Techno CultivatorChapter 34 Mysterious Challenger
- 4 years ago
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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.
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.
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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...
-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...
-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...
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...
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...
-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...
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 km2. The surface area of Ascension blows it out of the water at a whopping 28.6 billion km2. Now for a new comparison, take New Zealand. It’s got a surface area of 260,000 km2. If the surface of the earth was covered in New Zealand’s, it...
-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...
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...
-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...
-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...
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,...
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...
-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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
-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...
-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...
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...
-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...
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...
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...
-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...
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...
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...
-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...
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...
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...