly. As if he was looking at fresh meat.

    At this thought, she suddenly felt a shiver run up her spine. If she could sweat, she would probably be feeling a cold sweat breaking out on the back of her neck right at this instant. Very much the same sensation James first had when he had watched her from the ramp of the velocity¡¯s hanger.

    <hr>

    <h4 class="c">Epilogue - To Be Continued</h4>

    With the Spatial Stones in hand, James now had that most important missing component of his Mobile Base/Dropship. Which he was now calling his Command Centre.

    Having completed their mission, the sins, ghosts and knights all returned to Tech City for a short respite from battle. As of now, there were 6 Sins, 5 Ghosts, and 3 Knights. The latest additions to the Knights were Sword Girl, who was rather powerful in her own right, and Charles who was second only to Exsue in his piloting skills.

    He was the pilot of the white Velocity Gunship sporting the Knight holding a shield and lance. His skill in piloting was abnormally strong. It seemed, his fanaticism for flying was so strong, that he suffered a cultivation deviation when he broke through the spirit barrier.

    He¡¯d formed something he called Flying Intent. According to him, it was somewhat like an extension of his soul energy. Its purpose was almost entirely focused on the act of operating something that can fly, whether it be machine, artefact or spirit beast. His Flying Intent affected the properties of everything he operated in the sky.

    James also came to realise that Sword Girl had unlocked a similar strange power during her breakthrough. She¡¯d unlocked Sword Intent. Which was focused solely on the sword and only the sword. It just went to show how strong her focus on swordsmanship was.

    It was also the ability that allowed her to move so quickly and made her katana skills so masterful. In fact, it even helped her master sword skills at a much faster rate compared to others.

    Once the war was over, everything started to slowly settle down. James didn¡¯t plan to hold another War of the World immediately. After all, history of sentient beings in this world dated in the millions of years, and his lifetime certainly wasn¡¯t going to be short.

    With that in mind, he decided it was time to slow down a little bit. He was far too used to life on earth, where every day was a race against time to get things done as quickly as possible. His goal was to be so powerful that he would become undying. Impossible to kill.

    He wanted to bath in stars and explore the universe.

    He wanted to kill Gods and slaughter Buddhas. He even wanted to go explore these little hidden sub-dimensions called ¡®planes¡¯. Perhaps he could go to the heavens and rape some angels, or go to hell and play poker with the devil.

    In the end, he was just bored and wanted to enjoy himself.

    With that in mind, he decided to start planning some more wars between other nations. This time, with a longer span of time in mind. They say that the longer one cultivates a field, the sweeter the crops at harvest.

    On the other hand, he wasn¡¯t in a rush to leave Atsunari now. Not after the dirty little secrets, he¡¯d been learning from the Gastalous continent.

    He knew that there were some incredible things buried on Atsunari. As a local tyrant, with no one on the continent that could match him, naturally, he planned to claim these secrets.

    Unfortunately, Imogine, the pigtails girl from The Red Hearings, wasn¡¯t sent to become his slave girl. They¡¯d thought he originally had planned to marry her. When they proposed he return to Gastalous for the marriage ceremony, he gave them a look like he was observing idiots.

    After clearing up their misunderstanding, they tried to find every means possible to quell James. To their great discomfort, it seemed like they had a spy within their most inner circle that fed James endless information.

    By the time they got the hint that it would be impossible to deal with James while he was still on Atsunari, the guild had already suffered so many losses they were no longer of interest to James.

    Therefore, he simply cut them loose after promising to kill every member of their guild that travelled to his continent without his permission. He would extort a huge sum of resources from their guild in exchange for the few he did give permission to step on his continent.

    Eventually, things began to slow down on Atsunari again. Until the next time James decided to make a move...

    Which is another story all on its own.