With the discovery of soul Pressure and soul sense, James now had a whole new element to consider in regards to his cultivation training. With that in mind, he once again secluded himself away in the HQ building and spent the next month focused on understanding it more, finding a way to train and focus it and discovering how it tied into spirit energy.

After meticulous experiments and training, he concluded that he could only touch the tip of the iceberg in regards to spirit aura. He went back to the beginning and started trying to understand what he could of it.

First of all, he knew that it must be how the mind accurately controls refined spirit energy inside and outside of the body. It didn’t seem to have any problems controlling it inside the body, presumably because the soul, or whatever, had some attachment to the body that James couldn’t fully understand.

The problem came from controlling refined energy outside the body. After doing a few tests, James discovered that once refined energy left the body, it became slightly volatile and eventually seemed to break down and return to primal spirit energy after a while.

The time it took to decompose was dependent on the amount of energy, and also it’s purity. He hadn’t really gotten much into the purity of spirit energy because he’d not heard much about it. From what he understood though, spirit energy had three vectors.

The first was quantity, which varied mostly based on which realm you were in. The mind, or perhaps the soul as James was now calling it, was limited in how much it could safely maintain control over in the spirit realm.

The second was element or affinity. Again, this was determined by intent, which for a commoner or barrier realm unlocking an element is basically the same as Soul Pressure. Elements also had a number of other conditions like the number, the understanding and modifiers like abstract elements which often screwed up all the previous rules.

The third was quality. He touched on the topic of spirit energy quality as a barrier realm cultivator. In that case, it was because of the breathing technique they’d developed back then. At the time, purifying spirit energy mostly only increased the chances of them breaking their barrier.

When they broke through to True Spirit, their average spirit energy quality was higher than everyone else’s. James never considered this until he began utilising the soul sense and could feel the difference between his energy and other practitioners.

After more testing, he determined that the increase in quality gave them a huge edge over competition. Not only did it increase the time that his energy could remain under his control once it left his body, but also increased it’s effect on matter and energy when it came in contact with it. As well as his ability to control it.

As an example, if he had 100 particles of standard refined fire spirit energy, it could warm up a potato. If he had 100 particles of purified spirit energy, it could roast the potato. If it were purified even more, then 100 fire particles would be enough to turn the potato into dust.

Once he knew that, he set out to consciously purify his spirit energy to the highest possible quality he could. The only problem was that it was a slow and tedious process, and while he was focused on it, his rise in energy quantity stagnated.

It was a trade-off between reaching higher levels faster and having a shit load more spirit energy or progressing much more slowly and having less spirit energy that was more powerful. After considering his options, he naturally chose long term investment. After all, he was probably going to live for thousands of years. Especially if he had any say in the matter.

Once James realised that it was the unconscious use of Soul Pressure that controlled spirit energy, he began to try and consciously use it when he practised martial techniques. He found that when he was consciously trying to affect his refined spirit energy with Soul Pressure, it was remarkably easier to control.

This proved to James that refined spirit energy was already filled with Soul Pressure. He just wished he could maintain that kind of control over his Soul Pressure when it was trying to influence his surroundings and not spirit energy that had already been refined by it.

The second thing he touched on was his limitations with Soul Pressure and Soul Sense at its present level. His soul sense reached dozens of meters out from his body but the further from him it reached, the blurrier it seemed and the less he could understand from it.

Right next to his body he could sense quality, quantity and element in an uncanny manner like some kind of psychic, which he guessed he probably was in a way.

At the limit of his sense, which was about 50 or so metres from his body, he could only generalise the sense. He could tell if spirit energy was refined but not its nature, he could tell the general quantity of spirit energy in the area, but could only pinpoint a person’s realm and not how much energy they actually had, and he couldn’t tell the quality at all.

Regardless, it still acted perfectly fine as a third eye at that distance, and he could clearly see things that far away in his mind as if he was only standing a meter away.

Again, he felt like he should be able to focus his sense onto a single point but whenever he tried it only slightly increased his visibility at that location. It felt like his Sense and Pressure were rigid, stiff and weak. Like a muscle that sat trapped inside a cast for a year.

The limitation on his soul Pressure when just trying to affect free energy was even greater. It only had a range of about 10 metres from his body. Luckily, although it had much shorter range, it’s strength didn’t reduce with distance and instead remained uniform across the entire area.

After measuring it, they determined it was like applying gravity to everything in the area. Once they’d worked it out, they figured he was applying about 5m/s2 to his surroundings. Not only that, but he could apply it in in whatever direction he wanted. If he tried to focus it on one small area, then it became about 7m/s2 in that area and reduced slowly moving out from that point but remained the same total overall.

The more something fought against this Pressure, the more energy it consumed. After some more calculations, they worked out that his Pressure could apply about 30,000 newtons in total before a similar thing to spirit energy depletion kicked in. That meant that he could stop 6 tonnes moving at 1m/s, or alternatively, he could freeze a mortal in his tracks and slow down a barrier realm to a crawl.

They determined that if they could focus that energy into a single point the size of a needle tip, then it would be the equivalent of about 1,500m/s2. That would be enough to instantly stop 30 tonnes. Not only that but it could stop a projectile fired from an Arc Cannon and then send it back at three times the speed.

Two issues remained with soul Pressure. Even if he could focus it down to a speck with 1,500m/s2, it would instantly use the 30,000 newtons of Pressure available to him the moment it touched something more than 20kg. The second problem was that even just releasing soul Pressure freely in that manner required an immense amount of effort and James was flat out maintaining it for more than a few minutes.

The third issue was that trying to focus it and control it increased the level of difficulty by a square function. In other words, if the level of effort used to just maintain his Pressure at full power was quantifiably 6, then controlling it into a single area at the same time was 36.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to train the power and control of his soul Pressure yet, but he was hoping that it would be like lifting weights.

Finally, he ran some tests to determine if a person’s spirit energy or cultivation realm affected the level of soul Pressure. After bringing in an endless stream of guinea pigs, he came to realise that almost no one in this backwards empire actually understood their spirit aura and outside of a few select groups it was mostly overlooked.

He also came to realise that soul Pressure was an entirely separate form of cultivation which helped influence spirit cultivation and not the other way around.

After believing he had a slightly better understanding of the mysteries of the spirit aura, or soul as he’d begun calling it, James started devising new cultivation methods for both his spirit and soul cultivation. He couldn’t do much about the meditation technique. That was now basically ingrained, and there was hardly anything he could or wanted to do to change that.

His breathing technique only had the minor alteration of adding in the constant use of soul Pressure. Although he wasn’t sure what to expect when he started trying to consciously increase the soul Pressure exerted on refined spirit energy inside his body, he quickly discovered it did wonders.

The only problem was that it didn’t work unless he was consciously doing it. He then suddenly discovered something he fully didn’t expect when Gold James woke up from his endless meditation and decided to try and play with Soul Pressure too.

They quickly discovered that Gold James had his own Soul Pressure which was identical in every way to James’. James then also quickly discovered that he had absolutely no control over Gold James’ use of his Soul Pressure. They could both operate their soul Pressure together and double their output, but it didn’t combine into one and rather just stacked.

Interestingly enough, although they had their own separate soul Pressure, they shared their soul sense.

After the brief intermission created by this tomfoolery by Gold James, James got back to work on his cultivation methods. Having discovered Gold James had Soul Pressure as well, meant that Gold James, who was always meditating and focused on the breathing technique anyway, got to consciously apply Pressure to it while he meditated.

The next thing was martial techniques. This was the easiest part because it was just a matter of consciously controlling the spirit energy he released with Pressure instead of just sort of thinking about what he wanted it to do and willing it.

Seeing as Soul Pressure was essentially his willpower anyway, the only real difference between the two was the realisation that how much effort he put into willing the spirit energy into doing something greatly affected his control over it.

At first, this was slightly difficult, but he very quickly began improving after he mentally made the decision to try it. He believed that training like this could also help to improve his control of his Soul Pressure outside of his body.

Finally, he got to his Soul Pressure’s strength. To train its strength, he found the densest and heaviest material he could and created a weight training room. He then made sure to take an hour or two and visited this room every day to try and lift some of the weights using only his soul Pressure.

Very slowly, he managed to see some small amount of progress. Mostly in that he gained another 20 newtons of force to his total spirit Pressure after a month of training.

In order to train soul control, he would actively maintain his soul sense for as long and as often as he possibly could. He also began trying to focus his Soul Sense on specific things within its scope of vision. This one progressed only slightly faster than the Soul Pressure.

At first, his soul sense could be maintained for barely a few minutes before he started getting backlash effects and was forced to stop. While he was actively using it and trying to focus it on things a good distance away then the time he could maintain it halved.

After a month of solid training, minutes became hours and not only that but the distance his sense covered increased by a full 20 meters.

-The Arena-

It had now been two months since the Auction, and The Mysterious Stranger once again appeared in the arena and challenged James. James felt that even though the stranger had been giving them a run for their money up until now, that he could take her on.

Mostly because of the training he’d been doing with Soul Pressure. But also because for a few months, the only people he couldn’t best in sparring was Skay and Exsue.

James and the Challenger met in the arena at high noon. The three suns sat high above them like grand curators of the world and spread their light across everything. The sky was clear and blue, and the crowds marched in and gathered in the arena.

With the new renovations to the arena, it was likely that even if Tower Realms went all out in the True Spirit Arena, then the protective arrays for the audience would remain intact. James was pretty sure he could probably set off a gravity bomb in here, and the audience could all just sit there and watch.

Standing up on James’ usual perch was the 4 Sins that took an ass whooping the last time the challenger showed up. Exsue was the only one that probably could have still come out victorious, but that would have come at a significant price. She was well aware that obliterating half the population of the city that had been sitting in the crowd that day would most assuredly have put her on James’ bad side.

Standing at one end of the arena was the Challenger in her customary black robes with her face shielded by a hood and a sword at her hip. Standing opposite to her was James, in his light blue robes with the Guild Seal on his chest and a long silver sword at his hip.

He also wore a ring on his hand. The ring was his aura splitting artefact, or rather now more appropriately named a Soul Pressure diverter. After some testing, James understood that this array pattern created a null area around him that freed spirit energy from the effects of other people’s Soul Pressure.

When testing, he discovered that deploying his own soul Pressure with the intention of eliminating someone else’s would create an area where the two overlapped and James’ Soul Pressure would counteract the opponents for whatever amount of Pressure it could apply per square meter.

If the person had 200 newtons more Pressure than James did, then it meant that the spirit particles in the area their soul Pressure’s overlapped would have 200 newtons of Pressure applied to them by the other person.

This ring seemed to create a very small concentrated field for about a meter around James’ body that did that to the exact amount necessary to eliminate any Pressure influence not his own. Unfortunately, in James’ opinion, it didn’t manage to mask him from the view of Soul Sense and instead made it even easier to see him.

As the two competitors stared at each other, James couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen those eyes somewhere before. Those clear blue eyes. He was certain he’d seen them.

Suddenly, James got a strange sensation. His Soul Sense reacted, and he realised he could feel the challenger trying to scan him with their Soul Sense. From what he could tell, they didn’t seem to be able to tell that he’d been busily scanning them since they’d walked into the arena.

He thought back to the experiments he’d been doing over the past week and realised he’d missed something crucial. He never realised it because he’d been too busy considering how to implement Soul Pressure into his training and combat.

Soul Pressure, when it was creating zero pressure on the surroundings, acted like some kind of ESP third eye. What he didn’t fully realise was that he’d never once been able to scan Skay. That old freak probably had Soul Pressure as powerful as Ruff’s. He didn’t realise he couldn’t scan Skay, not because he hadn’t tried but because every time he did, it just looked like he was scanning a mortal.

James had assumed this was because Skay didn’t really use spirit energy at all and the only reason he could confirm Skay was a True Spirit practitioner was that strange feeling like he ‘just knew’ when he looked at him.

He then suddenly understood something. ‘If soul Pressure is meant to be a reflection of your will, then I can influence other people’s soul sense with my own’. That said, he began to try and focus his soul sense to shield himself from being scanned.

At first, he still felt like the challenger was able to scan him, albeit they couldn’t see much because the two were separated by a good 50 metres between them, but he felt it nonetheless. Gold James then decided to chip in, and suddenly the pervasive sense of being looked at under a microscope was replaced with the feeling that someone was trying to scan him but only saw a blur.

Moments later he saw the challenger’s eyes suddenly widen in shock. James only smiled like a demon and gave a nod to the bell boy. The ‘ding’ of the arena bell sounded out, and the crowd roared and cheered.

James and the challenger then made the exact same motion. They dropped into a combat stance with their hand on their sheathed sword. Seeing her every move suddenly being copied, the challenger once more got another shock.

James started pumping lightning energy into his mind to increase his perception time and reflexes. He figured that he would try and play with this person for a bit. He suddenly realised something else strange with his Soul Pressure.

When he was consciously pouring it into his mind along with lightning energy, he felt a drastic increase in his perception time and his processing speed. The world around him slowed even further, and he watched on as actions of the crowd, like clapping, which should only take a fraction of a second, dragged out into nearly 5 seconds.

The world became slow motion around him. James now understood how Palace Realm Practitioners could be so fast and process the ridiculous speeds they could move at and perceive. It was Soul Pressure.

James then returned his focus onto the challenger, just in time to see her making the first movements of launching one of her wind blade attacks by drawing her sword.

James’ devilish smile grew more sinister and with the assistance of his lightning energy, he managed to launch a simultaneous wind blade. The two blades clashed in the middle of the arena and surprisingly James’ won out and continued on after slicing through the challenger’s.

Seeing that moment of shock and surprise in her eyes made James’ day. He then quickly saw those eyes ignite with what James could only describe as ire.

She shot to the left while launching consecutive wind blades only to be perfectly mirrored by James. She then tried closing the distance in an attempt to reduce his reaction speeds. Instead, she only managed to increase his reaction speed because she was far enough into his Soul Sense field that he could mirror her every action with his eyes closed.

It did manage to score her a short moment though when she was close enough that James’ Soul Sense could scan her properly and he finally saw her face ... and everything else obviously, but it was her face that gave him a shock.

After recovering from his shock, he grew slightly more interested in playing mirror. He wanted to enrage this person to their limits. He also wanted them to know that he knew and began to ask questions.

“How did you get here cellulite girl?”

Hearing this provocative question, the challenger froze for a moment, and the flames of rage in her eyes only grew more intense. James sensed her body filling to the brim with wind and lightning energy as she tried to speed up faster and catch him out in their game of mirror.

She dodged left and right while launching lightning bolts and wind blades everywhere, only to have them all meet an exact and slightly stronger duplicate sent from James.

She then tried to change tact and chose instead to simply go into close quarters and cut him to pieces. She rapidly launched forwards, and James finally had no choice but to retaliate. He didn’t care that he’d lost the game of mirror. He was busy trying to figure out how this person was here at all.

Seeing James finally raising his guard and taking the fight more seriously, the Challenger raised her sword, and in the same motions she first used with Goliath, she made a sudden huge increase in lightning energy and her body vanished and reappeared to James’ right like a ghost.

To everyone’s shock and surprise, James simply stopped dead on the spot and then swung his sword directly forwards. A loud clang rang out in the arena, and the figure of the challenger phased into existence in front of James while holding their sword defensively and trying to push back James’ sword. She then released another strange spirit energy, and her sword started forcing James’ back.

James leant forwards slightly while all 6 of his spirit energies suddenly flooded his body and created more pressure on his sword causing it to slowly sink towards the challenger’s head. He stared directly into her eyes and spoke again. “How did you get here Kelly?”

Realising the jig was up. Kelly, the challenger, diverted her sword to the side and then jumped backwards from James. She then launched a wind blade off, and the crisp ‘ding’ of the arena bell sounded out.

The crowds were decidedly upset with this battle. It was very much not to their expectations. In order to quell the crowds, James ordered Goliath and Jessy to put on a show for them and then beckoned Kelly to follow him.

-Guild HQ-

Sitting at the round table in the HQ office was a girl with long wavy black hair and smooth defined features. Her skin was ghastly pale as if she’d lived her whole life in a dark room. She had thin red lips and defined cheekbones making her all the more ghost like.

She was garbed in her black travelling leathers which she wore under her robe, and her long straight hair fell around her face and neck down past her shoulders, parted only slightly in front of her face in a very antisocial emo manner. On her hip was her sword and scabbard and in a makeshift holster on her thigh was what looked like a poor attempt at a pistol. Her arm had the tattoo of a triangle equally cut apart into 3 sections. Each one housing a different symbol in it.

She was a thin looking girl with a chest as flat as a board and a firm perky bum.

As she sipped her tea, the core members of the Brotherhood sat surrounding the table while looking at James. The first to speak was Exsue who seemed rather upset that James seemed to actually know this woman. She was now regretting that she hadn’t vaporised the woman and the people watching in the stadiums be damned.

It was bad enough he came to this place with Jessy ‘the hussy’. She stared fixedly at the girl then at James and then back and forth a few more times before pointedly asking. “Who’s this bitch?!”

James smiled as he imagined the fallout of these two women meeting each other. Exsue was systematically insane and seemed to be excitably jealous of anyone who had a relationship with James. Especially if they’d had any history in the ‘sack’.

The girl named Kelly was the definition of lazy. She did the absolute minimum required to achieve her goals. Which was a huge waste, because James was convinced she could pick up just about anything she put her mind to.

He was rather surprised she’d actually achieved as much as she did in this world. Perhaps the only reason he could think of was her desire to not be hassled ... ever. Which was why James suspected if Exsue started getting in her face, Kelly was probably going to try and strangle her to death.

It’ll be like a lazy cat meeting an excitable dog ... and the cat got petted by the owner, but the dog didn’t. What could go wrong, right?

Seeing Exsue already making assumptions and getting bushy tailed, James finally chose to disclose his relationship with the stranger. “Everyone meet Kelly, she’s ... uhh, let’s call her a past acquaintance. She and I both started our electrical apprenticeships together in Australia on Earth. I haven’t seen her since I left that dump though. She’s probably the laziest person and...”

After glancing at Skay momentarily, he continued on. “ ... the second most brilliant mind I’ve ever met. She actually had such a strong handle on electromagnetism I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s her main element after sloth.”

Hearing the proclamation that this sickly looking woman had the sloth element, everyone except Skay was suddenly surprised. James and Skay could, of course, both sense it with their Soul Sense. Because they’d still been exploring it, they hadn’t mentioned it to the others yet.

This led to a lengthy explanation on what they understood about it and how it worked. Apparently, either Exsue was putting on an act of astonishment and knew about it all along, or she truly didn’t know. James was inclined to believe she had been keeping a lot of things from him but chose to ignore that for now. He was certain that he could trust her enough that she wouldn’t keep it from him without a good reason.

With this short introduction, James felt the sudden surge of Jessy and Fatty’s soul sense expanding out to cover the room and beyond. Goliath and Harvy both agreed they couldn’t do it, and although Exsue said she couldn’t do it, James had a sneaking suspicion that she was just too powerful for him to detect.

Skay finally got fed up and slapped a hand onto the table. “Who cares if they can see her elements boy? We know, and that’s enough. More importantly than that, I predicted that it was possible but never did I imagine we’d track someone down so quickly.”

Skay’s eye then became fanatical as he flipped open his black-pad and looked straight at her. “You must be from one of the other labs right?”

Jessy finally couldn’t wait patiently anymore either and shot to her feet. “Who cares about that shit! If you’re from earth, how did you even get here?!”

Skay just brushed his hand through the air as if it was a matter of course. “Do you not comprehend quantum entanglement? Whatever one particle does is matched by an equal reaction in its pair.”

Hearing this nonchalant reply, Jessy slammed a hand onto the table. “What does that even mean you old fuck?”

The new girl Kelly finally chimed in and added to the discussion. “It means, that the gateway was opened from a reaction between the anomaly and the entangled electrons. In other words, gateway opens in the sea lab, gateway opens in the other 412 places on earth connected by electron pairs. For a simple 2 bit whore, it would probably be easier if I just told you what you’re really asking. Yes, there are other portals to earth, but they’ve all closed. Probably the only one that can go back is the one you came through.”

Skay visibly jerked hearing someone else voicing his own thoughts. He gave Kelly a strange look and then continued on questioning her. “Girl, what lab are you from?”

Kelly didn’t even register the old man and instead looked at James. “Beach Boy. Looks like you somehow managed to drag your ass through to this side. God really does have a cruel sense of humour to make me suffer two lifetimes with you in the both of them.”

James smiled like the devil as he leant back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. “Good to see you too Kelly. I see that even spirit energy can’t fix that fat ass of yours. By the way, if you’re planning to go back, then you’re going to want to pack a radiation suit, you know ... with the nuclear holocaust and all.”

Kelly seemed to take a wide-eyed moment to register the mention of a holocaust then just as quickly it looked like she’d already processed and moved on. “I see, well that will no doubt disappoint some people. So, would you care to fill me in on everything you’ve created here?”

James jumped up from his chair with a bright smile. “Sure, why don’t we take a walk around the city first. I’ll show you what we’ve done with the place.”

Allowing Kelly to broach no argument, he simply stood up and walked out of the office. No one else was sure what they should be doing about the new girl and decided to leave it up to James. The only exception being Exsue who ran out and clung to James’ side while biting his arm and demanding a detailed history of his relationship with the new girl.

James did as he always did and completely ignored her. After a short trip along the monorail system, which by the way Kelly showed no enthusiasm for, or even slightly acknowledged, they arrived at Monolith plaza. James hadn’t even bothered to point at anything and explain how it got there or how they built it. Instead, he spent the short trip over here making jokes at Kelly’s expense.

Kelly watched on in a very bored and uninterested manner as James strolled up and placed a hand on the monolith. Moments later Heavenly Law descended onto Kelly and then just as quickly disappeared. It wasn’t uncommon to see Heavenly Law popping up in the city, so hardly anyone paid much attention to it.

James then turned back from the monolith with a solemn frown and marched back up to Kelly. “So who sent you?”

Kelly was still in a moment of shock after realising she’d somehow managed to escape the binding oath she’d been under. She then let out a long breath and looked back at James with an equally solemn look. Seeing the way these two were acting, Exsue for once didn’t leap in to try and steal James’ attention. Besides, she was rather curious just what was going on as well.

“A Dark Guild that picked me up in Lanthoe. They’re a little bit more under the radar than you though, no flashy city takeovers and certainly not selling weapons at auction to try and encourage wars.”

James cupped his chin and started walking back in the direction of headquarters. Seeing him just pacing off in thought, Kelly chased after him to catch up. As he paced, James started asking more questions. “How tightly binding was your oath and how much information have you had to give them?”

Kelly gave him a look like he was an idiot then huffed. “I haven’t given them shit. Unfortunately for them, I unlocked a rare spirit energy, and I had no idea how I did it, so the oath we made wasn’t for me to help develop their guild but instead to loyally serve them. It wasn’t too bad at first, I had to sleep with some pigs and do some menial labour, but I was also heavily encouraged to practice cultivation. I quickly began to develop my own means of cultivating.”

James mind was running at 120% trying to piece everything together. “What meditation techniques did you learn?”

Kelly just chuckled and gave him a sideways glance. “I used them all. They had about two for every element, and I memorised them all. It didn’t take long to discover how to unlock more elements until I bottomed out at the 4 I’ve got. Sloth, Lightning, Magnetism, Wind.”

James then scratched his head in thought. “How did you learn about the uses of your Pressure?”

“Soul Pressure? Oh, you mean the Spirit? They just call it Spirit in the ancient scrolls I read. This Dark Guild has some really old shit stashed away in their headquarters that none of them have touched since god knows how long ago. I found this scroll that talked about how warriors see through an ‘inner eye’ using the power of their True Spirit. That was called Scrying with the True Spirit. The other thing with the Pressure was like ‘Pressure your will onto the laws of the heavens’ or some shit. They called that Spirit Influence.”

Scrying and Spirit Influence. These were the ancient terms for Soul Sense and Soul Pressure. James rather liked the Scrying term and decided to refer to it as Scrying. He wasn’t a fan of Spirit Influence and chose instead to just call it Spirit Pressure. He then decided to refer to the area these strange mental phenomena covered as his Scying field and Spirit field.

After that brief mental distraction, he returned to the present in time to where Kelly was talking about how most the palace realms and tower realms she’d met could use Spirit Pressure but seemed to have no knowledge regarding Scrying.

James then continued on in his questioning. “So, why are you in my city and why haven’t you been building things for them like we have?”

“I’m here because they needed someone who could test your combat capabilities. They know the Sins have multiple elements and are damn near undefeatable in the True Spirit Realm. So they needed someone that could accurately push them and hopefully defeat them so they could devise ways to capture you. I was the only Spirit Realm cultivator in the guild they believed had that potential.

“And the reason why I haven’t been building bombs and weapons is that as far as their concerned, I can’t. I twisted the truth and said I was a homeless bum on my world. The few things I have managed to throw together by myself aren’t anything near as impressive as yours. The most powerful thing I could concoct was gun powder, which is where this came from.”

Saying as much, she un-holstered the makeshift pistol on her thigh.

James gave her a strange look. “How the fuck do you know how to make gunpowder?”

“Read it in a book when I was twelve.”

“Even here, you’re still a freak amongst freaks.”

They then continued to discuss everything each other had been up to since they’d arrived. Once they weren’t talking about anything important anymore, Exsue reminded them that she was there by starting a fight with Kelly when she tried to discover just what these two had shared together in the past. James chose to ignore it entirely and simply left them arguing in the middle of the city.

That night an undercover cell from this Dark Guild, apparently calling themselves the Shadow Men, was suddenly dragged into security custody where James had a great deal of fun re-inventing water torture.

I say re-inventing because apparently breathing was also less important when you had spirit energy. Thanks to that, waterboarding could no longer kill someone, but they still couldn’t eliminate the age old primal instinct of panic and fear when water started filling their lungs.

It became somewhat of a sick past time for the next week or so as James wandered down to the dungeons and started teaching his security personnel all about it and trying to perfect just the right amounts of water to keep someone in a constant state of feeling like they’re about to drown but not quite.

If he just submerged them in water then after the brief initial panic they started breathing water. No, instead he needed to maintain that middle point where they’re lungs were slowly filling with water only for him to use his water affinity to force it all back out and the process to continue on endlessly.

By the end of the week, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not the infiltrators had broken and revealed everything they knew, it was a matter of whether or not James, or some of the city guards, were bored.

To say it was a cruel, violent and brutal past time wouldn’t be a lie. But by the same token, no one was going to die ... probably.

This then became a very dark and cruel practice in Tech City, and the general underground element of the city all agreed it was best to avoid pissing off the security and stick to the usual bribing and extortion. Everyone was also fully aware that the Dark Brotherhood had eyes everywhere in the city and as long as you weren’t trying to subvert the guild, you could just about get away with anything as long as the security forces didn’t catch you in the act.

It wasn’t unusual for murder, robbery and extortion to take place in the city on a daily basis. Now that the city had been standing for a few months, most people had become accustomed to that status quo, and the underground element knew not to take it too far.

James didn’t particularly care about the commoner’s point of view in regards to allowing all this crime to happen. From his perspective, it simply reinforced the natural law of this world in which the strong reign supreme. He did his due diligence by allowing everyone to start cultivating for 10 copper coins, which was pretty much a steal.

Not only that, but he’d begun selling the star point breathing technique to the masses. It was no longer a matter of never having a chance to cultivate spirit power in tech city, but a matter of how much effort you put into it.

He also didn’t particularly like the idea of some people being more talented at it or having a better affinity. None of that crap mattered in his opinion. If you couldn’t advance, it wasn’t a matter of aptitude but a matter of effort.

-Guild HQ-

James sat at his round table, customarily drinking tea and waiting. It wasn’t long until the dignified personage of Artimus entered the room and sat down. Unlike the last time he came to visit, he didn’t have his dragon guards escorting him, and he didn’t appear to be acting as aloof.

Instead, he appeared to be slightly irked with James about something. James didn’t have to guess for long.

Artimus marched up to the table and slapped a hand down infused with his spirit energy. For the first time, James got a bit of a shock when he observed the Emperor with his Scrying. He wasn’t sure what it was, but Artimus clearly didn’t have one of the four standard elements. Instead, his spirit energy felt the same as the natural energy that piggybacked off metals.

Artimus also got a bit of a shock when his spirit infused palm didn’t even budge the table let alone turn it to dust like he’d been expecting it to. He forged on with an angered expression regardless and tried to hide the brief pause in his words when he had gotten that surprise.

“James you little... ‘thwack’ ... punk! I’m the god damn Emperor. You can’t just push me to the side and then summon me at your whim! And what the hell are you thinking?! War of the Worlds? Are you trying to start a war across the entire continent?!”

James smiled and placed his tea down as one of his hands lovingly ran over his indestructible round table.

“Well, it was actually an idea I got from our last little chat. You wanted to start a war and were willing to pay a hefty price. Which no doubt is the reason you’re now here. I took that thought and went to the next step. Consider for a moment what’s going to happen after the War of the Worlds tournament.

“Someone out there is going to suddenly have the backing of my guild for a short period of time. Everyone knows by now that we have the power to kill Tower Realm cultivators using artefacts instead of cultivation. From what I understand, most countries in this continent only have palace realm cultivators. If I had to guess ... everyone who manages to ascend higher than that generally escape the continent to Gastalous.

“This means, that by now my guild is one of the strongest powers in the entire continent. I’m sure I’ll be targeted by a few people eventually, but that probably won’t be until after everyone finally realises how powerful my guilds become, and by then...”

James’ smile became darker, and the light in the room seemed to fade slightly as he finished his sentence and laughed madly. “ ... it’s going to be too late to stop me. hehehahaHAHA!”

Seeing the madness in James’ eyes, Artimus stepped back from the table slightly as if he’d just dirtied himself by being too close to James. His face went through a series of expressions until it settled on a solemn frown.

“What exactly do you plan to get out of all this?”

James gave a cough of embarrassment at his sudden outburst then continued on after some tea. “Ahem! Well, the same thing I’ve always wanted Arty. I want information. You see, when everyone finally realises that my guild can supply them with the means to start taking ground in battle, then they’re going to pay out the ass end to get it.

“Empires and nations across the continent are going to fall all over themselves in an effort to get my support. In exchange, all I will ask for is all the information they have regarding everything. I want information. Arrays, Alchemy, Forging, Cultivation, Martial Techniques, Material Properties. I want all of it, and in order to either defend themselves or attack others, everyone will be willing to give it to me.

“I guess I also I want something to entertain me while I’m trapped here. I could probably already leave for the Gastalous continent but I won’t. From the brief reports I’ve received from Jasmine, the Gastalous continent has a spirit energy saturation at least a hundred times better than the average saturation of Atsunari.

“That means people there have been able to cultivate a hundred times faster than here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the average cultivation of the entire continent is tower realm or above. So I’m in no rush to go there just yet.”

Emperor Artimus let out a long sigh and then sat down at the round table. “Boy, I don’t think you realise just what you’re getting yourself into here. It’s true that many cultivators that have reached the Core Realm go to other continents, but just as many have stayed here. They hide away inside their clan or sect until they’re needed in times of emergency. These people are usually referred to as Dao Protectors.

“If you break the balance of the continent and start creating wars, the Core Protectors will rise forth and stop you. They are generations older even than I am and have watched over the balance of the continent for thousands of years. The Core realm isn’t anything like the realms you’ve experienced so far.

“The step from the peak of the Tower realm to the base of the Core Realm is as big as every realm of cultivation done before it combined. Core Realm cultivators truly can split oceans and crumble mountains and your little toys will be useless against them.”

James sat in silence for a moment as he considered this notion. He then suddenly clicked his fingers and smiled. “That’s what feels so different about your spirit energy. You’re half a step into the Core Realm, aren’t you? In this supposed massive step between the Tower Realm and the Core Realm.”

To say Artimus was surprised would be an understatement. To be so easily seen through he couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss. His eyes then suddenly bulged out from his head, and he stared at James in shock. “Scryer!”

James cocked his head to the side in a questioning manner and couldn’t help but feel he’d suddenly given something away he shouldn’t have. “Yes, I can ... scry.”

Artimus stood up from his seat and started pacing about while muttering. James felt that Artimus was taking this a little too seriously. After all, can’t everyone learn to Scry? Thinking this, he said as much.

“Why are you so shocked? Can’t everybody Scry? It’s just a matter of releasing your Spirit Field and reducing your Pressure to zero.”

Artimus, who was in the midst of raving to himself spun and stared at James. He then frowned and slapped a hand on the table, this time with enough Pressure for it to actually shake a little. “Don’t be a fool child! Scrying and Spirit Pressure are two entirely separate things. Scryers are as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.”

“I don’t see how. It seemed pretty easy for most of my core members. It was strange that a few of them couldn’t do it, but I thought that was simply a lack of comprehension.”

“Comprehension my ass! You don’t seem to realise just how rare a gift you’ve got! In my entire lifetime, I’ve only met 1 other scryer, and that old bastard was on his death bed!”

Finally, Artimus had enough. He eyed James suspiciously, gave a harrumph and then finished what he came here to discuss. “I accept your proposal. You will outfit my nation and start a war between the three great nations. In exchange, you will have the right to peruse the knowledge of my clan housed in the Dragon Vault. However, only you may enter the vault and no one else. You can only take out what you manage to learn yourself while in there and nothing else.”

James thought about it for a brief moment then gave a nod of the head. “Fine, I accept your terms, but I want to visit the vault before the war starts.”

Finished their discussion Artimus turned and walked out. Just as he was leaving, he glanced back and left some words of advice for James. “Boy, I would be careful about Scrying people so freely in the future. I can sense it now that I know what this feeling is and it makes me uncomfortable. Many people will be less forgiving than I am. Especially people more powerful.”

James just smiled politely and dropped his Scrying Field. Because he could only use it for a few hours at a time anyway, James wasn’t too worried about leaving it off. Regardless of the Emperors warning, he planned to continue using it as much as possible. In his opinion that would be the only way he could train it properly.

-Hall of Forging-

When James had rebuilt Tech City from the ground up, all the major faction at the time were relocated to their own little private skyscraper in the central district. The Gau Clan was favoured rather well in this little move because James had even gone a step further and completely rebuilt their Hall of Forging and Sword Hall underground.

The Sword Hall was basically just an arena and a handful of dojos and meditation chambers. The Hall of Forging, on the other hand, was 8 underground layers of workshops and forges all outfitted with proper ventilation and array heated furnaces. It had anvils with arrays carved into them for reinforcement and basic tools forged from sturdy spirit materials.

The entire set up was modernised somewhat but still kept that dwarfish underground forge feeling.

James had finally come down here to study forging with Song. For a rare change Skay willingly joined him this time. James had expected a shit fight like he always got when he dragged Skay away from his research but apparently, the understanding of forging with Spirit Pressure was just as interesting to him as it was to James.

At first, Song was more than happy to tutor them. That was until he began to question his own sufficiency and skill level after only a week had passed and the Duo had already managed to excel at everything he threw at them. By the second week, he was depressed by the speed of their growth and by the third he was suicidal.

Over the course of the week, James and Skay had learned a great deal about the intricacies of forging. First and foremost they discovered the intricacies of Willpower.

When forging, there are three major steps. The first is the conditioning.

Before they can even shape or cut the material they need to condition it by applying spirit energy to it. Most forge masters have either fire or earth element because those are the elements that best suit conditioning metals and solid substances but it’s not impossible to be of another element.

The whole idea of conditioning a material is to remove impurities. This is also where the use of Spirit Pressure comes in. By applying spirit energy to the material, either your own which is better because it’s more direct and easy to control, or from another source like storage gems or a spirit beast core, you are actively interfering with the free spirit energy that is inside the material.

Normally a material will absorb primal spirit energy from the world and then ‘refine’ it. This matter of refining is vastly different from the refining done by normal cultivators. When a person refines spirit energy, they’re essentially imprinting it with their own will as it changes states to an element.

When natural materials refine energy, they are creating refined spirit energy without a will. Which is what has been referred as free energy. Naturally, free energy also includes primal energy which has no element or will.

Free energy is unique in that it generally interacts in a special manner with refined energy from a person. In the case of the Lightning seeking spirit stone, the free energy attaches to the atoms of the material and acts as an instantaneous pathway from anyone point to another.

In the case of black-iron, it interacts especially well with lightning spirit energy and amplifies the normal properties of electrons flowing through a substance to create a magnetic field. Not only that, but it also increased the sensitivity of electrons in the material to be more easily excited by magnetic fields.

Most of this information was disseminated from Song and what they observed with their Scrying. After the incident with Artimus, James had decided to keep hidden the fact that everyone that had come from Earth seemed to be a Scryer and instead let Song believe that the two of them were just prodigies in conditioning.

When spirit Pressure was applied to the material, it wasn’t a matter of simply applying Pressure to everything in range but required controlling the Pressure to only effect a certain type of energy. In the case of conditioning, it was only free energy particles that weren’t naturally formed by the spirit material.

During this conditioning, they were also taught to remove normal impurities from a material. This didn’t concern the duo too much though because Jasmine had the means to purify a material to 99% and higher. Unfortunately, she couldn’t purify the free energy of a material which meant that this step was still important.

This conditioning was all to purify the material to some extent. The more you could purify it the more powerful its effects would be. On that note though, it wasn’t just the purity that effected a materials effectiveness. The general amount of free spirit energy attached to the material affected things as well.

To take black-iron as a good example again, if you had two blocks with the exact same amount of black-iron in each one, and the exact same purity regarding matter, they still might have different levels of effectiveness. Instead, the amount and purity of free energy in the material would be the contributing factor.

This was why people preferred to get their hands on Spirit Essences. These mostly only occurred in natural ore deposits. In nature, they more often than not show up as the purest parts of a material. This is because of the quantity and quality of refined free energy in the area pressures out impurities. Amusingly, the more pure a section of ore becomes, the more primal spirit energy it can convert into refined free energy.

The first material they were given to condition was just regular metal iron. James was rather interested when he gave the iron a closer inspection with Scrying and discovered that even mortal materials like iron had its own kind of refined free energy that it created when primal energy interacted with it.

The reaction and creation were obviously very slow, but it still existed. Seeing this, James began to inspect everything he got close to and began to notice almost everything had a different and unique kind of free energy pervading it.

Things that got mixed together, like steel, often had many different energies that all interacted differently with each other. For the first time, James actually closely inspected the air around him and found hundreds of different and very weak energies. Some of them were residue from other people using spirit energy and some of them were from naturally created free energies.

Anyway, the conditioning step was the most important. When he tried his first attempt at conditioning, he found it quite easy. Although he couldn’t control the area that his spirit Pressure exerted itself very well yet, he could control what it affected rather easily when he was Scrying.

It was simply a matter of willing every free energy particle away from him except for the iron energy particles. Once he could do that, he used his earth element and fire element simultaneously and excited the free energy in the iron. When it was white hot, he applied his spirit Pressure and slowly ramped it up bit by bit.

By the time he was done, hundreds of little specks had passed through the other side of the white hot metal. After a brief inspection, he found that there was some impurities he hadn’t moved at all and a huge number of tiny impurities that had only moved slightly.

When asking Song about this, he received a strange look. Song nonetheless went on to explain the theory behind it as being a fusion between two or more energies. When energies have been compressed together for long enough, they often form a bond and become nearly inseparable. Unless you can pump in enough spirit energy to excite them fully, and enough spirit Pressure to separate them, then they will stay that way forever.

It was also apparently the bane of all great smiths, and the purity they could get material too often reflected their level as a forge master. At which point Song bragged on his ability to get material to almost 92% purity. According to him, the last 10% is always the most difficult.

Hearing him say this, James and Skay both shared a look. Skay then asked the question they had on their minds. “How do you know? Or rather, how do you measure purity?”

Song just grinned and led them over to a bench with a strange magnifying glass just hovering over the top of it. “This here is an artefact produced from a very rare crystal called ‘San’s Third Eye’ that allows a person to see spirit energy to the 100th degree. It’s not the most accurate piece of equipment, but it’s the most accurate you can get in the Yori Empire.”

James and Skay shared a look with each other, and both made a mental note to track down more of this stuff later. It wasn’t so much of an issue now that they had Scrying but it could possibly change everything for Jasmine. If they could find a way to engineer it, they may be able to give Jasmine the ability to accurately scan areas with higher concentrations of spirit energy.

Not just that, but it may also increase the likelihood of her being able to properly forge Artefacts. At present, she used Earth technology for forging. Which meant that she mostly increased the purity of a substance to its highest degree and not it’s energy.

Even though she could melt stuff down and purify it, there was still free energy that didn’t belong to the material fused with it in places or just stuck to it in others. She couldn’t control spirit energy all that well, and even with the ability to control arrays, she didn’t have the potential to use Spirit Pressure, because she didn’t have a spirit ... or willpower, or whatever it was that cultivators had.

Moving on, the next step depended mostly on how you wanted your artefact to react to spirit energy. In the case of their first project, Song had them trying to use their iron to create a flame sword for fire affinity cultivators. This meant they wanted it to amplify the effects of fire spirit energy.

To do this, they had to go through a process called fusion. Using iron as the base, they then had to add two other materials. The first was something called fire seed and was a seed from a plant called the fire lily. They had to crush this into dust and then purify it in a similar manner to how they purified the iron.

The second material was the shell of a creature that resembled a beetle called the lava bug. When they purified this, they had to try and keep only the refined energy in the shell that had fire retardant properties. James found that instead of using fire, it was actually easier to excite this free energy with water energy.

These two materials were then ground into dust and added to the molten iron. Then came the tricky part of fusion. Just mixing them together, similar to how Jasmine does when creating a similar artefact, would drastically reduce the Artefacts powers. They needed to use their spirit Pressure to fuse the energies together to create a hybrid of fire, fire retardance, and iron.

This process was incredibly difficult and required days of pouring in water, fire and earth energy and trying to centre his spirit Pressure on the mixture. By the end of a week, they’d finally managed to fuse the three together with only about 70% of the free energy not fully fusing. They then had to go through the process of purifying the new hybrid material again to remove the leftover dust, which now had little to no energy left in it.

Once again, they had a pure bar of iron that had three different naturally occurring energies inside it. The fire energy from the seeds amplified and affected spirit energy that passed into the blade, the iron acted as an intermediary and the base of the blade and the beetle shell prevented the blade from weakening due to heat and also had the added bonus of making the iron more sturdy.

Although this stuff had the same atomic structure and molecular makeup of normal iron, it had properties that far exceeded it.

The third step in the process was shaping the blade. This was the easiest step and required no spirit energy and soul Pressure unless you count the spirit energy used to swing the hammer like a giant.

Once they were done with that, they moved onto the fourth step. This wasn’t done for every artefact, but artefact creation was closely tied in with array patterns. This step was called ‘ruin carving’ and was essentially just carving or painting ruins on the sword blade or the hilt.

The final step was called the ‘baptism’, and according to Song, it was the most important part of any forging process. He described it as forcing a part of your spirit into the weapon.

This was done by focusing your spirit Pressure onto the artefact and then trying to split some off from your control and give it to the weapon.

It all sounded like hogwash to James, but Song insisted that it was possible and that they had to at least try it. James sat cross-legged in a room for almost a week with his Scrying field focused onto the sword and trying to separate a piece of his spirit Pressure into the sword.

At first, he sensed nothing and felt nothing apart from the exhaustion that came every few hours. Eventually though, he began to sense what felt like a little piece of his spirit Pressure very slowly disappearing. The more he focused on that feeling, the faster it became. By the end of the week, it was truly noticeable, and his average Pressure had dropped back by nearly 25,000 newtons every time he sat and focused his spirit. Then on the 6th day, he felt a tugging, and suddenly the entirety of his 30,000 newtons disappeared in an instant.

In his scrying field, he actually witnessed ... something ... leaving his body and entering the sword. He couldn’t explain what it was because the scrying field was more an inner eye and wasn’t as much an actual visual thing. If he had to describe it, it was a form of energy, but it definitely wasn’t spirit energy or any other energy he’d ever noticed before.

Before he could finish his thoughts on the matter, a huge wave of nausea and exhaustion hit him and he passed out. About a day later he woke up in the clan mansion and was led back to the Hall of Forging. After some brief testing, he discovered his Spirit Pressure was already slowly recovering by itself. When he asked Song what happened, he just smiled and muttered something about the first time is always the roughest.

James then got an opportunity to inspect his sword. It was rather rough workmanship, but according to Song hardly anyone could have done better on their first attempt at forging. He even praised it as one of the best first-time artefacts he’d ever seen.

When James poured some spirit energy into the sword, he felt the sword react and burst into flames. After some playing, he discovered that it would react to any spirit energy. If he used fire, the flame would be more focused and hotter. If he used water, the sword created a stream of superheated steam.

Earth energy made the sword heavier and more sturdy while the flame was only dim but still plenty hot enough. Wind energy made it lighter, increased the sharpness of the blade and seemed to fuel the fire making it more wild. The Lightning energy created fire and lightning arcs that ran all along the metal, and Plasma energy started causing the sword to melt.

He quickly put an end to that though. Clearly, the heat resistance from the free energy of those beetles shells wasn’t quite able to match the heat of the sun.

He then played with the use of multiple energies at a time and created a whirlwind of steam and fire or a flaming sword that turned the earth to magma. Not only did he find it amplifying the effects of his spirit energy but even when controlling it to launch a wind blade or shoot lightning, it gave him greater precision and power.

Now that he was done playing with spirit energy he instead focused his scrying field onto it. He immediately sensed that strange energy again, and after some introspection and observation, he determined that was a spirit.

When he discussed the experience with Song, the old man nodded sagely. “Your sword does have its own spirit now. The spirit best reflects the thoughts you had when you created it. You don’t need to worry, it hasn’t permanently damaged your True Spirit, and it’s not a part of you anymore, but rather it’s become its own spirit now.

“It’s still young and really only assists the use of the weapon but the more the sword is used, the more the spirit will grow. Eventually, in perhaps a few tens of thousands of years it will gain sentience, but until then it is more like an animal that will grow and learn from its users. It mostly makes the weapon more responsive and allows it to aid in the manipulation of energy, but later it can affect the very nature of the weapon.”

James mind was shocked into a momentary daze. ‘Holy shit! A living sword! That’s out of this world.’

Song took back the sword then gave it a brief look over, tested it a few times and then had a look at it through the San’s Eye. He then did the same thing with Skay’s sword when he finally finished his baptism. This was the moment Song reached suicidal.

He was already depressed that the duo had managed to complete everything they had in a matter of three weeks. Normally, disciples of the Hall spent months or even years on their first spirit artefact, and they rarely came out half as good as these two swords.

Not to mention that the duo even managed to create a poor quality spirit. It’s called poor quality only because it was still young and weak and its aptitude for learning was slow. The name undermines the achievement though. The fact they imparted a spirit onto the sword at all was miraculous.

When he held it, he could feel the responsiveness of the spirit and had to admit that he probably couldn’t have created a stronger spirit when he was at True Spirit Realm without endangering his cultivation.

Seeing that the swords passed, the duo then spent the last week touching on other subjects that Song could teach them, from how certain free energies interacted and other methods and secrets to the art of forging. By the end of the final week, he’d been sucked dry of almost everything but his own personal secrets in the art of forging.

-The Forge-

James and Skay then returned to the Lab and had a forging area constructed. They filled it with everything they could think of. The very next thing they did was post a job request on the job board. It advertised the need for material refiners. Detailed the requirements and the general process of the job and had a fat reward.

They then set up a factory in town which used refined spirit energy from arrays, which James and Skay now both understood was actually Free energy and was actually closer to natural energy than it was to a cultivators spirit energy.

These array’s then pumped specific energies into specific materials, and a bunch of true spirit realms then had to go through the process of trying to purify it. Generally, everything that came out of this factory had an energy purity of 70 or 80%. It then got smelted by Jasmine and came out with material purities in the high 90s. This meant the majority of their stocks had 90% or better material purity and 70-80% energy purity.

Just by doing this, the general integrity and spirit reaction of all of their artefacts doubled.

This wasn’t the only thing that suddenly changed. James and Skay managed to get some San’s Eye crystals imported and then realised that almost everything they’d been getting shipped by account holders had been of shit quality. Not regarding material quality obviously but in terms of spirit quality.

James then came to realise that most bulk sale markets didn’t advertise spirit quality because hardly anyone was a real forge master and mostly used this stuff to try and mass produce goods similar to what the Brotherhood had been doing.

The whole storehouse then got revamped and split into 4 major sections. One was incoming goods which hadn’t been processed at all. One was processed goods, where everything was ordered by material type, name and then spirit quality. The third storehouse was processed goods going on sale, and the final storehouse was miscellaneous that they didn’t know what they were going to do with yet.

After about a week, James’ Spirit Pressure had been restored and actually increased by a few hundred Newtons. More importantly than that, he found that his control had increased dramatically. He could now reduce the area of Pressure by nearly half of its original area.

This meant that he could almost double the Pressure he created in half the area of before. That meant that anywhere within 20 metres of his body he could create a Pressure of nearly 240kg per metre in a radius of 10 metres.

Not only that, but he could somewhat slightly change the shape of his Spirit Field. When he then tested his Scrying field, he discovered no such dramatic changes had carried over. Only some improvement from his constantly surveilling his artefact during creation was noticeable. Clearly, the two things were separate powers of his True Spirit.

With the thought of getting more control over his Spirit Pressure and one day creating a body armour from it, he once more focused his attentions on forging. With the assistance of modern technology, he could now create a sword with perfect dimensions.

The problem still lay in the fact that fusion and conditioning often changed the saturation of free energy in the material. It would create areas of higher free energy levels and inversely create areas with less. This was the most pressing issue he faced, and it dramatically affected the performance of the finished product.

The array parts were easy. He didn’t even have to do those, because Jasmine could do them with an accuracy down to micro-millimetres. In the same notion, the shaping was easy because that too could be done by Jasmine.

The baptism was still incredibly difficult and time-consuming but the more he practised doing it, the easier it became.

The level of concentration and effort required seemed to be directly linked to the type, quality and quantity of free energy an artefact possessed upon completion. By the same token, the more difficult it was to baptise, the greater the gains James got from it.

After a month of being locked away in the forge, James came out feeling great. Not only had his control of his Spirit Pressure doubled in accuracy and malleability of the field, but all the time spent using his Scrying to investigate materials for flaws had increased its control and range as well.

He could now sense up to 100 metres away, and his vision was perfect quality for almost 60 metres of that. Not only that but his Spirit Pressure could expand to 12 metres and had a total Pressure of nearly 40,000 newtons.

His control had also decreased the accuracy of his field to only 4 metres radius, and at his maximum level of focus, he could produce nearly 40m/s2in that zone, which he found rather strange because mathematically speaking he should have been capable of producing damn near 250m/s2.

He could now also maintain his full undivided focus for nearly 10 minutes, which was a plus side. That meant that when he focused on the smallest area he could, he could stop nearly 1 tonne moving at 40m/s instantly. That was enough to crush a mortal to death and at least severely injure a barrier realm.

This could injure a True Spirit Realm practitioner, but their Spirit Pressure would automatically protect them from the full effects. That then revealed the biggest problem, which was that it would almost instantly reduce his Spirit Pressure to 0 and he’d suffer from energy depletion.

The safest limit for him was to always have about 5,000 newtons. After that, depletion effects started to kick in, and it would limit his ability to perform. When conditioning he would normally maintain about 5m/s2 of acceleration to his 50m2 area. If he also controlled his focus to only affect the impurities, then he could maintain about 10 minutes of that before reaching depletion stage.

The more impurities he Pressured out, the more he increased his acceleration Pressure. By the time he did his last few conditioning sessions on a material, he would be using his full acceleration on the out of place free energy and only for brief moments of about 10 or 20 seconds.

Luckily, Spirit Pressure seemed to be tenacious. The more often it was used, the faster it regenerated. By the end of his month secluded in the forge, he could fully replenish his spirit Pressure from nothing in a matter of hours instead of days.