Now would be a good time to explain how exactly they managed to achieve all of this in the 2 weeks since they built their auto-factory. Also, you’re probably guessing at how exactly those boards were floating around no?

Well, let’s start with, how so fast? In truth, almost everything they sold had been assembled by computers in the auto-factory. Hell, after they completed the first couple machines Skay just programmed it to auto-manufacture itself, so the fuckin factory could produce just about everything as long as you had some time and the materials to pump in at the other end.

What sped everything up so much wasn’t just the auto-factories ability to build parts for just about anything. It was a breakthrough Skay had in adapting spirit materials to computer technology. The reason he’d been having so much trouble initially was that he was trying to start by directly creating a modern CPU microprocessor.

He quickly found it to be damn near impossible to adapt it to the right levels to prevent strange or abnormal data loss and program errors. Then after James made an offside comment about having to redesign everything from resistors and transistors to diodes and logic gates Skay had a eureka moment.

With James’ comment in mind, he spent twelve hours having the lab manufacture all sorts of basic electronics then tested all its properties and started pumping it into the computers. Once that was done, he repurposed nearly every bit of processing power they had at their disposal to help the computer system rebuild a model of a computer using all the information he’d just started jamming into it.

After nearly twelve hours of the rest of the lab being shut down because the computers were busy, the whole guild lost power ... apparently, the poor old generator couldn’t handle feeding every single computer they’d managed to set up in the lab while they were drawing every watt it could provide.

When this happened, James and Skay both went through a short moment of madness and created a new generator. This one didn’t use conventional energy creation. Instead, it was built from all the patterns they’d pulled out of the primal spirit array.

Once they’d reassembled it and after a few rocky tests, rebuilds, and tweaking they connected their array generator up to the system. This generator later becomes the prototype for the energy of the boards and Big Berta. There were a few things different with this from conventional generators, though.

Firstly was the refined lightning spirit energy instead of conventional electricity. They had to set up quite a few little subsystems to smooth out its waveform and then convert it to the appropriate voltages and current.

Once the new computer was finished, they would be able to remove all that stuff because the nature of the LS3 was to only pass through energy that was being used. Skay had tried to use the characteristics of other materials in this world that would do all the conversion and prevent short circuit conditions from occurring.

That meant that they could let the chaotic lightning energy be directly hooked up to the system. The only downside to this was that everything would need a full refit to spirit material standards. Mostly that would mean the auto-factory would need to a full new fit out with everything being upgraded to spirit materials instead of conventional materials. Amusingly, they probably made enough money at the auction to attempt this madness.

The second difference was that they had no idea just how much this new array could generate and store. It was essentially a primal spirit array, but instead of only having a little gathering array to power the attraction foundation they installed an extensive collection pattern and storage pattern. This meant the array was gathering almost all the energy the attraction pattern pulled towards it.

Anything that wasn’t used by the system went into the storage array which had now also become relatively larger. They set up a little primal energy measuring device, hereby referred to as a PEM, as the best way to see when the storage was full.

When the storage was full, the gathering array wouldn’t be able to pull in more primal energy for conversion, and it would then just start building up energy on level 5 like a standard attraction array would.

If the average primal energy in the generator room ever dropped, they would know they’re using more power than the array could pull towards it.

After they sorted out the power issues, the computers fired back up at full force and powered on for another 8 hours until they finally completed the prototype spirit computer 1.0. When they set it up, they quickly realised a problem.

It was so god damn fast that the operating system they were using was actually holding it back. The most amusing thing was when Skay hooked it up to his network and the AI he’d been working on recently downloaded to it. The first thing it did once it was operating off the spirit computer was to re-write the primary operating system, and then it re-wrote half of its own code.

When it was finished, the spirit PC processed so much information it left the combined processing power of the 15 other lab computers in the dust. It was so fucking fast that it could run the entire lab and still had enough processing power left over to run the array deciphering program at nearly a hundred times the speed of the old computers.

Now you might think this machine pretty damn impressive, but it had one downside. It was fucking expensive! Not just that, some of the spirit materials they needed for the core parts were as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. They only managed to get their hands on a tiny amount of them, and it had bankrupted them when they realised how much they needed to finish building the computer.

Interestingly, it had now paid for itself twice over with the end of the auction. Speaking of which, this was how they managed to finish so much awesome shit before the auction. The spirit batteries they sold had nearly 20 intricately connected and intertwined array patterns. The Hoverboard was slightly more advanced and had just short of 300 different patterns in it.

Big Berta was a whole other story. Although it took some designs from the boards, it actually had even more advanced models continuously running in flight to keep everything stable and maintain air born motion once it was loaded up with 200 tonnes of shit. It wasn’t mentioned, but the thing could damn near run endlessly when it was unloaded. It was only when fully loaded it had so many problems.

There were also some potions that Norman and Skay had been working on. They had a similar operation to the array’s going. They tested certain substances then pumped the information into the system and let it extrapolate potential uses and combinations for it.

According to Skay, alchemy in this world was absolutely fucked up, and he loved it. Some books he’d managed to get a hold of told stories about great alchemy masters having created tonics to do everything from re-growing hair on a balding head to dissolving an entire mountain.

James was fairly sure Skay didn’t care about his balding head, so that only left dissolving mountains. He once again reaffirmed his decision to never drink something from Skay that hadn’t first been tested.

-Guildmaster’s Office-

Early the next day James felt like he had déjà vu. Sat next to him was Exsue biting into his shoulder and Jessy doing something with paper. In the corner stood a statuesque mummified zombie in a big black robe. Across from James sat 7 people.

The only new addition to this scenario was Goliath and Fatty who both volunteered to sit in with this talk as well. Apart from Skay, who was busy doing ... god knows what, the gang was all here.

The 7 guests starting from left to right were, Gustov from the Katsu Merchant’s Guild. He was a fat man with a full head of greasy black hair. Although he looked suspiciously like one of those greedy characters that would sell his mother for a copper coin, he was always polite and jovial and seemed in the best of moods all the time. This only made James even more suspicious of him.

Next to him was an older woman whose hair had started to grey. She carried herself with an air of dignity and superiority and acted very much in the manner of an upper-class noble lady. She even held her tea cup with her pinkie finger extended. This was the Katsu Sect’s Elder Xenshi.

Next to her sat two men. Both looked middle-aged and if they didn’t spend almost every spare moment arguing and throwing insults at each other James would have picked them out as brothers. These where Hang and Danto also of the Katsu Sect but had come representing their Susso and Telly Clans respectively.

Seated next was Elder Jeng, who had apparently volunteered to assist the 6 factions in their dealing with James. This was agreed upon because the Gau Clan and Brotherhood had a trade treaty and if anyone was going to ensure it was properly enforced it was Jeng. Even Hao was in agreement with this decision.

Of all the Elders the last person who wanted James selling cool shit to other people was Jeng, so it went without saying that he volunteered in this role. He was mostly just here to remind James about their treaties and to inform these factions that the Brotherhood was limited in selling certain things.

That was essentially the same as saying, we already own this stuff so if you want to buy it, you’ll have to buy it through us.

The last two people seated at the round table were the most mysterious. Lucas Doe and Emily Smith. These two weren’t the representatives that had been bidding yesterday, but they were apparently now here to represent the Yansho Merchant’s and the Adventures Guild respectively, the curious thing was that they declined to comment on their positions in the guilds.

Lucas was a thin, wiry man with glasses and a head of shaggy long brown hair. He was dressed in scholarly robes and had the aura of a knowledgeable guy. The odd thing about him though, was his eyes and the way he carried himself. If James didn’t know better, he’d think the man had somehow had an experience exactly like Harvy’s.

This was because Lucas had big dark bags under his eyes and moved everywhere in a slow meandering fashion like he was about to collapse. The bloke looked so bloody tired James thought he might actually be asleep with his eyes open right now.

Emily Smith was a shorter blonde gal. She looked no older than James or Jessy and was very fit and healthy looking with no strangeness about her. She wore leather travelling clothes and at her hip sat a long cross-sword. On her back lay a round shield that was pot marked with dents and bends and little holes. It was even still covered in soot like she’d used it to escape a fire.

James had heard her saying something earlier about ‘fighting dragons’ when Lucas had been in a strangely lucid moment of wakefulness and asked about the shield.

The two parties started off with some tea and some introductions. Then James put on his business face. “Well let’s get started. I originally planned to meet you all individually but decided against it for two reasons. Firstly, although we’re not disinclined to back door dealings with any of you, you’re all representing someone that is far more powerful than us. This means, that for the present, it’s best to maintain open discussions and let all parties be involved, to prevent any dissatisfaction.

“Secondly, I want to say something that all of you should hear. Because you’re all representing powerful factions, we have gone to the trouble of setting up some countermeasures. Foremost among them is what will happen if you try and kill any of us. Should we disappear, all of our knowledge and everything we’ve researched until now will become public. Everyone in the entire continent will know how to do what we can do.”

“This was implemented 2 days ago and is precisely because you all represent such powerful groups. I’m sure none of you wants another party to start building Arc Cannons or deploying hoverboards like leaves off a tree.”

The 6 representatives all stared wide-eyed at James. What kind of trade negotiations was this? He didn’t even dance around the issue and jumped straight into the deep end with both feet tied to a rock.

This was essentially the same as a threat to all these powers, it was saying two things; ‘If you try to take from us you will get nothing. You’re going to have to protect us if you don’t want everyone else to have our stuff.’

This was outright extortion. The first person to react was Jeng. To say he was surprised by this opening foray would be an understatement. He’d long since come to suspect that he’d been underestimating the steppers, but now he was certain. To begin trade negotiations with a clear threat was a whole new league of madness.

A bright smile blossomed on his face. “Boy, are you planning to break your oath to my Gau Clan? If you release your methods freely to everyone, that would be an outright violation of our trade treaty!”

James gave a solemn nod and stared straight at Jeng. “I’ll be honest old goat, I know you’re here to try and stir trouble and I’ll tell you right now this is a threat against you as much as everyone else here. This is for my guild’s protection. If I’m dead, it won’t matter if I break my oath.”

Jeng’s fist tightened, and his face dropped into a scowl. Gustov, the Kantsu Merchant’s Guildmaster, just gave a deep chuckle. “It’s fine, I have no problems with this. We merchants don’t have the means to steal from you in that manner anyway.”

The Kantsu Elder, Xenshi, also just gave a quiet nod of acknowledgement. “I take no issues with it. Keep in mind boy, that doesn’t mean my sect plans to take any actions to protect you. We will just accept our loss if you die.”

James looked at the rest of the dignitaries and seeing they had nothing to add he moved on with a bright smile. “Excellent, now that the unpleasantness is out of the way, let’s begin. What can I do for you all today?”

Before anyone else could jump in, the blonde Emily said one word that everyone else had been thinking. “Weapons.”

James just gave a coy smile. “Please allow the old goat Jeng to field that one.”

Feeling the encroaching pressure of these influential people falling on him, he forced his way through an explanation of why the Brotherhood couldn’t sell weapons.

Hang, from the Susso Clan, didn’t seem too pleased and said as much. “You mean to say you’ve monopolised the Brotherhoods weapons business? This is unacceptable.”

For a rare change, his twin Danto Telly agreed. “That’s right, it shouldn’t be difficult to annul their oath to you. I can understand you trying to rope them in earlier, but they’ve created things that even the best Forge Master’s in the empires would have trouble matching up against. Now that they have people like us turning up to make them a profit, you’re limiting their growth.”

In one form or another everyone agreed. After all, the Arc Cannon was a rather unique and incredibly powerful weapon. If it could be mass produced it would change the face of the entire continent.

James just shook his head when everyone started getting a little riled up. “Everyone please calm down. You can’t focus all your dissatisfaction on the Gau Clan. The main reason we agreed to this treaty condition was that we didn’t plan to sell weapons to anyone in the first place. I’m afraid that if you only came here for the Arc Cannon, you will all be disappointed.”

For the first time, Lucas joined the conversation sounding half dead and looking like he was half asleep. “Well then, what do you plan to sell, and how much can we buy? Say, for example, your school. What if we offered to buy that and everything it can do?”

James cupped his chin and thought about it. “No. I can’t sell the school or any of its capabilities. What I can sell though is usage. I can sell you as many tickets as you want for as many people as you want. Hell, if you pay out the ass end, we will establish a university of knowledge and for the right price can even help people understand the experience the implant provides. That will be in the future though.

“For now, our guild only has a few goals. That is to stockpile resources and learn everything we can about this world. If you can help us achieve this aim, we can sell you just about anything you want apart from the technology to build some of our things. Weapons and the school are good examples.”

Lucas gave out a long sigh and leant forwards with his head in his arms like he was preparing to take a nap right here in James’ office.

“Well then, how about this. We will exchange rare resources that trade through the Yori Empire from the three great nations. We’ll sell them to you at the Yansho City’s market prices. In exchange, instead of giving us gold, you can log all your purchases from us as our guilds account. We can then send whoever we want to Gau City for the school, and you can deduct from our account.”

“This will also act as a slush fund, and anything you’re selling we can buy it with the account. Of course, that includes direct orders. Say if we wanted to buy some more of those ... air boards. We could then put in a manufacturing request, and you fill the order.”

James wasn’t sure what to make of this. He turned and looked at his business tycoon, Jessy. Seeing it was her cue she perked up from her papers. “That would be acceptable. However, we reserve the right to refuse any requests and to limit purchases as we see fit. Also, the raw materials we need for production will be supplied by the interested party. We can chalk up a basic outline of things we are willing to sell, their price and the materials we’ll need you to supply. We’ll also tell you how much of it were able to trade. This will be updated say ... every two weeks and it will be your responsibility to gather this report from us.

“Prices will be subject to change in our workload and the effort required to complete your order promptly. Any accounts we hold for you will be taxed for operating expenses, if your account empties, it will be closed. If you have no objections, we can draw up a simple contract for your accounts right now. To ensure you we don’t plan to cheat you, we can swear an oath as a guild to treat your accounts fairly and with due diligence.”

For the first time since he’d arrived, Lucas perked up. He sat up straight and stared at Jessy. So intense was his staring that Jessy began to blush and move around in her seat until he spoke again. “Fine, these conditions are acceptable.”

Having said that, everyone present jumped on the bandwagon. When results of the meeting travelled around the city, all the guilds in the city jumped at the chance to start a business account with the Brotherhood.

After these people left the city, things once again began to calm down. Apart from a few attempts to infiltrate the lab by unknown factions, everything remained calm in Gau City for another week.

-Sword Hall-

In the sword hall, Xanzu was busy cultivating his spirit energy on one of the arrays the clan had James set up. He was close. So close! The Palace Realm! He would be the first person in the clan since Jeng to enter the Palace Realm before he turned thirty.

So you realise how incredible that is, in the entire Empire, Palace Realm experts under 30 years of age numbered in the dozens. Palace Realms older than that were in the hundreds. People in the Realm above Palace numbered in the tens, and almost all of them were once cultivators that broke through to the palace before 30.

He wasn’t there yet. But he was close. When he finally got there, he would get his chance. Soon he would be the leader of the Gau Clan, and when he was, he would destroy those steppers and take that slut to his dungeons.

Xanzu had spent the last month training to reach the Palace Realm. He wanted to go and cause trouble for James and the Dark Brotherhood, but he’d had to focus on his training. Amusingly, the greatest help in his rapid development was all thanks to creations from the lab that Jeng had been paying a pound of flesh for.

Jeng too felt somewhat held back in regards to the Brotherhood. He never would have allowed them time to settle into the city if he knew they would grow so fast. To make it worse, they rarely left their Guildhall.

If he wanted to try and get rid of them, it meant he’d have to risk paying to send people in there. He already knew, the moment someone invaded the guild they would be blown to pieces by one of those blasted Arc Cannons.

It only got harder to try and act against them after the incident in James’ office. Originally Jeng had made quite a few promises and back door deals to try and get the other guilds to start putting an embargo on the brotherhood. That all quickly changed when instead of trying to discuss the issue James just turned some guy into a bloody mist and blew another’s leg off.

The Tailor’s Guildmaster was apparently still recuperating from his missing leg.

Jeng and Xanzu were both making plans, but everything was once again uprooted when James threw that bomb out at the meeting after the auction. To make it worse, he’d tried limiting James in other ways by saying he was breaking the oath by selling array patterns that the Clan wanted to sell.

James simply replied with “When the Clan starts selling them we will stop”. The reason he could get away with that was because even though they’d been feeding back information on the arrays to the Clan as they had agreed to, the clan members could hardly make heads or tails of it.

Without explanations, they had trouble making sense of the Brotherhoods notes, which was only exacerbated by the duo changing back and forth between different terminologies. For example, they would often interchange lore and source code, or foundation and hardware.

The only one who had any idea about the arrays was Anvil, who the boys in the lab had no issues with. The problem was, he had no computer to do all the busy design work and cataloguing, so he had to rely on memorising everything and going through hundreds of documents to try and find certain patterns.

As such, Jeng felt the last resort was to speed up his plans to take control of the Clan. Once that happened, he could find a way to trick James into annulling their oaths and then nothing would be stopping him from killing that bastard himself. All he needed was to be close by and before his goons could fire off the cannon James would be dead and Jeng would be long gone.

Jeng stood nearby watching Xanzu training. “How long boy?”

Xanzu opened his eyes and looked back at his master. “Not long Master Jeng. I’m close now. I feel like I’m already half a step into Palace Realm.”

Jeng scratched at his scarred eye and gave a grunt. “Good, I’ve secured some more of their 616. I don’t care if they release all their technology anymore. It’s too late to stop them, and because of that stupid father of yours, we lost the chance to control them. If we don’t kill them now, it will be a disaster for us later. I already think Hao is growing suspicious of us and if he gets help from them before we’re ready we may lose our opportunity.”

“Yes Master, I will be ready. I’m so close now. Please remember not to kill the girl. I want that little slut for myself.”

Jeng just gave another grunt then walked out leaving Xanzu to train.

-Brotherhood Guildhall-

Standing in the plaza outside the Brotherhood Guildhall were two people. One dressed in the garb of a Tibetan monk with prayer beads around his neck and a bald shaved head. He looked as old as time itself and his entire face resembled a wrinkled prune.

Standing next to this man was a young boy about 13 or 14 dressed in the traditional cloth get-up of a poor pitiable commoner.

They both stood out in the plaza looking at the Guildhall. “Master, are you certain this is the place? The name alone makes me question if these people have any morals. It’s definitely an evil organisation, right?”

“Eh heh heh. Little Casper, even in the yang there is some yin, and in the yin, there will always be yang.” The old monk just rubbed the boy’s head then started walking towards the door.

The boy looked at him with a sour face. “You crotchety old bastard, do you ever speak a single sentence of sense?”

“Oh ho, Little Casper, you must remember that a proverb is the teachings of a thousand men and one proverb tells of a hundred stories.” The old monk just muttered another terrible proverb about proverbs then entered the guild.

James and Skay were playing with something on a work bench when the elevator gave its customary ‘ding’. As they looked up, they both stopped what they were doing. Skay dropped his soldering iron onto the bench, and James was already reaching for a big red button nearby.

The moment he pressed it, red lights started flashing everywhere, and two enormous rods made of LS3 drop out of the ceiling aiming at the elevator doors.

The old monk and the boy just waltzed out of the elevator like they were in their own home, paying absolutely no attention, what so ever, to the massive arcs of lightning that had started dancing along the Tesla Cannons that just aimed directly towards them.

The moment the old monk’s foot set down outside the elevator, the Tesla Cannons unloaded almost the entire energy reserves of the array generator into two long violent arcs of lightning. To James and Skay’s great surprise, the old monk just lifted his left hand and a barrier of water condensed out of thin air.

After a minute of the Tesla Cannons blindly spraying lightning and the lights flickering, the lab became quiet. The elevator was shrouded in a mist of rising steam from all the water vaporising on contact with the lightning, and there was no movement or sound.

That was until they watched the completely unharmed old monk walking out of the steam nonplussed as if he was walking through a garden. The boy shortly followed after him, waving his arms around generating a little bit of wind energy and blowing the steam away.

James eyes nearly rolled out his head. Those Tesla Cannons made even the Arc Cannon look soft. Generally, the amount of energy they just released should have completely obliterated anything that walked out of that elevator. Hell, even the elevator should have been vaporised by the huge arcs of plasma that had been created.

After glancing around like he was looking for someone, the monk focused on James and his wrinkled old face split with and equally wrinkled smile. The boy, on the other hand, was staring wide-eyed at the Tesla Cannon in the ceiling. “Holy crap. Master, it was incredible. I want one.”

“Oh? Haha, Little Casper, give a man a fish, and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.” Replied the monk as he walked towards James.

The boy following behind him just gave another groan.

James was freaking the fuck out right now. Before he had a chance to process what was going on, Goliath appeared out of one of the equipment testing rooms and lined up an Arc Cannon. A sonic boom rang out, and everyone watched as a bubble appeared around the monk and the projectile deflected off and smashed into a wall, disintegrating a good four metres of solid rock.

Goliath, being a relatively straightforward creature, just started firing off more, until ten new holes of dust and rock debris lined the roof, wall and floor on the other side of the monk. The boy behind the monk just watched on with wide sparkling eyes.

After a few more steps the old prune-faced monk was standing in front James eyeing him up and down. “Oh yes yes! Good, planning a day ahead, is planning for a lifetime.”

James stood stock still like a rock, with his lifeless dead eyes staring back at the monk. Meanwhile, his brain was spinning faster than it ever had before. “What?” He finally replied.

The old monk just smiled pleasantly then pulled a bench stool over and sat down. Then he gave James a nod to sit down and replied with more proverbs. “This morning’s tea makes yesterday distant.”

James couldn’t tell what the fuck was going on. ‘Who the fuck is this guy? More importantly, just how fucking powerful is he to be able to deflect ten shots from the Arc Cannon 2.1? Especially after he just diffused two lightning arcs that could disintegrate through 5 metres of solid metal. Dude hasn’t even worked up a sweat.’

Casper walked over and grabbed a stool as well. After sitting down, he looked expectantly at James. After James’ placid face just sat there staring back for a whole minute, the boy finally spoke. “What the Master means is that serving some tea now would lead to forgetting about that whole ... thing, just then.”

Skay, who had just rescued whatever they’d been working on from the soldering iron, looked at the boy. “Tea? Forget? Are you fucking out of it kid? Are you fucking threatening us? You barge into my lab, and fucking ask me for tea?! Fuck your tea! I don’t want to forget!”

Geo just gave a sagely nod. “All things are forgotten and the moments lead to the future. Tea, however, is eternal.”

Skay’s eyes were bloodshot, and he looked about ready to reach over and strangle this old bastard. James held out a hand to stop him then motioned for Lackey 31 to go and make some tea. Once it was served James immediately felt a little better.

He used to be a coffee man, but now tea helped him to relax and think. Because shit was always going wrong around here, he drank a lot of tea. Finally, after a few sips, he put the cup down, and his focus fell on the old man.

“They say a single word can mean a thousand things and a thousand words paint a single picture. If a single word can paint a single picture, why do we need a thousand words?”

The old man’s dried plum of a face seemed to constrict and collapse in slightly, and he gave a slight chuckle. The boy looked at James oddly, and Skay just scratched his head. After a moment, the boy gave a long sigh and mumbled. “Wasn’t even any reason for me to come here. This guy’s just as fucking crazy as the crotchety old bastard.”

“Haha, Little Casper, all lines intersect, but great minds think in parallel.” After the monk said that he turned back to James.

“Nurture the plant one year, ten days of flowers. To build it fast took a hundred years, to fall it took a day. Beast and Man share one goal but walk two paths. To grow stronger is not to grow faster and running is to miss the view when walking. When growing a tree, patience is the key. All things end at the beginning and begin at the end.”

Once he finished the bald old monk stood up as if this whole show had been to say just these few lines. Then just as he walked into the elevator, left one last proverb. “Two paths move in the same direction, but they’re blocked by the trees. Remember to see the trees ‘and’ the forest.”

With that, the boy and the monk left. Finally, Skay couldn’t take it anymore and slammed a fist down on the bench as he focused on James. “What the fuck was that? You speak in fuckin riddles now?”

James remained stoic as he eyed the elevator. After a few more seconds of silence, he let out a long breath. “I’ve got no fucking idea what all that means. I was just curious if I could have an entire conversation in proverbs.”

Skay’s eyes were so close to popping out the only thing holding them in were his stupidly thick-lensed glasses. James threw him a sidelong glance and took another sip of tea. “You want to know the thing I’ve learnt the most in this world? There are some situations you simply can’t change. If that man had wanted to kill us, we’d have been dead before I even had a chance to push the purge button. We’re not in Kansas anymore old madman. If we can’t at least enjoy it a little, what’s the point? I think if I’ve learnt anything apart from that, it would be that sometimes, you have to roll with the punches.”

Skay was shaking from rage. “Boy, are you playing with me? Did that fucking nutter give you some sickness? You going to speak to me in truisms and proverbs forever now?”

James gave a bashful smile. “The lobster sheds its shell and grows a new one in the face of adversity. If it never sheds its shell, it never grows.”

After teasing Skay for a little longer, he whipped out his pad and called the envious crazy bitch down to the lab. He figured if anyone could decipher the monk’s cryptic nonsense, then it would have to be Exsue. After all, she’s millions of fucking years old, surely she’d heard a few proverbs in her time.

Hearing that James had summoned her, Exsue was so excited she sprinted from her room on the second floor down to the lab. She damn near tried to pry the elevator doors open on the way down. When she flew out of the elevator like a bullet from a gun, it was only a blink of the eye until she was glued to James.

James immediately regretted this decision. Typically, he tried to avoid Exsue as much as possible. When she first got resurrected, she was stuck to him endlessly, which meant he could never get anything done. After some half pleading half negotiating discussions, they’d worked out sort of a schedule.

Exsue wasn’t allowed to be in contact with him at all during the day unless it was for guild things. In exchange, James had to allow her a single hour a day that she was ‘authorised’ to be present in his company. Initially, Exsue wanted the whole day but realising she was only making James mad she eventually relinquished those fantasies.

Amusingly, this only made her envy grow even stronger, especially when she thought about how Jessy always seemed, in Exsue’s mind, to be making up guild related excuses to be nearer to James. Jessy had started to grow more comfortable with this world by now and was, in fact, making no special efforts to see James at all.

Goliath walked over after placing the Arc Cannon into the auto-factory for recycling. Although he remained nearby while the monk was still here, he wasn’t about to walk over. Guy just bounced Arc Cannon fire off a fuckin bubble after all.

Goliath accepted that there was nothing he could do if that freak just decided to kill everyone and so decided to do what he did best. Stood off in the distance while menacingly eyeing the old monk.

As Exsue crawled all over James and Goliath sidled up next to James and Skay, the elevator gave another ‘ding’. Everyones eyes automatically diverted towards it slightly panicked. When it opened out stumbled Fatty who was eating something out of a bucket. Presumably, grain, because it was cheap.

Behind him was Jessy, who gave a cautious glance around the lab before sending Harvy out with a Cannon strapped to his shoulder. The reason for this was because the Tesla Cannons were still deployed and that meant one of two things. They were being tested again, or someone had just been standing here in the elevator that shouldn’t have been.

After Harvy swept the lab and saw his Evil Overlord and Master drinking tea looking only slightly bemused, he gave the all clear.

The moment Jessy was in earshot, she was throwing out questions. “What the fuck’s going on down here? The whole guild was shaking. I thought someone had attacked us.”

The trio that had already been in the lab just gave wry smiles. Seeing that James and Skay were having a short conversation with their eyebrows and head motions, Goliath was the first to speak.

“We had an unauthorised intruder. James deployed the emergency protocols, and the man made a shield of water. Then when I saw him still advancing, I fired a full clip from the Arc Cannon, which looked like they were bounced away. He then said some strange things and left as quickly as he’d arrived.”

Jessy pinched her brow while thinking furiously. “So what did he say?”

Fatty, who usually wasn’t allowed to speak much, on account of never having anything constructive to add, chose this moment to start theorising. “A stranger just walked in here you say? And he was so powerful that nothing worked against him? He must be one of the overlords. If I’m right, the aliens of this world are all made up of strange and powerful factions. But they fight with each other internally. No doubt this man was an alien of the rebel faction and wants to assist us.”

James reached out a hand and gave Fatty a slap. “Shut up Fatty. We already told you. On this world, we’re the aliens. Now, Exsue, you’ve been around for a while. Surely you’ve heard a few proverbs in your time, right?”

Exsue was straddled over James’ knee and humping back and forth. She seemed to be rather enjoying herself. Everyone present just ignored it. They had long ago accepted this girl was absolutely shameless when it came to James, but in regards to anything else refused to lower her status by deigning even a hint of interest.

After James replayed a video from the lab and Exsue heard the man’s words she stopped humping away. “How strange. That man must be a deviator.”

Everyone gave her an odd look. Before anyone had a chance to ask, Harvy chimed in as he freshened James’ tea. “I am a deviator, my Lord. The term refers to someone who has gained faster cultivation speed and power at the cost of some part of their soul. It is a free will thing. If you reach a point in your cultivation where you stand at the crossroads of life and death, then you can grasp more power in exchange for sacrifice. I sacrificed free will, this man sacrificed sensible speech.”

James gave Harvy a strange look. “Harvy I thought you were the runt of the litter. When did you learn about this stuff?”

Harvy placed the teapot back down once he’d finished, and returned to standing nearby like a ghoulish mummified butler. “Master has given me permission to peruse and research from the database in my free time. Some of the books we purchased earlier had mentions of deviators.”

James gave Harvy a serious look. “Harvy ... you have ‘free’ time? As in a time you’re not doing something else?” James then looked at Skay. “Harvy has free time Skay? Doesn’t sound like you to be so benevolent.”

Skay just gave a sinister chuckle. “Harvy is my chief lab assistant. I need him to know everything. Besides, even if he found a way to reverse his deviation, he has sworn his life to the Brotherhood. I give him a few hours to peruse now and then.”

James cupped his chin and gave a nod. “Sure, sounds good. Harvy, I don’t need to tell you what will happen if you start keeping secrets. If you find anything interesting while going through the database, I want to know about it.”

He then turned back to Exsue. “So, any ideas what the old man was saying?”

Exsue just snuggled up to James and forced his arm around her waist to hold her to him. He inwardly sighed at just how fuckin needy this bitch was. She then finally began to speak. “Well baby, don’t hate me if I interpret it wrong, okay? Oh and also you did really well. That dual truism of yours was a perfect opener and probably the only reason you’re not still here trying to decipher him.”

James put a cocky grin on his face. “Of course it was, it’s not hard to throw together some random proverbs. The problem is trying to interpret other people’s proverbs.”

The other members of the core group all made strange faces with cocked eyebrows. Finally, Skay chipped in with a vein sticking out of his temple. “What do you mean it’s not difficult?! You just told me a minute ago, you don’t even know what the fuck you said!”

James looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “When did I say that? I just said I had no fucking idea what the old coot was saying. I knew perfectly well what I was saying.”

Skay’s eyebrow began twitching. “Fine you little shit, so if you understand proverbs so well, why can’t you decipher him?”

James cocky smile returned. “Mostly, I want a second opinion. After having thought about it for a while, I basically think he’s telling us to slow down and refocus our research and cultivation. I’m pretty sure he’s also of the opinion we’re trying to build the guild up too fast, and that if we keep going at this speed, it will make it weak in the long run.”

Everybody made different faces hearing this. Fatty looked the most surprised. “How did you gather all that from those few sentences of gibberish?”

James just gave a knowing smile and said nothing. Exsue seemed to get very excited. “Oh JayJay, you really are perfect. You were so close to understanding everything you probably wouldn’t have needed me at all if you’d really focused.”

James just gave a sigh while Jessy made a gagging motion. James wasn’t fooling himself. He was an arrogant guy and loved to soak up some praise now and then, the only problem was, he felt incredibly dirty when Exsue praised him. He felt like a toddler again and getting praised for taking a crap in the potty for the first time.

Of course, this wasn’t because she praised him in a demeaning way, but because she praised him for any and everything. The worst part of all of this was, he knew she believed every word of it. Just that alone made him feel like going for a wash.

Exsue then began explaining. According to her, James was mostly correct. The old man was telling them they needed to broaden their research instead of how they’d recently been putting so much focus onto arrays. He was also telling them to be more careful as they built their guild.

Apparently, there was also going to be a beast attack soon. Exsue sheepishly explained how eating cultivators and other spirits beasts was the fastest way for a spirit beast to evolve. This was why they were drawn to areas with higher spirit energy saturation. Because usually, those areas had other creatures that were cultivating.

The last thing he said was basically, ‘they would meet again’, and he was also warning James not to lose his focus on cultivation so much. James had to admit he’d been far more wrapped up in array research and the guild recently and had lost some of the focus he’d had on cultivation.

After the old monk’s display today, James realised that as powerful as their technology was in this world, it wasn’t as powerful as a real expert cultivator. Although he was sure they could one day reach that level with better materials and designs, cultivation was still the key to real power.

The most significant news was naturally the beast attack. Exsue had somehow correlated 10 days of flowers with tens peaceful weeks of building up the guild. They were in week 9 right now, which meant in a week’s time, the city would be under attack.

Having finished the dissection of the monk’s words, the team started setting up some jobs. Firstly, they reallocated the scouting drones back to the limits of Gau City as an early warning system. They also started sending some out further, in the hopes they could see where the beasts were gathering, or with the hope to find anything actually.

James posted Fatty to the auto-factory to take charge of it. As a fitter, Fatty had a pretty good idea how to move heavy things and bang on stuff so James was sure it would be fine. All he really had to do was make sure the Lackey assigned there was filling the right materials into the right places so the 3D printers could do the rest.

He reallocated Goliath to member training. Goliath usually spent most of his time training in the arena anyway, so most the members knew him. They even set up basic combat training as a Job Request on the boards that anyone could accept. This was primarily paying them to go and train their fighting skills with Goliath.

Jessy was tasked with the diplomacy of the Guilds in town and contacting the account holders to see if they could give any aid ... for a price of course. When he suggested this he said; “You should get in contact with your boyfriend. I’m sure if it’s you he’ll help out.”

Jessy’s face scrunched up when James said that. “What boyfriend?! You’ve got a boyfriend!”

James gave a chuckle. “You know, the tired guy, errr ... Lucas. He seemed to like you.”

Jessy just gave a snort, like noticing some scrawny scholarly type was beneath her.

Skay and James stayed in the lab to start setting up some things that would be useful in the worst case situation. James also had Skay start assembling a proper brain scanning machine. He wanted to kick research into cultivation up a notch.

Exsue of course did ... whatever the fuck it is that Exsue does when she’s not attached to James like a bad smell.

Once they had their Jobs assigned to them, everyone split up again.