-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.”

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.