Seeing he’d managed to work up a response from James with that little play his subordinate just acted out, Artimus smiled and placed his tea on the ground next to his seat then crossed his legs and eyed James.

“It’s rather simple James. You’ve only been here for 3 or 4 months, and you’re already achieved so much. You’re already running a city in my empire, you and your 3 companions have already stepped into true spirit realm 10 times faster than even the quickest cultivators in the entire Empire, even others with rare or multiple elements like yourselves.

“Not only that, you have researched and developed uses for array patterns that have remained untouched for as long as my clan has recorded history, you have weapons capable of killing palace realms and even have means to make tower realms simply disappear.”

Seeing James about to deny involvement in the Hanso incident Artimus just waved his hand. “I don’t care if you were involved in Hanso’s disappearance or not. The fact remains you killed that tower realm beast in the endless forest and have already proved your ability.”

James leant back in his seat and cross his arms as he eyed Artimus suspiciously. “You still haven’t mentioned why you came here. In fact, I’m rather curious. Why would the most influential and powerful man for 600 kilometres in every direction, turn up on my doorstep instead of just summoning me like all your other subjects?

“It makes a guy wonder just what you want. If you wanted me to do something above board, you’d just call me like a dog. No, you want something else, something shady. Perhaps the three nations are already watching my guild, and you’re worried that they might be a little concerned if you suddenly start summoning me. They might suspect you want my technology ... or perhaps they might think you want me to start killing some people they don’t want dead?”

Artimus’ smile widened. “Well, I can see now how your guild managed to climb its way up to its position so quickly. You’re right, there’s someone you are going to want dead just as much as I do. I’ve let you build your guild and take control of a city because you have some potential. Normally I’d have people already infiltrating you, but the few people I’ve sent either can’t get deep enough and disappear trying or they can only bring out information that is useless to me.

“I have all the array patterns you have, but my best array masters can’t figure out what to do with them. I have people that use your strange meditation and breathing techniques, but they can’t teach them to anyone. I even had someone try and master all of your ‘basics’ at your ‘university’, but he suddenly died from some mysterious power.

“You have protected your secrets well, and it makes you hard to control. But it also makes you a powerful wild card. With you helping my empire, we can expand into the territory of the three nations and protect ourselves. For once, my Empire will rise from this cage of great nations and take its place among the continent’s greatest Empires!”

Noticing that he’d gotten somewhat side-tracked, Artimus gave a bashful cough. “Well, how you operate within my empire will be discussed another time. What we need at the moment is for you to make a man who could very well cause us both problems ... disappear. Just like Hanso did.”

James cupped his chin in thought for a moment then looked up at the Emperor. “So, in the long run, you hope to use my guild to trigger a war with the great nations. If I’m not wrong, having this person mysteriously disappear inside your empire is only the first move. You probably plan for us to complete other missions in the future to raise tensions and encourage the nations to go to all-out war.

“Then when they’re busy killing each other you swoop in and start taking some land. All the while you expect me to supply you with a means to empower your shitty armies with a way to fight for and then protect any land they can take. But that doesn’t sound right. You don’t have the means to force my hand on this issue, which means this first job is to create the means.

“You plan to ensure that you have dirt that can make me the target of their rage should I not conform and then you can force me into assisting your grand scheme. The only problem with all this is you need us to look like we did it on our own intuitive. So this man you need us to kill is probably someone that would somehow be disadvantageous for my guild. How am I doing so far?”

While speaking his thoughts, he watched the Emperor’s smile slowly drop into a frown. Clearly, he was somewhat close to the truth if not guessing on the nose. When Artimus made no comment, James’ face lit up into a bright smile.

“Excellent, well then, I have a few things on hand you might like to know. The first is that I’ve just received a contract to disappear your first two sons.”

Artimus just smiled and waved his hand like it didn’t matter. “You think that matters to me? I can just have more sons. I’ve lived for 1,600 years boy. In that time I’ve sired more children than I care to count. Unfortunately, none of them have ever lived up to my expectations. For the third prince to be making a move on his competition is more than I could ask for from a future clan head and Emperor.”

James gave a nod like he’d expected as much. “Good to know. The reason I mentioned it was because it ties to my second point, my guild will take on any job. If you want someone dead, then you just have to pay for it.”

Artimus wasn’t quite sure what to make of this young man now. Even after he’d made a point of showing that he could see through the Emperor of the Empire and that this assassination would be the bargaining chip he would use to force the guild into compliance, the man still agreed to it for a price.

He was rather conflicted now. He wanted to use this to entrap the Dark Brotherhood into the service of his clan and empire but instead felt like he was now walking into a trap. Nonetheless, he pushed on. He wanted to expand his Empires influence even at the cost of millions of souls.

“Fine, name a price, my clan has more gold than the hairs on nine oxen.”

James just chuckled at that comment. “Gold? What use is gold? It’s just used as a place keeper for real wealth. It’s like paper money, without the market it’s just paper. When the shit hits the fan, even a commoner who dreams their whole life of obtaining gold, wouldn’t sell a bag of grain for a single bloody copper. No, I want something else.”

Artimus scratched at his neat grey beard as he eyed James. He knew the boy was right. Gold is worthless to a truly powerful cultivator. Oh, it’s a good measure of wealth when the market is running, but it remains just that, a measure. When the market falls the only thing left is old school bartering, and because not everywhere uses gold to trade, it’s rather useless outside of civilised areas. Real cultivators treated useful resources as wealth.

“So then. What do you want? Resources?”

James smiled like the cat who ate the canary. “Well, it depends. Who do you want dead?”

Jessy cupped her face in her hands when she saw James smiling like the devil. He was planning something, but god only knows what. She was actually rather surprised. James had started picking up the law of business rather quickly. Don’t be fooled by this conversation about being dragged into some war and becoming the dogs of the royal family.

James only saw this whole thing as a means to make money and was probably already making plans for back door dealing with the three nations. Like any good businessman, James had claimed the high ground in this discussion and obtained the advantage.

Artimus remained silent for a moment then gritted his teeth. For the first time in years, Artimus felt out of his depth. The boy was just a little bit frightening, wasn’t he? He didn’t even blink while he offered to kill someone that may start a war.

“He’s a man from the southeastern nation of Hastoel named Perlious. He is here to investigate your guild and determine if you would be worth covertly kidnapping and enslaving.”

James tapped his ear with a smile on his face, but before he could start talking, Jasmine’s face appeared on a projected screen on the wall. “Certainly James, there are 3 men by the name of Perlious within our jurisdiction. The most likely is a man posing as a True Spirit Realm Cultivator currently in Star City. He has been in every open guild operation and has spent a full day in the mines. He presently has no recorded criminal activity and has remained as ordinary as everyone else in the city.”

James’ eyebrow started twitching. He disliked that Jasmine had already started tending to requests before he even ordered them. Having a machine with that sort of intuition wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

James chose to let it slide though. He was currently in a meeting with the god damn Emperor and didn’t want to start lecturing her in front of him. “What else can you dig up on him?”

“At present, he’s the most average man in almost everything. He spends the average amount of gold, eats the average amount of food and has used the average number of foul words. He even defecates at regular average intervals. He is the most average man to ever exist.

“5 days ago he was recorded in the Katsu markets spending double the average, eating twice the average and sleeping with ladies of the night at 4 times the average. He was also recorded having the following conversation on a long distance voice transmit talisman.”

“ ... ing to be there soon. From everything I’ve heard, they’re exactly what we want.”

“Have you seen any of these miracle artefacts the guild reported?”

“Yes father, I met with the guild leader of the katsu merchants yesterday, he managed to secure one of these, ‘Berta’s’. It would make a perfect troop transport. He has refused to sell it. There’s one other thing father, the two men that were sent to infiltrate the guild haven’t reported in. They’ve either defected, or been discovered.”

“That’s fine Perlious. Remember, don’t draw any attention. It can be certain that old fox Artimus is watching them closely. Don’t forget, if we’re going to take them, we need to know everything. They may have powerful defences, but I doubt they’re prepared to counter against a surprise attack from within. I’ll be sending a new team of 20 in a week’s time. Make sure you’re ready.”

Jasmine ended the recording with a ‘Beep‘ and then began talking again. “That is the only long distance transmission we have on file.”

James looked at the recording playing as a clean shaved, slightly chubby man with curly red hair walked around in the guild plaza of Star City.

“Jasmine, is he on your watch list?”

“Certainly James. The watch list presently has this man and another 12 people being monitored as potential threats and 138 people being monitored as targets of interest.”

James shot a look over to Artimus. It seemed like, for now, the man wasn’t lying about this person being bad news for the guild. That’s what it sounded like anyway.

“What else have you got. What guild is feeding outside powers information about us?”

“At present, we have accounts with 12 separate major guilds. 3 of them have made contact with Hastoel representatives within our observation. None have had a discussion directly pertaining to infiltration or to this man named Perlious.”

“Fine, send out a contract to these guilds requesting information on the man. If anyone even glances in the direction of the Hastoel nation, then I want to...”

“It appears the Katsu Merchants guild has just contacted a member of the Eastern nation by the name of General Latsoe.”

James’ eyebrow was working into a fritz at Jasmine’s growing intuition. She was getting just a bit scary. It can’t be too good yet, because if she knew how close it was pushing James into going downstairs and creating a malfunction in the reactor, she’d be intuitive enough to not do it.

While James was calculating just how much he’d lose from such a course of action, Jasmine had already started playing the conversation.

“General Latsoe, it’s Gustov. I just got a request for information on your son. I think someone’s tipped them off about him.”

“So? Tell them who he is. I’m the General of the entire fucking northwestern border. If they know what’s good for them, then they’ll be fucking scared out of their wits. That pissant little Empire can’t protect them from me!”

James turned to Artimus with a face wreathed in glowing smiles. He was like the devil selling wishes again.

“The General’s son? You don’t say. Well now. The price for killing someone that could create such a big backlash. What kind of price would you put on that head? Of course, it’s slightly worrying that killing him outright would be more disadvantageous for our guild. But that’s not your long term goal, is it?

“What you want is full-scale war. That costs extra. You’ve no doubt had methods to make it look like the other nations killed him. That’s the only way I could see you starting a war over this. If you want the three nations at war. We can do that too. Jasmine, what would be the best way to start an all-out war between the nations?”

“We could kill some influential types from all three nations and leak information that our guild was hired by one of the other nations. To be completely honest, you should just let me create a small army of droids and kill everyone. That way you could enslave all three nations and the empire.”

James looked at the screen on the wall displaying Jasmine’s talking face. “Bah! You take all the joy out of it. Where’s the intrigue? Where’s the backstabbing and plotting? Look, if you start building droids again, I’ll just set the reactor to self-destruct and leave you here to join it and the rest of the Empire. The best part of being a narcissistic megalomaniac is the plotting!”

“I’ll take that into consideration for future endeavours. Would you like me to start ‘Megalomaniac Plotting 1.0’ for all present tasks?”

“All tasks unrelated to me.”

“Of course James.”

While this had all been going on, Artimus’ face had been slowly distorting as he thought to himself. ‘Madness! Sheer madness! This man is clearly insane. He must have gone through some kind of deviation in his cultivation. I thought he had a sense of the bigger picture, but he’s obviously just crazy!’

James then had Jasmine contact Skay, who, when he came on screen, was busily stuffing a fresh-faced young Lackey into a strange looking pod shaped like an upside down cone that was penetrating into the ground.

“Old Madman. I need you to cook something up in your lab.” James said to the screen depicting a young man trying to claw his way out of a pod and the crazy old Skay stuffing him in with his foot like trying to compact garbage into a bin.

After a short period of wrestling and foot stuffing and slamming a door on the cone shut, Skay wiped the sweat off his brow and turned to face the camera. “Oh? Good timing boy. I’m about to test the drop pods. I’m gonna need to borrow the dragon girl and the ship.”

After that short scene, Artimus was now certain he’d somehow just been involved in a crime. James just waved his hand like it was a matter of course.

“Sure, whatever. I have a job I need you to do first though. We developed those needles for the Trickster so she can use her element from a range. Can we do something similar for other elements? Say for your elements, or perhaps Goliaths element?”

Skay adjusted his glasses in thought. “Probably wouldn’t be hard. Just need some power gel, some other spirit herbs could probably increase the feedback, and then pump some element into it I suppose. But what about my tests? Took me nearly an hour to fill these 5 prototypes.”

“It’s fine. You said yourself it shouldn’t be hard. You’ll probably be done before the subjects expire.”

Jessy, by now, had long since given up on these two. Trying to get them to conform to standard social etiquette was impossible. She’d actually wanted to avoid James meeting the Emperor in person, but he’d ended up asking for a meeting despite her efforts. Looking at the face the Emperor was now making, she was certain he’d long since realised his mistake.

After a brief discussion, James ended the transmission, and like the devil turned back to Artimus with a smile on his face. “So, Arty, what do you think would be an appropriate price to start a war? Of course, we can just go ahead and kill that Perlious fellow, but that probably won’t help you start a war if he disappears right after we started asking questions about him.”

Artimus couldn’t quite determine what he wanted to do now. It would be difficult to claw the Brotherhood in, especially now that they’d seen through his ploy so easily. But that didn’t mean it was impossible. “I want you to start the war, but if you do, I’m going to need your help equipping my Empire to expand and defend itself.”

James cupped his chin in thought for a while. “We can start your war, and if you have the resources for it, we can even equip your army for you. But I want something in exchange for this task. I want everything you have.”

Artimus suddenly shot to his feet. “What?! My Clan has owned and run this Empire since the...”

James waved his hand like shooing away a fly. “Bah! Empire?! How useless. I don’t want your fucking empire. You only have one thing I want. Knowledge. Information. I want every record of array patterns, potions, pills, artefacts, techniques, history. Anything you’ve got written down or stored away in that head, I want everything.”

Artimus could barely contain his anger. “You may as well be asking for my Empire! Our cultivation techniques and research date back to before the three nations had even grown from piddling little backwater countries. This research isn’t something for the likes of some tiny guild that will last for only a blip of time in my Empire’s history before it’s engulfed in a flood of greedy clans and sects seeking their methods! You won’t be able to protect that knowledge and instead of paying you for a job I’d be pouring my clans methods out to anyone that wants it!”

James never lost his calm smile and just gave a sly look at the end of Artimus’ enraged speech. “Well, that’s fine then. That’s the price of starting a war between the nations and then securing the Empire’s ability to take and maintain their hold on the three nations lands.”

Artimus had long since lost the calm knowing smile he’d carried in here. In all his 1600 years of life, he’d never met such a difficult person to deal with. He thought it would be simple to walk in and the grandeur of his personage would be enough to cow this guild to his whim.

To make things worse, not only had he vastly underestimated how crafty the Guildmaster was, he’d underestimated just how powerful their information network was. They had the power to record conversations between people anywhere in the Empire. That was like being a farseer or time scriber. You had the power to single handily topple countries.

Only making all this worse, was that they’d somehow managed to make Hanso disappear. If it was possible for them to make a tower realm expert just disappear like that ... well, he didn’t want to test it personally.

He’d rather send in the royal guards to test them first. So far, the first attempt of testing had his head spread across the floor from some long range weapon or technique that came through the window from some person who was far enough away that even Artimus couldn’t figure out where he was releasing this technique from.

Having these thoughts rolling around in his head, Artimus’ face returned to a serene calm. “This isn’t just our problem, you’re clearly being targeted by powerful people now. If you don’t side with the empire that leaves one of the nations. I would then be forced to evict your guild from my empire, and you will become someone’s dog and lose all autonomy you’ve had until now.”

James smiled like an old Chinese man with his eyes squinted together and his smile reaching the top of his face. “You don’t need to worry about that. Should it happen, you will be the one losing out. Besides, they will quickly learn what is and isn’t acceptable when doing any business with my guild. Well, it doesn’t matter. That is the price, if you aren’t willing to pay it, that’s not my problem, things will just continue as usual.”

Artimus retained his polite smile and after a few minutes of staring at each other, one looking like a pleasant old man and one looking like a used car salesman, Artimus bade his farewells and left. His parting comment quietly echoed in the Guildmasters office as his remaining guard bent down and picked up the corpse of his compatriot on the way out. “I’ll consider your offer.”

The moment he left, James’ smile fell to a placid, blank face. He then turned to Jessy. “Well?”

Jessy gave him a confused look. “Well what?”

“Well, you’re in charge of the business side of things. How’d I do?”

After that question, Gold James suddenly appeared in his spirit realm and went into a tirade.Oh here we go. You need some back patting now? Need someone else to boost your ego a bit more. One of these days you’re going to...

Just as quickly as he appeared, James willed him away. He wasn’t too sure what to make of the Gold James anymore. By now he could usually keep that shiny bastard de-summoned, but the moment he got a little egotistical about something he’d achieved the shiny little bastard would pop up again to lecture him. Which tended to be quite often.

Rubbing his face tiredly James diverted whatever Jessy had planned to say about his performance with the Emperor. “You know what, forget it, just tell me your thoughts from a business perspective. How likely are we to get a job from the Emperor?”

Jessy crossed her legs together and leant back in her chair. “If this was only business, it’s not unlikely that he’ll request the job for your stated price. However, it’s never just business, especially in this world. He’ll most likely wait and then jump in when he thinks we need it, like a rescuing saint. He wants us to be compliant and feel like we owe him something. That’s how he plans to initially tie us together.

“If we don’t receive significant pressure, he’ll create it. He wants us indebted to him. Then if that doesn’t work, he’ll start pressuring people connected to us and limit us business wise. His only problem will be the upcoming auction. If he can’t alienate us before then, it’s most likely he’ll have no choice but to accept the deal.”

-4 weeks-

While letting everything slowly ramp up to the next auction, James spent most of his time researching martial techniques. He’d had Jasmine studying any technique manual they could get their hands on.

One thing he’d learnt was that he’d misinterpreted how the martial techniques worked. He’d presumed that it was simply a matter of using more or combined spirit energies to increase the power of your techniques. It turned out that most martial techniques used certain meridian paths to increase the power of the technique.

James had no idea how exactly that was supposed to work, but nonetheless it did. This presented a significant problem for James, with his non-existent spirit realm he couldn’t utilise meridian paths fully.

After some work with Jasmine, they managed to map out all the meridians they could find recorded and discovered the ‘meridians’ were a poor depiction of a person’s nervous system and acupuncture points were actually nerve clusters.

With that new knowledge in mind, James had Jasmine set up an implant with the nervous system map of his own body and then spent a weak understanding and fully memorising it. Once he was done, he started developing two new techniques. The first was his breathing technique which now changed to a rather convoluted system operating as a clock.

Now that he could pretty much simultaneously use two different elements without any backlash he cycled through meridians paths in his body like two hands of a clock. For an hour the long hand would start at twelve o’clock and circle around through all his minor meridians with a different element each minute and each cycle randomising the order of elements.

His hour hand would focus on his main meridian paths and cycle every 12 hours with each hour being a prolonged use of a single element which once again randomised at the start of a new cycle.

While this was happening, he would use the star point technique on each acupuncture point, of which there was 240. Each point was barraged by 6 elements in a second before it switched to a new point. This was done to help force his spirit realm into becoming more tolerant of using three or more elements simultaneously.

Instead of having to find a way for the energy to return to his dantian where it started from, it would instead simply return at the end of a meridian path to his imaginary realm. This became his new standard breathing technique, and it turned out to be nearly 10 times more efficient. It also had some other interesting side effects like increased reaction times and abnormal levels of strength even for his cultivation level.

James named the new technique the ‘Hands of Time’ and had his brain scanned, and an implant created immediately. It became one of the most expensive techniques on the guilds merit reward list.

Amusingly, it was so difficult to teach yourself to do it subconsciously that even James had significant trouble with it. His only saving grace was that Gold James would suddenly pop up if he stopped his breathing technique and start accusing James of getting lazy because he thought he was too good for breathing techniques now.

James was starting to wonder if the Gold James was some sort of subconscious projection he created to prevent himself from getting too absorbed in his own self-centered ego.

The other technique he’d been working on he called ‘Fleet Feet’. It utilised his meridians to fully empower his legs and mind with lightning energy and wind energy simultaneously. He discovered that the acupuncture points and the size of his meridians in his legs actually somewhat limited the flow of his spirit energy and greatly reduced the speed he could alter spirit energy flow or increase or reduce it to control his speed properly.

When he asked Elder Grace, who still frequented the hall to train Jessy, he discovered that normally a person had to spend years conditioning their meridian paths and unblocking acupuncture points in order to perfect a new technique.

This created a problem. He could just pour the spirit energy in from everywhere like he used to and it allowed him greater control of the technique, but that lost him the significant amount of power up he received from using his meridians. He finally realised that having an ethereal spirit realm was both a blessing and a curse for martial techniques and breathing techniques.

Control or power? James very much wanted both and set out to achieve just that. With the help of Jasmine, Skay and a few test subjects, James began a project to reduce the lag created by using meridians without losing the increased power.

12 Lackeys and a week later, it was decided this would become a long-term project to revisit regularly. In the meanwhile, James decided it would be best to try and increase his meridian flow and break open some acupuncture points.

With this thought in mind, he began to spend days in a row locked in meditation and cycling his breathing technique with the maximum amount of spirit energy he could pump into it in one go.

By the week before the auction, he’d unblocked 8 acupuncture points in his legs, and his meridians all over his body seemed to ‘feel’ bigger. According to Jasmine’s scans, they’d actually shrunk somewhat and increased in density nearly 3 fold. A similar rise in density was found in the nerve clusters that ‘felt’ unblocked.

After the Hanso incident, James rarely needed to be present for his guild members to do business and by this point in time the business side of his guild was almost entirely operated by lower guild members, freeing up his core guild members to do whatever they wanted.

All of them except Skay became focused on the research and training James had been doing into meridians. Skay, of course, wasn’t as concerned with cultivation as everyone else. He apparently had devised his own system to cultivate that was fed by his knowledge. James had no idea how he came up with it but apparently it worked because Skay only seemed to grow more powerful, spirit energy wise, with every project he finished and the more he understood.

When the others tried to master this technique or create a technique similar to it, they discovered it to be damn near impossible. It required a level of cognition that was off the charts. Skay always refused to do any brain scans and show just how active his mind was, but Jasmine had snuck some readings somehow and simply told James that even earth had monsters and never mentioned it again.

By the time it was 4 days before the auction anyone that was participating had either arrived in the city or was less than a day or two away. With the recent city upgrades, the inner district was now mostly empty apart from sects or clans that had managed to snatch up a building when the city was first rebuilt only 6 weeks ago and the university that had actually been slightly expanded.

The rest of the inner district had been demolished and was now mostly open space waiting to be sold or rented. Apart from a very high-end 50 story skyscraper that was built to serve as a hotel for visiting dignitaries, no other new building had been erected.

The four surrounding districts, on the other hand, were now full of all sorts. The commercial district had 4 circular plazas that were filled with markets and traders. The residential district was filled with houses and high-rise apartments that could house nearly 600,000 families.

The last two districts were referred to as the Spirit district and Crop district. Greenhouses that reached into the sky spanned the entire Crop district, and almost all the food was stored in huge underground silos that were temperature and humidity controlled by advanced array designs.

The majority of the land was actually used for grazing country, to raise and farm animals for meat.

The most interesting district was actually the Spirit district. It was close enough that it actually lost a km to the edge of the lab and the Endless Forest Gateway compound. This was considered a good thing by James, because it forced people to enter the city to get to the compound gate and also kept the lab inside the city limits, whereas before it was almost 2 kilometres from the city wall.

This wasn’t the most interesting thing. It wasn’t even that the rest of this district was filled with training halls and meditation chambers for rent. The most interesting part was the 500-meter tall tower that sat in the middle like a great spire reaching into the clouds. At the top most point of the tower was only a single 10x10 room.

This room had such tremendous pressure it was almost never active. The power required for the top 40 floors to operate actually strained even the lab’s reactor. This meant that until someone stepped onto the 100th floor, the top rooms remained silent.

This was caused by needing to have a huge number of arrays that could resist the pressure of the compression array. More energy was actually spent keeping the tower standing when the top 40 floors were active than all the compression arrays in the tower stacked together.

In addition to the Spire, the arena was also dug up and moved to the spirit district. Not only was it bigger than ever, but it was also segregated into 4 areas to allow matches between every type of spirit realm.

Naturally, the Tower Realm area remained unused, but the Palace Realm was regularly used by cultivators passing through to Star City. The thing people needed the most when reaching higher levels was experience in using their elements and combating other powerful cultivators.

Everything in the spirit district was owned by the city, or more appropriately, the guild. That meant everything there was rented out. This actually started raking in even more money than Star City, because cultivators would visit Tech City and hire meditation chambers or Dojo’s because they were all structurally reinforced to the point even Arc Cannons wouldn’t be able to dent them. This made them perfect for training martial techniques or meditating in.

Some people had even rented a meditation room for 6 months or more, so they could go into closed door cultivation and try to break through to the next realm.

During this period of rapid development for Tech City, Star City has been slowly expanding maps and increasing the distance and level of its exploration of the Endless Forest. Unfortunately, despite a number of group attempts, no one had managed to fully explore places like the snake pit or abandoned mine yet.

The quarry had been rapidly explored by Jasmine’s drones and mining operations for LS3 and the Major Spirit Storage gem deposit had already begun. The mini-lake of condensed spirit energy had been sucked into a giant tank that had been acquiesced for the present time to Skay, who demanded the right to research it before using it for anything.

The income from Star City and Tech City was now more than any city in Yori Empire except for Yansho City. Although James was supposed to pay land rights and tax to the empire for Tech City he didn’t. Apart from the same tiny sum that the Gau Clan used to pay the empire, James gave them nothing.

Even that little sum he paid to them was entirely because he was still technically part of the Empire. If he thought he could do it without a bloodbath ensuing, Artimus would have tried to enforce more taxes on James.

This was especially considering Tech City had managed to start dragging in so much commerce and cultivator activity it would no doubt be dwarfing the capital city in land and population in another 10 years. For a world that operated with three or four hundred year lifespans, 10 years was a relatively short time period to most people who mattered.

The Brotherhood really had developed too fast for anyone to notice they would become such a powerhouse in such a short period of time. They couldn’t even be properly infiltrated because they had some abnormal level of security.

Needless to say, the city was filled to the brim. It wasn’t just the auction that was the reason for Tech City’s rapid increase in activity these few days. Because of his recent advances in how spirit energy worked in the body, James wanted to test himself and test some new techniques.

With that thought in mind, James advertised a few activities for the days leading up to their showcase. The first was a reward for anyone that can reach above the 50th level in the Spire. This was because each level grew so dramatically that even tower realms would find it difficult reaching above the 50th floor. At this time, James could barely make it to the 21st floor.

As far as True Spirit Realm cultivators went, the only person to beat that was Skay, the disgusting old freak. He strolled up to the 40th floor then came down saying he got bored like it was all some walk in the park. James was fairly certain he must have had gravity as one of his elements, or something ... who knows with that mad bastard.

The second reward was for anyone that could win against any of the 7 sins in the arena and for every win against a sin the reward doubled. Because they still hadn’t found a sloth, Harvy was designated to that role. Being half dead, he may have actually been the closest thing to sloth James had found so far.

He implemented this because he wanted to test his skills and to encourage the training of his core members. To prevent some riff-raff challenging him and taking up his precious time, he made it so you could only challenge the sins if you could win against 5 normal Brotherhood members in a row.

At first, a lot of people lined up to try their hand at defeating the Sins, but that very quickly backfired. Skay and Harvy basically killed anyone that challenged them. Skay, because he hated being interrupted, and Harvy, because death was his nature.

People stopped challenging Goliath because he disabled almost everyone he fought with, leaving broken legs, arms and internal organs. For a similar reason, everyone refused to battle Jessy, not because she disabled them by breaking bones or leaving them near dead. No, it was the debilitating orgasm that left them questioning if they’ll ever have kids again.

That only left three people to fight that didn’t kill or debilitate everyone they fought. Exsue was named the Witch of Envy. This was because she always cackled madly while firing off lightning everywhere like a witch from the stories. The worst part about the lightning was if you touched it you’d be distracted by your envy of everything. You’d see visions of everything you lack that others have.

Although this doesn’t seem as bad as the lust thing, it was far worse, because in a large group battle it would turn everyone against their comrades. An entire army could effectively be wiped out if half of them fell into madness.

Fatty retained his title of the Red Barron. His powers were far stranger in battle. With a single deep breath, he could suck all the spirit energy from of his surroundings. Not just primal energy but people’s refined energy that they released to employ martial skills. Worse still was actually touching him, it was like touching a spirit energy black hole.

Luckily spirit energy depletion was nowhere near as paralysing as Jessy or Goliath. There was also a significantly smaller chance of joining Harvy on team dead.

That only left James who somehow seemed to be the sanest of the sins. The only problem with battling him was, it was like a lucky bag. Because he was always testing different techniques, you’d sometimes be painting the arena red or shaking uncontrollably on the ground as lightning danced around your body.

The worst part about challenging James was that his record in the arena was untouchable. He’d never once taken a hit or even been grazed by a martial technique. He was so fast it was impossible to pin him down.

The closest someone got was a man using hidden weapons who launched throwing daggers and needles. So sneaky was his tactics, James was forced to use maximum power to speed up his perception and catch them in mid-air.

The final reward was more academic and was posted in the University. This was more a science fair than a challenge and was designed by James to encourage the sharing of knowledge and design. To encourage more learning, he’d recently been adding new courses to the university.

Not only did they now offer meditation, breathing techniques and the four basic knowledge programs, they also started adding in basics on introductions to spirit materials, artefact creation, array systems, elementary alchemy systems, and some basics on cultivation.

To top it off, they’d put Gary in charge of the University and the Guild, so he was now in charge of hiring and managing some staff that could understand some of the basics, that allowed them to tutor others and increase the turnaround from people taking implants.

To add to this, they brought in hundreds of barrier realms to record everything they knew about their jobs, then started some simple programs that covered things from farming to cooking and from building to manufacturing. Almost every menial job under the sun had a counterpart in the university to help allow the uneducated and unemployed find work.

It soon became standard practice in Tech City to ask new hires if they’d been to the Tech City University and it wasn’t uncommon for the youngsters of more well-off families to be sent to study all kinds of things at the university.

By this point, people had started to come out of the other end of the 4 basics, and dozens of academics and scholars had managed to understand at least enough of them to pass basic testing.

While all this had been happening, some darker aspects had started moving into the city under Jasmine’s watch. Three different large groups of people had entered the city and started causing trouble only to be surrounded by groups of Mark 2 combat drones, holding little array cubes.

The new combat drones looked like miniaturised versions of Velocity and had only been built because Jasmine broke under the pressure of James’ ban and begged him for permission. James was incredibly uncomfortable that Jasmine had developed to the point she realised nagging the absolute shit out of him would be effective.

The only thing preventing him from detonating the reactor under the guild was that there were now 2 more of them hidden away under the city powering everything and he wasn’t certain if he could escape the fallout even if he were in the Velocity Gunship.

Regardless of that, the new drones had a more sleek design like a sideways teardrop and had 3 mini jet engines that operated with arrays. They were also incredibly expensive and because of that, James only allowed her to produce about 20 of them. Nonetheless, these drones were beyond fast and could operate two little ‘hands’ from the front which allowed them to be incredibly versatile.

The little array cube the combat drones carried actually acted like projectors and created a 3D array projection between them using electromagnetic waves. This meant that what they actually created was an invisible array that then silently created a stable reaction in between the drones and turned the space between them into a volatile oven.

To everyone else, the drones’ would surround the people trying to break into the lab or destroy the property of the guild and then their little cube they were carrying would light up. Following that was a heat wave and the infiltrator slowing turning into a charred burnt corpse.

Unfortunately, they weren’t powerful enough to contain a Palace Realm cultivator. In those cases, it was usually Goliath turning up with an armed group of guild members in Mk II Combat suits or a few more combat drones popping up from all over the city with Arc Cannons and Tesla Rods.

During the four weeks that the city had been re-reconstructed, James wasn’t the only busy person. Goliath had trained and installed two new Generals that were in charge of security and defence in Star City and Tech City. They were General Wiest and General Gallin.

While Goliath had been busy doing that, Skay had been building various obscure things and researching even more obscure things. One of those things was the Mk II combat suit, which had now become even more streamlined. It fit like bike leathers and was just as flexible and light without losing any of the combat potential of the Mk I. That said, it didn’t add any combat potential other than the flexibility and lightness. His Mark III design was far too expensive to equip guild members with.

Skay had also been working on what seemed like hundreds of other projects locked away in his lab. Some of them James knew about, a lot he chose to ignore, and some even Jasmine wasn’t privy to.

Fatty seemed to be a Jack of All Trades and had been through more different assignments and responsibilities than a career criminal in and out of prison. He was now permanently posted in charge of Star City, mostly just as a means to keep him out of the way.

Jessy spent most of her time in correspondence with Skay, James and their many business partners, and also kept a personal eye on their accounts. She was in charge of all public relations and also determined and advertised what they’d be willing to trade at the auction and what they traded in the interim.

Exsue was the last of the core members and spent all her free time badgering James. Every time he thought he’d thrown her off or escaped her, she’d reappear and stick to him like herpes. He’d begun to suspect that Jasmine was feeding her information on his location just to piss him off.

While the city had been under construction, the ghost team had already long since infiltrated the private residences of both the first and second prince. On an inconspicuous day that was of no special meaning, the manors of the first and second princes were mysteriously vaporised in flaming explosions that engulfed hundreds of meters in a tornado of fire. The entirety of the empire had suspicions about the culprits involved, but chose not to voice their concerns.

Emperor Artimus simply brushed it off without concern and life moved on. When Rex finally came through on his end of the bargain, it was publicly called a donation to the University of Tech City. The library staff at the University spent nearly two days and nights scanning everything they received into the system until everything suddenly vanished before they could put it on the shelves.

James had everything moved down to the HQ storage lockers and only allowed basic and elementary documentation to be displayed in the library. Most of which was useless to anyone that had a slightly better than poor understanding of array patterns.

Jasmine had been working overtime on these patterns and used them as an excuse for James’ permission to build a new spirit computer. This allowed her a chance to start creating the first array circuit based computer system. Amusingly, she was forced to concede that even she couldn’t get it working properly and had to settle for a slightly more advanced version of the spirit material computer she was already operating from.

This however then left the door open for her and Skay to continue research and testing on the idea which she happily concealed from James. Now that she’d already doubled her computing power with a new spirit material computer, if James found out she was still working on a new one, he’d definitely put a stop to it.