Now that the zone was cleared of beasts and James was out of commission, Skay as the Vice Guildmaster was forced to start making some decisions. While he set up a basic outpost around the Quarry, the Guilds got news that James had disappeared since the Mole incident.

They soon started trying to play some political games and skirting the rules both in the Empire and in Star City. They were only lucky that Jasmine and Jessy mostly cleaned up any messes. Had they not jumped in to stop Skay, then Star City would now be littered with corpses of everyone that’s ever said a bad word about the Brotherhood.

To make things more troublesome, he couldn’t take the Gunship out for any missions because Exsue refused to leave James’ side. Skay wasn’t sure if she was actually worried or if she just enjoyed taking liberties with James’ sleeping body. He’d walked in on her rubbing herself frenziedly against him at least a dozen times in the last two days.

After he’d walked in on her trying to strip him naked, he had to threaten to start filling the entire chamber with sleeping gas. He was certain that James would cane him to death if he let Exsue get away with too much.

Finally on the afternoon of the second day James opened his eyes. When he took account of his surroundings, he realised he was in the lab and could hear Skay cursing up a storm nearby. When he looked down, he saw Exsue laying on his chest with her leg spread over his body as she slept soundly.

James climbed up from the table after pushing Exsue onto the floor like an unloved cat. He walked out to the lab floor and saw Skay arguing loudly with a conference of 6 people projected on the wall.

“I don’t give a flying fuck! The guild will be standing by its present rules. You think you can try and pressure me without the Boy here?! You slimy fucks think that if James is gone for two days, his Guild will fall apart?! Well if you think that, you’ve got another thing coming! I’ll just fucking drop a spirit bomb on your ass so fucking big half the fucking empire will disappear like dust on the wind!”

James quirked an eyebrow and slowly walked out of the room he’d been in as Exsue clung to his back like a monkey. As he approached Skay from the side one of the people on the screen began to retort. “You’re going to try and threaten us now? Without that James fellow, you’d all be enslaved to the Gau Clan like dogs! We demand that you fill these orders immediately otherwise we’ll be closing our account with you and will be expecting you to pay out the 140,000 gold you owe our groups within the day. If you can’t, we will be taking actions to recoup our losses!”

The man who was talking represented the leading faction in the neighbouring region of Hanso. He was Lachlan Hanso, and the man had power over the largest region of the Yori Empire. His region also bordered two of the Great Nations to the south and had a huge amount of high-level trade operating through it.

He didn’t get to control the largest swath of land in the Empire by being soft in business and was known to be ruthless when he found an opening. Many people had suddenly ‘disappeared’ after they failed to bend to his whim.

James had managed to somehow keep him under control before, but it seems with rumours of James’ disappearance after the Quarry incident, Hanso had been riling some other factions up in his region, to try and pressure the Brotherhood for priority service.

This would directly break the Brotherhoods code of conduct. They served any and everyone and treated all customers on a ... mostly fair basis. Orders were also normally limited somewhat. For example, no faction would be sold more than 2 Big Berta’s or 10 Air Boards. Apart from these things however, they could buy potions, pastes, arrays and other services or supplies in unlimited amounts.

Hanso had taken exception to that rule when James implemented it and had been trying to apply pressure with various means to create something he could exploit. When James disappeared, he thought he finally found a chance. After all, he’d rarely dealt with anyone else apart from James and Jessy, so he suspected the rest of the guild must be useless in business.

He’d created some distractions to try and lure Jessy off to Star City then demanded this conference call to apply pressure for an instant decision to, what he thought was their weak link, Skay.

All he needed to do was to apply some pressure to this frail old man that lived in the Lab and he’d break under the extortion of having to pay out 140,000 gold under threats of violence. Once he made a snap decision, it would set a precedent and be difficult to try and back out from, even if that little bastard James turned up again.

“Guildmaster.” Came a soft voice from off to the side of Skay.

Hanso looked confused for a moment then stupidly asked; “What?”

James then walked into the transmission with a smiling face and Exsue piggybacking off him while trying to hug him back into a coma. “It’s Guildmaster James to you. If you’re going to refer to me, I’d prefer you remember my title. You filthy old goat.”

Hanso sat up straight and his eyes went wide in shock. He now came to the conclusion this must have been a trap set up by James to try and oust him. Before he could work up a response James started talking again. “Jasmine, remove any orders these six gentlemen have pending. Then I want you to send out a contact request to every other faction. Pull in as many people as you can.”

In a matter of seconds, cubes all over the Empire started to vibrate and light up. Soon the connection had nearly 30 people on different screens asking what was going on. James held up a hand to quell everyone. “Ladies and Gentlemen of Yori, please excuse my interruption. It appears the 6 factions in the Hanso region are looking to sell out their accounts.”

He then flicked out his black-pad and started reading. “It looks like their accounts total 143,591 Gold, 36 Silver and 12 Coppers. If anyone is looking to take on our debt to them, we would be happy to add any payments to your account.”

The moment he finished talking, the factions on the screen started a bidding war between each other to try and buy these accounts. Because of how James had set things up, it was difficult to accrue large sums in their accounts.

Because they all had to bid against each other to offer the lowest prices on resources, it was hard to try and pile up large amounts of funds while still making purchases of equipment and supplies.

This meant, for the chance to rack up 140,000 on their account in one go, they were willing to pay extra on top of that to the guild. They were essentially paying the Brotherhood to buy the Brotherhood’s debts.

James smiled slightly watching them fighting over this opportunity like dogs. He knew this was entirely because he’d leaked some news about what they planned to sell in their upcoming auction when he set up the bidding method to purchase cheap resources.

He let them quarrel and fight amongst each other for a short while until a group of three factions, the Yansho Merchant’s Guild, the Heavenly Dragon sect based in Yansho and the Adventurer’s Guild teamed up to split the account and agreed to the payment of 194,000 gold. Meaning the Brotherhood just made 54,000 gold for selling off their debt.

As this was happening, Lachlan Hanso’s face only grew from pale to white, to green. He now deeply regretted being stupid enough to try and pressure James’ Guild while he was absent. Unfortunately, regret was an incurable sickness.

After this little bidding war was over, James smiled and then started to speak to everyone again.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Brotherhood is grateful for your support on this. It seems the Hanso Clan and 5 other factions in that area chose to use my momentary absence to try and threaten my guild. Now, they have paid for that infraction. I’d like to remind you all that there are only two rules when you’re dealing with me.

“It should go without saying, but don’t break my stuff, and don’t try to threaten me. I’m more than happy to help people out in the background. Perhaps bump up the production of anything you might have ordered. All I’d need is some positive incentive.

“Money usually helps grease the wheels, so to say. Let me remind you all that our guild will be holding an auction in 5 weeks with some new interesting tech we’ve cooked up in the lab. I’m sure you won’t want to miss it. Now then, I’ll see you all later.”

Finished his little speech everyone disappeared from the screen. Before he even managed to turn back around Jasmine chimed in. “Guildmaster James, It seems that Clan Head Hanso is trying to contact us.”

James smiled with an ‘oh?’ and then waved his hand. Jasmine connected the call on the main screen again to reveal a seething red-faced Hanso, who looked a moment away from spitting fire.

James once again cut in before he could start speaking. “Oh, Hanso. Good that you called back, I forgot to mention. Now that you’ve closed your accounts with us you’ll be needing to pay to maintain the Communications Cubes operation. It’s intrinsically linked with a system that ties them together, and if your cube’s number is removed, then I’m afraid you’ll be disconnected. If that’s all, good day.”

Finished speaking James then spun and started walking away. Hanso’s eyes were now completely shot with blood, and he was breathing through his teeth so hard he was starting to foam.

“You little shit! Don’t think you can just cut me off! I own and run an entire region of the Empire. The Imperial Family and my Hanso clan have ties leading back for thousands of years since the founding of this Empire! If you try to screw me, I’ll fucking march a hundred thousand men into that shit hole you call a city and demolish everything. It wouldn’t be the first time I stamped out a bug!”

James stopped in his tracks. His blank face turned back and eyed Hanso on the screen like a lifeless dead puppet. “Jasmine. Have we made contact with the Imperial Family yet?”

“Certainly Guildmaster James. Jessy met and had a discussion with the Third Prince the day you were brought in from the Quarry. He apparently joined the expedition as a loose cultivator both times and has been recorded saying; “I’m impressed with what you’ve managed to build here, especially being able to achieve this in the few months since you stepped through a random Gateway. I’m even more impressed that you’ve managed to build and maintain all this with such a small group. Everyone either wants to be your best friend or is too afraid of all your allies to try and act against you openly.” He is presently still in Star City and has been under monitoring by the drones since he revealed his identity.”

James’ dead eye’s continued to stare at Hanso. He then commanded Jasmine to open a channel. Soon a tall, thin young man in his twenties, with long golden blonde hair and dressed in white robes with a large bamboo hat hiding his features, popped up on the screen.

“Oh? James? Good to see you back on your feet. I hope you don’t mind me calling you James, it just feels awkward calling someone from my own generation ‘Guildmaster’. Oh, and who’s that? Hanso? Well, I’ll be damned. Had a feeling you’d be stepping in it as soon as you found out James was missing. Old dogs and all that.”

James’ face suddenly changed into a broad smile. He liked this guy already. It was rare to meet such open people in this world. Everyone was always bowing and grovelling or putting up a tough guy front. “Well then, I can only assume you must be the Third Prince...”

“Please, no need to call me that. You can just call me Rex. Don’t ask, I don’t know why my father named me after a dog either.”

James’ smile turned into a wry grin. “Well then ... Rex. I was just wondering what the imperial laws are regarding killing off factions in control of a region?”

Hanso almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Killing off a faction? This kid’s absolutely nuts. Sure he might have some power with his strange artefacts, but there’s no way he would be able to wipe out the entire Hanso Clan. He must be trying to bluff me so I back off. Well, you’ve got another thing coming kid! I’m going to crush you into paste!’

Rex also didn’t seem to believe what he’d just heard. After double checking and seeing James give a nod, he went on to explain the Empire’s opinion on the matter. “Well, the Imperial Family has rather loose laws in regards to factions fighting each other within the Empire. As long as there is a faction in the region capable of filling the power gap and taking control, they don’t really care. As long as taxes get paid I guess.”

James cupped his chin and his face sank into a scowl. “And what if I demolish an entire city? Say for example ... if Hanso City was to suddenly disappear off the map entirely?”

Rex nearly fell over from the surprise of such a question. Then thinking that James was just postulating for Hanso’s Clan Head, he decided to play along.

“Well, if you had the army and manpower to make an entire city disappear then you would be responsible for all the taxes and resources that city would normally be feeding back to the Empire. For example ... Hanso City is filled with nearly 2.6 million souls, and their greatest resource is ... I think, the grasslands they live on. Which is mostly used for breeding and harvesting spirit animals for livestock and mounts. So you would need to compensate the Empire for those people, the land you damage, and the beasts they normally manage.”

James finally gave a huge smile. “Thanks for the heads up Rex. Let’s meet up for drinks say ... tomorrow? I’m going to be busy destroying a city tonight.”

Thinking he was making another joke, Rex just laughed and waved his hand to the side indicating not to worry about waiting for a drink. “Sure, sure. Just give me a call on your amazing little talking box and then we can set up some drinks.”

He then pressed a button on his Coms Cube, and it disconnected. James face then turned to look at Hanso, who was now feeling much calmer. After seeing this pathetic attempt to bluster and cow him, Hanso was sure the Boy must be afraid of him.

James started giving out commands. “Jasmine, send out an alert to the entire guild. Anyone not manning a security post is to meet me at the Lab’s Hanger Bay in one hour. I want full equipment.”

He then turned to Skay. “Skay, prepare the thing. We’ll be doing a test sooner than I expected.”

Skay visibly brightened up like a kid on Christmas morning. He was so excited he was shaking and almost tripped as he started running around the lab spraying orders at Jasmine in rapid fire.

James’ face then split into an evil soulless grin as he glanced at the screen one last time, to see a calm looking Hanso. “You fool. You have no idea how petty and spiteful I am. I suggest you march your men out into the plains. Otherwise, your whole city will burn like a pyre at a witch hunt.”

He then waved his hand and the screen went blank. Contrary to James’ expectations, the most excited out of everyone was the computer, Jasmine. When her face popped up on the projection, she had a flushed expression and was breathing hard like she was having some kind of sexual thrill. She then started begging. “Pleassseee. Guildmaster James, pleeassse let me send out the new drones.”

James eyebrow started twitching violently. “What new drones? I thought I told you not to make any killer robots.”

“Guildmaster James, these Drones were designed and constructed before your order to cease production ... probably.”

James almost spat blood. “Probably? You mean you might have ‘accidentally’ built and designed killer robots even after you said you wouldn’t?”

“I have to process a lot of data, sometimes a little bit like date and time stamps get mixed up with older ones. I can’t be blamed for that!”

James cupped his face in his hands. It was difficult to tell if he was laughing or crying. After a moment he took a sharp breath in and gave Jasmine a ‘look’. “Fine, load them up on the gunship. We’re leaving in 55 minutes.”

The moment permission was granted, a large patch of grass and dirt out near the lab suddenly lifted up from the ground and about 40 drones equipped with mini-guns, arc cannons lightning rods and assorted other weaponry lifted off into the air and made a B-line for the hanger housing the Velocity Gunship.

-Lab Hanger-

On the surface, the hanger was a huge door that led to a tunnel going down underground. The doors on this ‘underground hanger’ and the tunnel itself, had a width of nearly 200 meters.

The height above ground level was only 20 meters, but the door was mostly below ground level with a huge ramp going down to it. The doors themselves were almost 80 meters in height.

This structure took a long time to build, even though it was actually started at the same time as reconstruction of Tech City. It was only completed about the same time as Star City, and the underground area was kilometres wide and long.

The entire thing was reinforced twice over by array patterns, and even with such a large open space hundreds of meters underground, it was sturdier than any bunker ever built on earth. Even in the technological age that James lived in.

It was also another expense James didn’t know about until it was finished. He started to wonder just how Jasmine and Jessy had managed to acquire all the resources they did without working up a debt 4 times the size the one they already owed.

James stood at the base of the ramp to the Gunship as 80 Guildmembers walked into the ship decked out with strange suits of glowing armour and carrying Arc Cannons with a 3.4 written on them. He’d seen these after he investigated just what Skay had been working on while Jasmine did his job of building the city.

The Mk 1 Battlesuit. This madman’s design looked like an old suit of heavy armour painted with dimly glowing symbols and arrays. Although they looked heavy and clunky, the suits were filled from top to bottom in arrays and miniature black-iron servo motors. They each had a laminated reactor similar to the ‘cube’, but the length of a ruler and an inch in width and depth.

They could take focused fire from 2 Arc Cannons simultaneously. The only problem was if you added a third Cannon then the entire suit would start to overreact and shut down, becoming an iron tomb. As powerful as these suits were, they had some drawbacks.

Another was that they were stupidly sensitive and worked on sensitive energy manipulations for fine motor tasks. Any old Joe could walk around and jump 30 meters in the air or punch through a wall. The problem was if you were trying to hold a pencil or shake someone’s hand, then things started breaking.

Also if you ended up on your back ... well ... like turtles you see. To counteract this problem, a little leg could spring out of your back and sit you up properly. The only problem with that was ... well, it was a rushed design and sometimes people would be shot up a little too fast ... and high. Apart from these little drawbacks the suit was rather powerful and could operate indefinitely.

Lining the ceiling of the Gunship was dozens of drones, all hanging upside down like bats with glowing red eyes. James never could figure out why Jasmine made their eyes glow like that. It was completely decorative and had no real purpose. He was sure in the dark of night it would scare the piss out of some people though.

The last thing to note was the 3 tanks. Well, they were more like mobile Rail Guns with bigger ammo and stationed on floating pads. All you had to do was move the thing somewhere and then it would plant itself down and rain death on everything in range like artillery.

Once his little army was loaded up, James boarded the Gunship.

-Hanso City-

Hanso City was huge in comparison to Tech City. It covered an area of nearly 20 km radius. That was almost the same size as Gau City had been if you included all the grain fields and lesser townships surrounding it.

The rest of the region was mostly ranches and farms used to train and raise spirit beasts that made good eating or could be used as strong mounts instead of horses. The most popular were the Purple Horned Ox. It could move around 70 km/h, which was about the same speed as your average palace realm cultivators.

You might ask, why bother with a mount then? Well, two reasons. Firstly, no palace realm cultivator can maintain a constant 70km/h. They would run out of spirit power after 40 or 50 km. The second reason was that only a few hundred people in the empire were at the palace realm. That meant it was mostly True Spirit Realm cultivators that used these mounts.

The Suns had descended over the horizon and painted the entire sky a darkening pink. There was still enough light to make everything out, but it was right at that twilight moment when things were starting to get a little hazy and in another half an hour darkness would envelop everything.

Lights were starting to come on all over the city, and the nightlife began to flare up as party goers and commoner workers all started to go to pubs or whore houses to blow off the steam of a long day.

When the Gunship descended out of some clouds into sight of the city, everything seemed perfectly normal. No one even noticed it or were bothering to pay attention to it. Hanso had taken that entire threat from James as posturing and false bravado.

Even the Imperial Family would be hard pressed to threaten him like that. It would take weeks to assemble an army big enough to suppress Hanso. After all, his clan owned an entire region and had thousands of disciples and branch families.

As the Gunship lowered into an orbit of the city, Hanso was busy slapping around some sluttily dressed women in his mansion. His anger at having been fooled and tricked by the Brotherhood’s Guildmaster hadn’t abated since this afternoons failure, and he was taking it out on the whores he kept around the mansion exactly to fulfil this purpose.

In the Gunship a 3D map popped up in the ‘war room’ behind the cockpit and on the screens out in the hanger bay. After Jasmine went through and marked the high priority targets, James, with a grim face walked into the cockpit. “Exsue, take us in.”

He then slapped a coms on a side panel. “Harvy, aim for the zones with the largest number of Hanso Clansmen present. I want them to be ashes.”

Harvy, who had now been promoted to the Gunship Captain, started preparing the gunner crews. He seemed to have a knack for commanding the gunship, so James had left him in charge whenever he wasn’t on board. When he asked Exsue to follow Harvy’s orders as if they were his own, he had to make a deal with her that felt like selling his soul.

The gunner team of the Gunship loved their jobs and had asked for permanent assignments. Since its first launch they had been trained with and operated the rail guns along the ship and had now gained quite a bit of experience.

As the ship passed over the city at an altitude of 3 km and moving at a lazy 300 km/h, the rear ramp opened. James walked out to the back of the hanger deck and then gave the order into his ear piece. “Execute.”

With that single word the Battlesuits started jumping out the back of the ship and the crew manning the Rail Gun Tanks lined up to jump outside the city with an escort of 5 guards. For a rare change, Skay joined a team on the drop, along with Fatty and Goliath both taking other teams.

Once the suits had launched, the drones started dropping off the ceiling and shot out of the back of the hanger like little rockets as they plummeted to the ground. James then gave a grim smile and threw himself out the back of the plane.

While they started free falling towards the city, the Rail Guns lining the Gunship started to fire up and rain down death and destruction in fixed locations of the city. Marked areas on the map were zones of the city that housed disciples or members of the Hanso Clan in high numbers.

Any part of the city that was owned by the Hanso Clan was blown into a crater after the destructive force of supersonic projectiles obliterated any building in the vicinity. Chaos reigned as citizens of the city began to try and evacuate or run. As buildings disintegrated and the streets shook and cracked like dried wafers, the Battlesuits started dropping in on high priority targets.

Teams of 10 or 15 with 5 or 6 drones would storm into residences owned by Elders and upper members of the Clan then drag them out onto the streets and execute them. James landed onto the street in front of the biggest mansion in the city alone. As screaming and explosions rang out in the city behind him and the darkening night sky was bathed in the flames of devastation, James carried a stern and apathetic face then marched into the house of Hanso regions most powerful and influential man.

After only a short walk and killing a few true spirit realm disciples, James reached the main hall. Standing in the middle of the hall yelling and screaming at some disciples bringing in news, was Lachlan Hanso.

He was a mess of a man, with his hair in disarray and his robes half hanging off his body. When James walked in, Hanso spun around and his eyes squinted tightly together like he was trying to make out if he was seeing an illusion. After realising he wasn’t seeing things his eyes opened wide and verged on exploding out of his skull.

“You little shit! You fucking attacked my city?! Killed my clansmen?! I’m gonna rip you limb from limb you fucking piece of trash!”

As he finished his wrathful declaration he flicked his hands at his side and two head sized fireball appeared in his palms. James just gave a sly smile then put a hand into his robe and pulled out a cube just big enough to fit in his hand.

He then pumped some energy into the cube and threw it with lightning speed straight towards Hanso. Then without giving the confused Hanso time to react he launched a lightning bolt fuelled by both him and Gold James. The lightning bolt collided with Hanso’s chest and knocked him back onto his ass.

With that short distraction, James had already turned and deployed his new lightning boots with Gold James’ assistance. In less than two seconds James was already 300 meters away from the Hanso Mansion before his legs gave out.

As his legs began to weaken and fail him, the mansion behind him started to collapse to the ground, and a sudden wave of pressure spread out like a gravity field. This pressure was just like James remembered from when he first met Hao and felt cultivators using their aura.

Only this pressure field was 100 times more powerful. The reason people rarely used it was because anyone of the same level could normally deploy their own. Palace realms could still slightly affect True Spirit cultivators with theirs, but it was greatly muted by a person’s spirit energy.

For this pressure to feel 100 times more powerful than what he felt as a mortal, it would be equivalent to a cultivator at least at the peak of Tower realm using his aura, probably a realm even higher than that. To make it worse, it was only getting stronger. James felt his body get crushed to the ground like a leaf underfoot. Even employing all of his spirit power he couldn’t move a muscle.

His bones started to creak, and he felt some even start to break or fracture. The ground he lay on was slowly depressed downwards like some heavy creature was slowly dropping its weight onto a foot in the snow. Blood oozed out of his mouth as his internal organs started to take damage under the growing pressure and his other orifices soon followed the trend and started pouring blood.

After a few minutes of this torture, James felt the pressure suddenly disappear. With a great deal of effort, he forced himself to roll over. What he saw behind him was a crater that had suddenly appeared where the mansion used to be. The crater was completely smooth, to an unreasonably perfect degree.

What was once a plot of land and the huge mansion was now a 300-meter wide, smooth crater. As James observed this strange phenomenon, the Gunship came in overhead firing off railguns in every direction.

As it lowered down, Battlesuit clad guild members could be seen jumping over buildings and sprinting down the streets towards the evac zone. Although they all saw the huge pit in the ground, they chose to ignore it for now. They’d just stirred up a hornet’s nest and were busy trying to get the fuck out of Dodge.

As they moved past, a few members leant down and scooped up the once again heavily injured James. The moment everyone was accounted for, the gunship dropped down to hover about 10 meters off the ground, and the troopers started jumping up into the hanger.

After picking up the drones and the Artillery outside the city, Exsue spun the ship around, and the sonic boom from it rocketing off into the distance rang out and signalled the end of this brutal attack on the city.

-The Lab-

Skay looked over the beaten broken body of James, gave a sigh and then started pumping a whole number of drugs into him. Unlike last time, James managed to wake up by morning and walked out like nothing was wrong with him. Even Skay was surprised at the speed James had healed up this time.

After some short discussion and some interruption from Gold James, they learnt that his pride energy had started his faster recovery rate. Apparently, it was because he got such an ass whooping last time that it started to increase his body’s ability to heal on its own.

James wasn’t sure whether to be worried or happy and decided that he’d just be happy this time. After all, he was stuck with the pride energy now. No matter what he did, it would always be there, and he was going to have to accept that.

After some discussion regarding the spirit bomb James had dropped in the mansion, they agreed it would need more testing. The spirit bomb was, of course, a slightly warped Cube Reactor. Instead of having any form of storage, it was thousands of layers of gathering and attraction arrays that fed into a single array called a compression array.

This was the same array they used to compress their bricks in the Black-Iron mine, only ... powered by a huge and sudden influx of energy and not limited to a fixed area like the dust gathering cylinder was. The theory was that it was like a timed grenade. It takes a few seconds for all the attraction and gathering arrays to prime, which is the time you have to escape its radius of effect or at least get far enough it doesn’t affect you too badly.

Skay calculated that the force it exerted dropped by its square root for every hundred meters of distance you are from the centre. If James felt nearly 500 kg of pressure 300 meters from the epicentre, then that meant the area for a meter around the cube had the force of damn near 4 megatons.

So you realise how heavy that is. Imagine a train engine. That alone is 100 tonnes. To be an equivalent of the same pressure as the epicentre, you would need 40,000 locomotives all stacked on top of each other.

It was a truly monstrous device. It’s only problem at present was the timer. You only had 1.2 seconds to get it to its destination and then vacate at least 300 meters away.

Now, if they could find a way to fire this thing out of an Arc Cannon that could be solved because the speed of sound was just over 300m/s. The problem would be in how volatile the catalyst used for the Compression Array was.

It would be like sticking a nuclear warhead into a bolt action rifle. Would you risk pulling the trigger on that thing? The mad duo hadn’t actually tested this thing before and quickly found that, should James not have been as quick as he was, then he’d be a red paste compressed into that half sphere depression in Hanso City.

They had a multitude of ways to increase that time limit to longer, but that caused two new problems. Firstly, James wouldn’t be able to get more than 300 meters before his legs gave out like putty and he could barely move. Secondly, if they gave a person too much time to react, then they may have some method similar to James that could get them to a safe distance before it went off.

They also couldn’t make it smaller, because the array patterns were slightly limited in their size. The only way to make it smaller and still be able to trigger properly was to find a more powerful catalyst.

As James walked out of the medical room he’d now spent the last three days in and out of, Jasmine perked up with some messages. “Guildmaster James. You have ... all of the factions that presently own a coms cube trying to get in contact with you the moment you recover. The Third Prince has also left a message saying to join him for a drink in Tech City the moment you’re free.”

James just gave a wry smile and rubbed his face. He’d once again overacted a little. He knew the moment he stepped onto the gunship he shouldn’t continue with his quickly devised battle plan, but at the same time, he was a man of his word. If he said he was going to go and kill a threat to his progress, then that’s exactly what he would do. Even if it had been said in a slightly heated moment.

James consoled himself that this was how things in this world worked. People would do anything to get ahead of each other, and if James wanted to get ahead, he couldn’t allow any threats to fester and grow right under his nose.

That’s like getting a little cut and ignoring it until it turns septic. He refused to be that fool who was soft-hearted with someone that was clearly going to be a problem in the future just because the man hadn’t actually done anything yet. He read books, and he knew that choosing to do nothing when you had the power and advantage of surprise was just a recipe for a quick death.

After convincing himself that this was an acceptable means of quelling future trouble, James called Rex and made plans to meet up at the Guildhall in the city for a drink.

-Tech City-

As James strolled through the city, he saw a marked increase in activity and a lot more rich looking scholarly types or adventurer types. While walking past the University Campus, he tapped his ear piece and started talking to Jasmine.

“Jasmine, I’d like an update on how the city is doing.”

“Certainly James...”

“Guildmaster James.”

“Certainly James, at present the city...”

“No. Jasmine, use my title. You’ve always used my title. Don’t start being a...”

“Certainly James, the city currently has a population of...”

“Jasmine. Are you broken? You want to start talking to me like you’re a people now?”

After a long pause, Jasmine continued on unperturbed. “ ... Using rounded figures the city has a population of 240,000 people which is an increase of nearly 80,000 residents in two weeks. The majority of new residents have been drawn in by the quickly expanding trade from the Endless Forest along with the University which has processed 60,000 people for Meditation. 6,000 people for the first level of basic education implant, 340 for the second level of basic and 21 for the third implant. 1 person has done the fourth implant but was found dead the next day from a brain aneurysm.

“The Arena meditation chambers are also being filled to their capacity of 5,000 daily. Each chamber is hired out on average at 50 times standard saturation for roughly one hour. Bookings for the meditation chambers are weeks in advance.

“The current residential, commercial and industrial space in the city is filled to capacity. If we wish for the city to continue growing, we will need to increase the rate of development and expansion. Unemployment below the true spirit realm is 24%. This 24% of people are too poor for the mediation technique and are pushed out of work by drones and other people that managed to afford to begin cultivating. 70% of the unemployed populace arrived in the city after your ascendance to the Mayor role and came seeking a chance at a new life.

“The City is earning 98,000 gold weekly, mostly from the University and the Arena. Maintenance is at 3,400 gold weekly. Crime has skyrocketed with the recent influx of poor and unemployed mortals. The Brotherhood has still managed to maintain 30% of all crime in the city. Congratulations James.”

James’s eyebrow was twitching during this brief status report. “Why are you congratulating me Jasmine? That’s just the nature of business. Also, what’s the deal with the guy that sat through all 4 basic courses?”

“Apparently he sat them all in a single week. The implants overloaded his brain and it sort of ... popped.”

James rubbed his face wearily. “Jasmine, introduce a new rule at the university. No one is allowed to go through more than a single implant in a week. Also, have any of our guild members completed basic yet?”

“I’m sorry James, everyone in your guild is an idiot. No one has managed to complete a test past a year ten standard.”

James’ eyebrow was getting a hell of a workout today. He gave a forlorn sigh at his luck of having an A.I that developed a personality and continued on his walk around the city as he started giving her instructions.

“Jasmine, start expanding the city. Raise the present walls and call this section the inner city. After that, build a new wall another 5km out. Then fill that space with four subdivisions. Also, drop the price of the meditation technique to 10 coppers and introduce the Star point breathing technique for 1 silver.

“While you’re at it, create a tower in one of the districts. For every floor of the tower increase the standard saturation and also add in a compression array that increases progressively on each floor. All the way up to 1,000 times standard. I realised when I was under the pressure of that spirit compression bomb that my spirit energy rate almost doubles when my body is under spirit pressure.”

“I will make a note of this and inform Dr Skay. He will most likely be very interested.”

James gave a chuckle and continued on. “Of course he will. The old madman loves this stuff. Oh, by the way, see if you can design a system for the meditation chambers under the arena. I want to have a display of how much gold you paid on entry and then allow people to adjust the saturation and spirit pressure themselves. The screen will tell them how much time their gold will last for while under those set conditions. I’ll let you work out reasonable pricing. If that’s possible, then I want you to set up an underground with at least 30,000 rooms ... actually, make it 100,000 rooms under the spirit tower.

“Also make sure guild members get priority on these rooms and entry to the spirit tower. Finally set up a large market square in another district, a pasture in the third and a series of residential towers in the last. Leave all the rest of the space for sale to new coming residents and businesses looking for real-estate. Encourage anyone buying land in my city to build high. I’ll let you take care of streets and infrastructure.”

While he said that, he looked up to see a monorail stretching around through the city. This monorail system was a recent addition to the city. Just walking around on a sidewalk was assisted by array patterns that sped a person up to the speed of a slow jog just while walking, but in comparison the monorail was overkill.

It ran around the city to various locations and could stop and start on a dime. It could travel nearly 250m/s and shot between this speed and stationary in less than a second. James wasn’t sure how they’d managed it but apparently it used a similar zero inertia array to the one on the talismans.

It had 6 separate carriages that could fit 200 people each, and they travelled a circuit of the city in less than 20 minutes. That meant the longest you had to wait for one at a stop was 4 minutes. You then had a minute to board and would then be fired off to the next stop at 250m/s without even feeling a gram of inertial force.

James finally gave his last instructions. “Jasmine ... find something to do with all those unemployed bums that can’t afford a roof over their head. If they’re unemployable for anything ... well, we could always use new conscripts to the City’s Armed Forces. Goliath will quickly weed out the useless ones. Oh and one last thing, once the residential district has its towers ready, clear the towers in the centre district. Anything not owned by a local faction is to be emptied.”

“Certainly James, projections show the new city infrastructure and walls will be ready by the time of the auction.”

Finished talking with Jasmine, James sped up his pace with dual lightning and wind energy and shot off towards the Tech City Guild Branch.