-Guild Branch-

The Tech City Guild Branch, that was somehow being managed and run by ex-Lackey 1, now Overseer Gary, was far more impressive than in the past. It was a 30 story building right next to the biggest plaza in town, which also happened to be the Monolith plaza.

It remained mostly empty but was manned 24/7 and still posted Jobs that needed doing. Most of the cultivators that lived in the shadowy side of the city got their jobs here. The entire third floor was just 4 walls of job boards all in different colours. They now had white, grey, black and red. Each board had different levels of missions moving from the standard ‘do something to help someone out mission’ to the ‘kill that person to help someone out missions’.

Although the nature of jobs here was no secret to the rest of the city, no one complained. For starters, the Brotherhood would take money for pretty much any job. Which meant the jobs the other guilds or clans didn’t want to do themselves, they would pay the Brotherhood to do for them.

Almost every guild had tried to hire the Brotherhood for some shady business. This meant the Brotherhood had dirt on just about everyone. The last thing was, the Brotherhood owned the damn city and was probably even more powerful now than the Katsu Sect. Hell, the only reason they weren’t running the whole region was because they hadn’t asked for it.

As James sauntered into the Guild, he was stopped by some young fresh faced reception girls who seemed to think he’d come to register to join. The older reception girl almost fell on her face when she saw the other girls talking to the Guildmaster like he was some dreg off the street looking to join the hottest guild in the empire.

After a thorough dressing down of her juniors, she escorted James to the 2nd floor which was now the Guilds bar and lounge. James often forgot that although it was only 3 months in this world, it had actually been 6 months in earth time. He now realised he didn’t visit the city branch near often enough.

After being seated on a very comfy sofa, James handed a mission for the receptionist to take to the Overseer. James had somewhat forgotten his game of giving Gary weird tasks to complete and only remembered it when he left the lab this morning.

He decided if he was stopping by anyway, he might as well give Gary a new job. As he waited for Rex to show up, he ordered some hard liquor from the waitress that hurried over. Just as he was about to crack the bottle, Rex sat down across from him and took off his bamboo hat revealing his handsome and refined features.

He had a strong jaw and sharp green eyes that seemed to catch everything in their gaze. His golden hair hung down over his shoulders and looked so soft James was convinced he must wash it with unicorn tears.

Without any fanfare or introductions, Rex jumped straight into the heart of the matter. “James, I’m not sure if you realise, but you’ve stirred up a shitstorm of trouble with your stunt in Hanso City. You’re probably aware, but Lachlan Hanso is missing, and nearly 80% of his Clan was annihilated in a single night!”

James gave him a confused look and quirked his head to the side. “Oh? What stunt in Hanso City? Pity about that Hanso fellow though. I’m sure he had a lot of friends that will dearly miss him.”

Rex gave a baffled look and then snatched the bottle of scotch James had just started pouring. “Who do you think you’re fooling James? No one in the entire Empire will believe that you had nothing to do with this. An exact description of your flying death machine was recited by half the city and only hours before it happened you called every major faction in the empire together to buy out the man’s accounts.”

James then sat back with his half full glass of scotch and took a sip. After rolling it around on his tongue for a second, he swallowed it down and then looked up at the ceiling like he was mulling something over. “You know, you’re right Rex. I never even considered that until you mentioned it. Now that someone has killed that Hanso fellow I no longer need to sell those accounts. I can just close them.”

Rex looked like he couldn’t believe his ears. “What ‘someone’?! It was you! Stop trying to hide it! You even asked me about the repercussions right before you went off and did it!”

James just smiled and sipped on his scotch some more. “Well ... let’s say hypothetically that I did massacre the Hanso Clan last night. What’s the problem? The Hanso region is full of other clans and sects that can fill their role. I didn’t damage any property that generated resources or income for the Empire, and civilian casualties were minimal. You told me all of this just yesterday.”

Rex was now shaking. Either from rage at his continued denials of responsibility or the shock that it actually was this little true spirit cultivator that just wiped one of the most powerful clans in the Empire off the map in a few short hours.

“James, I didn’t actually think you had the capability to do it! I thought you were just blustering for Hanso’s sake.”

“Oh Rex, I don’t know if I do have such capabilities. After all, this is a hypothetical conversation and has no basis in reality. However, as a man of my word, I probably would have eventually made a move against Hanso if someone else hadn’t stepped in. I don’t speak empty threats after all.”

Rex was shaking so much the bottle in his hand shattered and stained his white robes with dark splotches. He looked like he was having a fit and couldn’t decide whether to start laughing insanely or screaming in a fury. After what seemed like nearly a minute, he took a deep breath and calmed himself down. Then his sharp eagle like eyes trained onto James.

“You’re an excellent liar James. I pride myself on being able to see through people, but it’s quite difficult to tell if you’re trying to be funny or actually serious. Well regardless, let’s say that hypothetically it was you who killed Hanso. Everyone in the Empire is going to want to know how a group of true spirit realm cultivators, not even numbering in the hundreds, managed to decimate a powerful clan with a tower realm expert and multiple Palace Realm experts and thousands of branch clans and disciples.

“Not only are the powers in the Empire going to want to know this, the powers out in the three great nations are going to want to know as well. You would have drawn the attention of every pair of eyes and ears in half the continent with such a stunt. People are already talking about your stunt of killing that tower realm mole in the Quarry expedition. That can be brushed off mostly because everyone wanted to claim credit for that. But all of a sudden Hanso, who you publicly had a falling out with, disappears 2 days later?”

James cupped his chin in thought after Rex gave him a hypothetical assessment. His mind was spinning furiously trying to work out what to do. After a while, he grinned. “Only been a month and I’m already jumping into the next pond. Well then Rex, if all of this is as you say, I doubt you’re looking for me just to fulfil your curiosity.”

Rex gave a wry smile and sat back onto the sofa. “You’re right. I didn’t come looking for you to assure my curiosity because I already knew it was you. I came here because I heard your Guild takes on any mission. I want you to kill my competition for the throne.”

James’ face remained neutral, and he leant forward and placed his glass down on the table. “Your competition? I’m assuming you must be talking about the first and second princes?”

Rex just gave a nod of the head.

“So what’s in it for us? You’ve come here and given me this ... warning, I suppose, and now you want me to race off and complete another high profile job?”

Rex gave another nod. “You get two things. The first will be my oath to protect your guild with all the resources of the Empire I’ll have at my disposal and the second is claiming ownership of such a high-profile job. If you are able to kill off two highly secured Palace Realm targets in the capital city, then even the three great nations will have to recognise your reach and power and will be forced to reconsider before trying to pressure you.”

James stood up and beckoned for Rex to follow him. After a short trip in the elevator, they arrived on the roof of the guild. As they looked around, they saw the rest of the city towering up around them and moving out in every direction.

James paced around the rooftop with his arms behind his back while looking down at the monolith plaza. “Rex, I want neither the fame of the kill or your promise. My guild operates with one rule. Money is king. I personally have a few more rules, but this principle remains constant for my guild. We don’t take credit for our work. In fact, apart from the guild, no one knows who completes what jobs. All they know is that someone in my guild can get their job done.

“Furthermore Rex, by the time you have the power and influence of your father, I will already be beyond the limits of your Empire’s ability to protect. By that time, it’ll be you coming to my guild looking for protection. That makes your promise worthless I’m afraid. You need to offer me something else for this job.”

Rex wasn’t born yesterday and immediately realised there was something specific James wanted, then he suddenly realised that James didn’t deny the possibility of being able to kill off his older brothers. Seeing he may actually have a chance at the throne, Rex decided to lay down all his cards.

“What is it that you want then? At the rate your guild is growing financially, mere gold isn’t on your radar anymore. That means, for a job of this calibre, you must want something else. A rare resource perhaps? If it’s within my means, I’ll pay any price to kill those two bastards!”

When he said that, his hand was clenched so hard blood was dripping to the ground from his fingernails digging in. Seeing this, James put on a coy smile and then his gaze returned to the monolith.

“I want two things. One for each brother. The first is all the information the imperial clan has on array patterns. The second is a spirit beast of at least the Palace Realm or better with lightning affinity. I don’t need you to capture the beast. Instead just locate one at Palace Realm or better and I’ll do the rest.”

Rex’s face split into a huge shit eating grin. “Excellent. I can agree to both of those requests. I’m assuming from your wording that you want the beast alive. I won’t try and guess why, but I can tell you right now that I know where you can find a beast in the Tower Realm with a lightning affinity. Also, as the third prince, I have some responsibilities. It just so happens that artefact and array construction in the imperial clan both fall under my purview.”

Hearing this, James then spun back and eyed Rex for a moment. He was suspicious that the man had agreed far too quickly, but if he was trying to entrap James, there was no way for him to protect himself. “Fine. We have an accord.”

-The Lab-

With his conspiratorial meeting done, James returned to the lab. With Jasmine’s drones now flitting all over the Empire like bees, James had a huge amount of incoming data. Processing everything sent back by her drones even gave Jasmine a hard time occasionally. At least she insisted that was the case and repeatedly encouraged James to build her at least another 50 spirit computers. She’d even started throwing out new designs trying to incorporate arrays instead of hard circuits.

After a few hours of Jasmine searching about with her drones, the locations of the two older brothers had been discovered and they’d begun tracking their locations constantly.

While Jasmine was busy doing that, James had her set up a conference call with everyone that had a cube minus Rex. After a few chaotic minutes of everyone asking a billion questions in a single breath, James calmed everyone down.

“Everyone calm down. Now I should start by saying due to the untimely destruction of the Hanso Clan, we won’t be selling off their account of 33,000 gold and that account will instead be closed under the guidelines outlined in the contract under the note regarding the inability to claim on the account.

“The other 5 accounts will still be closed. I’ll be happy to discuss those terms with the three factions that made a joint bid earlier. Now that business is cleared away, let me say that I can neither confirm or deny the Dark Brotherhoods involvement in the sudden disappearance of Lachlan Hanso and the assault on Hanso City.”

Finished with his short statement, another barrage of questions was fired from the powers holding accounts with the Brotherhood. James just waited there while drinking tea as they all tried to outdo each other screaming at their communication cubes.

After a good 5 minutes, people started to realise James wouldn’t be saying anything more on the matter of the Hanso Clan and they quietened down a bit. James felt like a politician training news reporters to show some respect. He then suddenly had a terrible idea.

He filed that idea away and then turned his attention back to his clients. “Well then, it’s only been a day since we last had a conference call like this. Hopefully, nothing big will happen in the near future, until we meet again for the Auction in 5 weeks’ time.”

James then closed the communication channel and had Jasmine start preparing a new project. While that was happening, he called his Ghosts over to the lab. When Alecksa assembled her team, it appeared Junior was still resting from his injuries.

James then started filling the four present members in on their next mission. He didn’t give them specifics of how or when to kill them and only told them to start trying to infiltrate places frequented by the two princes.

Once they left, he called Skay and then the mad duo started a new joint project. They created nearly a hundred spirit bombs with altering methods and designs. When they were ready, James took the Gunship out to the Endless Forest. Before they went and decimated the forest with their 4 megaton spirit bombs, James had them land in the city.

He then made some calls and started moving around some responsibilities. He sent Fatty out to oversee the Black-Iron mine now that all the greenhouse structures in Tech City were being managed by Jasmine and the previously unemployed mortals.

He left Jasmine doing her normal thing, which was rooting every dick in the city and being the main point of contact for business between the Guild and their clients. Amusingly about the only person in the city she hadn’t seduced into her bed was Lucas.

Exsue and Harvy remained in the Gunship. To try and develop new pilots, James had a similar system to the pilot array in the gunship built at the University. It was designed to act as a test and practice chamber. It could replicate the flight systems of everything they currently had and then some things they didn’t have but planned to build eventually.

Getting into the flight program was a little difficult, though. It required a person to have completed basic at the University, which pretty much no one had been able to achieve yet.

James then assigned Goliath to the Security head position. He was tasked with finding and training some trustworthy individuals that could take on the position of General of the Guard for both Star City and Tech City.

Once he’d accomplished that and set down training regimes, Goliath would then return to being the Goliath of Wrath and running missions with James.

That only left Skay, who somehow managed to keep himself amused locked away in that lab all day. James had him working on some side projects for him while he was down their building God knows what.

When he’d finished, he walked out of the city to a little grotto that had grown nearby to Star City. It looked fantastical in nature and had a bubbling brook and beautiful green grass with tall overhanging oaks and a little clear pond with a small waterfall streaming into it.

As James walked into the grotto, a little group of playing forest hoppers all perked up and then scurried off into the underbrush. James let out a sigh and then went and sat down cross-legged on a rock near the pond. He then looked around for a second, and after seeing no one nearby, he spoke into the forest.

“Alright you wooden bitch, let’s talk.”

After this short sentence, a nearby tree trunk started to deform and bend until, after a few moments, a lady with skin as soft as the petals of a flower and smelling of the forest in spring came walking out. She was completely naked as she walked out and her hair was long and green with flowers braided through it. After she stepped out, her clear sky blue eyes trained in on James.

“James, it’s good to see you. The clearing of that disgusting vermin seems to be progressing very slowly. Is there no way to speed it up?”

James scratched his face and sighed. “You said yourself that even you are worried by these things. According to you, they’re not part or your forest ecosystem, so I guess it’s more like a virus right? Well, a virus can’t be eradicated in a single night. Patience is key in fighting sickness and all that.”

The dryad of the forest moved past James and walked into the pond, submerging her body in the cool water. “James, you made me a promise. In exchange for your oath, I gave you permission to erect a city in my world. The Tree of Two Worlds is still young, and although very similar to a monolith it is limited in that it must grow from a seedling.

“There isn’t enough spirit energy here for it to grow quickly and it may be thousands of years before it can clear those vile steel wood trees out of the surrounding 1000 kilometres for good. Until then it is your job to protect the Tree of Two Worlds, slow the growth of those trees and prevent their expansion.”

James frowned and crossed his arms as he watched the dryad rubbing the water along her soft satiny skin and moving around her supple thin body in an alluring manner. As she continued to rub her body, she glanced over and made eye contact with James.

James gave a grunt and stood up from the rock. “I told you I’d take care of your herpes trees, you wooden hussy. I came looking for you to get the location of the nearest large infestation apart from this one. We’re going to be testing some weapons and I don’t want you getting all crabby again because we’re giving you a shave.”

The Dryad suddenly perked up at the mention of killing some steel wood trees. “That’s excellent news. It just a two-day journey west of here.”

James just grinned and then tapped his ear a few times. “I’m not about to hike two days across your snatch. Let’s make it a day trip. There and back.”

Before the dryad could respond, a shadow enveloped the little grotto, and the Gunship slowed to a hover above the trees. Not letting the tree lady protest, James pumped lightning energy into his body and then shot forwards grabbing her. He then flipped out a little talisman that created a weightlessness and shot them up into the sky like a rocket.

The next thing she knew, they were standing in a flying metal box, and it was rocketing away across the tree tops of the forest like a streak of light. If any creatures wanted to hassle them, then they’d be sorely out of luck. To notice them before the sonic boom sounded out and they were gone again would require luck, precision eyesight and perception twice as fast as James’ when he was charged up with lightning energy.

After only a 10 minute journey they stopped. The dryad hadn’t even had the time to work up a frenzy of disgusting language before her and James were looking down off the back ramp of the ship at a huge dark patch of dark, twisted, gnarled trees, surrounded by the lighter green, healthy usual forest.

“That looks a bit different to the steel wood trees we’ve seen. Don’t tell me you got more than one STD?” James commented.

The Dryad gave him a reproachful look that just bounced off. She didn’t know what an STD was but from the way he discussed her forest like it was her private parts and covered in disease and infection she could only conclude he was making comments about contracting strange things through sex.

After a moment of her glare being totally disregarded by James, she gave a long sigh and looked back out at the wide patch of dark dead trees. “This is a dead zone created when the steel wood trees suck all the life out of an area. They then become undead spirit trees and after a period of gestation, transform into Steelwood Treants that march off to new areas and germinate a new generation of trees. You’ll find even that small area of Steelwood trees near your city has an old Steelwood Treant hidden away in it somewhere.”

James just gave a distracted ‘oh?’ As he started pulling the lid off a wooden crate secured to the deck. After a moment of muttering and shuffling through the box, he pulled out a bomb slightly bigger than the one he used to kill Hanso.

After he had poured some spirit energy into it, the cube lit up with a ‘hum’ and a massive inrush of primal energy started to gather towards it. Some circular arrays then projected out an inch off the side of the cube. James started twisting and turning them this way and that before grinning like a mad man and tossing it out the rear of the ship into the dead zone.

“Better get some altitude Exsue. Rather safe than sorry and all that.” James mumbled into his earpiece.

The Gunship rose up to an altitude of 3km allowing them a pretty good overview of the area. They sat there staring down at the dead forest for nearly 10 minutes before suddenly something strange happened. Everything in a 1km radius of the cube started leaning in towards the centre. Then slowly rocks and dead shrubs or fallen branches started getting sucked in.

Soon the smaller trees were being uprooted and crashed through the forest towards the epicentre. After another few minutes, the huge dead Steelwoods were being pulled from the ground. This seemed to become the tipping point and suddenly everything for 1km around the point James dropped the cube just ... disappeared.

Replacing the now missing half sphere of forest and earth was a 2-meter sphere as smooth as a babies bum. Now that it had reached a critical point and the array patterns had been crushed under their own pressure, the ball fell to the ground and sunk in like stabbing a finger into a bowl of cake icing.

James couldn’t stop his hand from shaking and his face forming into an absolutely huge shit eating grin. “Haha, holy shit! An actual mass compression gravity bomb. Is there anything a guy can’t achieve with array patterns? Hahahaha!”

The Dryad was staring out the back of the gunship with wide, shocked eyes. She couldn’t comprehend what she’d just witnessed. An entire stretch of forest gone just like that. It wasn’t just the forest either. Nearly 2km diameter of earth and rock.

This strange man who stood in her forest talking to one of her trees for three straight hours till she pitied him enough to come out and talk with him. She thought him just a slightly clever fellow with a terrible cultivation level. But now she realised she greatly underestimated him. The power this man had at his fingertips was devilish.

James, like an excited child, pulled a few more of their spirit bombs out and started letting them charge and playing with the settings of the arrays projecting off them. Then after giving Exsue some instructions they began to float around over the dead zone dropping odd bombs in now and then.

One of them released a ground level wind blade that cleared 500 meters of trees around it like a great big instantaneous chainsaw. One of them was similar to the wide area compression bomb used on Hanso. Others released tornadoes of fire and ripples of earth that pushed any trees in its wake out of the ground.

James’ favourite was by far the gravity bomb and the plasma bomb. The plasma bomb didn’t have as big an area effect as the others. Instead, it only affected a smaller range of about 50 or 60 meters. But anything in that zone was guaranteed to die.

The plasma bomb didn’t explode as much as it fired off super-heated plasma balls around its surroundings. Each of these little balls was burning at the same Celsius as the sun and about the size of a table tennis ball. Anything they hit would be filled with a little hole regardless of how sturdy it was. If it can’t survive in the sun, then it can’t deflect a plasma ball ... probably ... hopefully.

He was curious to know how that old monk bastard would handle one of these things.

-The Lab-

After a few hours of playing with the bombs and the gun crews occasionally having some fun shooting Treants that tried to escape out of the forest, James and the Dryad returned to Star City. She was so conflicted that she said nothing and just walked back into her tree to try and comprehend everything she’d witnessed today.

James returned to the Lab and started filling Skay in on any interesting thoughts he’d had about the spirit bombs. They then reviewed footage captured from the gunship of all the bombs going off and observed their different effects.

They noticed the pressure bombs seemed to be able to harness a more powerful level of force from less energy. They assumed this was because of the type of catalyst they used until they observed bombs with even better catalysts reacting with less force. When they realised this, they started testing and discussing it for hours.

In the end, they both agreed that this pressure created from spirit energy, or rather spirit pressure, affected the nature of spirit energy slightly. For starters, the array patterns somehow seemed more stable while under pressure, which sparked new ideas, like using it to stabilise all the patterns in a cube until the whole pattern is set off.

They also agreed that spirit pressure increased gathering rate. For now, they measured this spirit pressure with weight, based on how much force it could exert on a set of scales, but they both agreed it wasn’t effecting mass the same as normal gravity.

They believed it was affecting the spirit energy that is innately inside everything. They considered spirit energy to be so pervasive that no matter or acknowledged energy existed that didn’t have some innate undefinable and unmeasurable level of primal spirit energy connected to it.

They believed it was this energy that the compression and pressure array’s manipulated to cause a chain effect. With these ideas in mind, the duo started coming up with new methods to implement them.

For starters, they redesigned every spirit bomb to have a minor pressuring array to help stabilise the normally volatile catalysts used for the detonation array.

They also redeveloped the cube in the basement and added some additions onto it. This was done incredibly carefully, seeing as neither of them wanted to see a spirit energy explosion on the scale of a spirit bomb 40,000 times more powerful than what they’d been letting off in the forest.

This wasn’t all. With the use of tiny pressure arrays, they managed to start miniaturising power cubes even further and knocked them back to about half their size for the same output.

After another day in the lab theorising and testing different uses with the pressure array, James was called up to the Guild HQ Office on the surface by Jessy.

When he arrived in his office, he walked straight in past an older gentleman in very richly embroidered white and gold robes and Jessy politely serving tea. Standing at the door were two standard armoured goons with a Dragon Crest on the front of their armour.

James didn’t even bother to notice anyone but Jessy, still being distracted by other thoughts, he just walked in and sat down. Without even glancing at the guest in his office he started pouring himself some tea and talking to Jessy.

“Jessy, I’ve started expanding the city again. We’ve got too many people moving here. We may have a way to reduce building costs, but you’ll need to talk to Skay about setting something up with the compression arrays. We should be able to drop an entire square kilometre of Steelwood and compress bricks just as strong in a fraction of the time.

“Oh and money. You should have been reached out to by the three factions that just bought up the debt of that poor bastard Hanso. If you haven’t spoken to them yet, get in touch today.

“The last thing I need you to do is pump up the hype for our auction. I want people to know we’ll be selling everything from building designs from our city to basic arrays. We’ll also be selling real estate in the city centre. Anywhere that we own in the city centre will hopefully be vacated by the auction day. Half the real-estate is up for auction.

“Oh, and add in Mk2 meditation rooms. We’ll set one up at max saturation and pressure as an example. If they want some, they can bid for the first 100 in stacks of ten. We’ll come build the rooms for them so we can install proper security on it. If they try to peak at the arrays, ‘zap’, they all get erased.”

Jessy was giving James a glaring look like he’d just stepped on her pet dog. When James realised Jessy wasn’t writing any of this down, he frowned. “What? Why aren’t you writing this down?”

Jessy then nodded her head sideways, and James turned to see a smiling, thin old man in his sixties with long grey hair and the same pair of sharp green eyes as Rex. James could immediately recognise who this guy was, mostly because he had a crown on his head shaped like a coiling dragon.

Being the narcissistic jerk he is, James wasn’t about to admit that he’d just completely ignored the most powerful man in the entire empire and chose instead to pretend he was just an ignorant stepper with no idea of the world.

“And you are?” James asked with a quirked eyebrow. He nearly even fooled himself, so fast was his change in expression.

The thin old man chuckled and placed his tea on the table. “Let’s not play games, James. We both know each other. If not personally, then by extension of our power and influence. I know everything there is to know about you, and presuming you haven’t already investigated me, you can surely at least guess who I am.”

James leant forwards onto the table and rested his chin on his hands as he squinted his eyes and gave the emperor another look over. “Fraid not old man. If you’re here to set up an account, then Jessy’s your girl. If you’re here to post a job request, then I suggest you try the branch office in Tech City.”

The old Emperor chuckled lightly again. Then while staring James in the eye, he dropped the pressure of a peak Tower Realm cultivator onto James like a rock.

James had somewhat expected this and had readied himself. To the Emperors great shock and surprise, James continued to sit motionless and without the least bit of strain. Instead, he carried a cheeky smile and then started to sip his tea.

“Old man, I should warn you that I don’t take threats lightly. I consider you dropping your spirit pressure as a threat, and if it weren’t for the fact I’m on good terms with your son, I’d simply have you disappear here just like your buddy Hanso.”

Finally, the Emperor’s stunned face calmed back into a squinty-eyed smile. “You have a talisman that reduces my spirit aura. You really do have means beyond your cultivation.”

After saying that, the Emperor’s spirit pressure disappeared like it had all been imaginary. He then smiled again and continued. “Well then, allow me to play your little game. I am Artimus Dragonheart the Third, 15th Emperor of the Yori Empire. Presumably, you’re Guildmaster James of the Dark Brotherhood and City Mayor of the now renamed Tech City by right of forfeit.”

James put his best shocked and surprised face on as he shot to his feet and saluted the emperor “Oh! So you’re the Emperor of Yori? And what can this humble denizen of your Empire do for you?”

The two generic looking guardsmen that had been standing by the door looked like they were trembling. The grips they held their sheathed swords with only grew tighter and tighter until their knuckles had whitened from the pressure.

Finally, one of the two guardsmen couldn’t take it anymore and stomped forwards. He unsheathed his sword and cut down splitting the heavy marble table in two with a single slash. “Insolence! You vile true spirit scum! You dare play games with his Imperial Majesty?! You dare threaten him with your filthy tongue?! This is insubordination, and you deserve the punishment of death!”

With his declaration yelled through gritted teeth, he bent down and forwards to launch himself at James.

Before his foot hit the ground for his first step, the window of the office shattered and was followed in the same instant by the man’s head. James hadn’t moved an inch from his lazy salute and just let out a long sigh. “Why do they always take it out on my table? My table never did anything to them!”

James then glanced over at Jessy who remained unmoved by this display and then turned back to the Emperor who had managed to save his cup of tea from the table before this incident.

After a moment of just looking at him drinking his tea unconcerned, James could only give a depressed groan. “Fuck, you came in here and broke my table just to test me? You’re creating a storm of shit for yourself you’re about to drown in, mate. Just say what you came to say and fuck off before I light the fuse on the reactor and turn your dirty little backwards nation into a fucking inland sea!”