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.

“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.