With all responsibility to the guild well and truly shirked, James now had the free time to ... well if being honest, not much changed for the first few weeks. For starters, James had long since shirked his responsibility to the city. He had given all of those duties to other people, namely Jessy and Jasmine.

It also didn’t help that he was still affected by Skay’s death. The first few weeks were spent flipping between brainstorming for his future flying Headquarters and meditating alone. By meditating alone, it would be more accurate to say he was shutting himself away and moping.

This quickly changed when every time he locked himself in meditation, Jasmine would try and introduce him to a new aspect of her connection to technology. At first, she shared memories with him. Which more or less was just a huge dump of data.

The worst part of it all was that he was too curious to not try it. It started out as her sharing the system that her mind used to process all the information from the energy particles trapped in their spirit realm. Although Jasmine claimed it was only a small amount of information, James felt his head swelling when he consciously accepted the memory sharing.

He very quickly discovered, that although he could understand it all, he couldn’t execute it to even a thousandth of the degree that Jasmine could. He was severely limited by his fleshy human brain. Which Jasmine clearly didn’t have.

James, being the stubborn fool he was, refused to let that stop him. This then resulted in him getting endless nosebleeds and going into states of confusion. He didn’t give up, but he started moping again. This led to Jasmine giving him another huge data dump of everything she had recorded about array patterns.

It turned out, that was even worse. Sharing memories was similar to receiving an implant. He could get all the data and stuff it into his head. The problem lied in properly understanding and memorising it all. Otherwise, it would just be forgotten again, and like mist in the wind, disappear.

From there, Jasmine would always entice James with something else when he fell back into moping, and every time he would fall for it. After about 6 weeks, he was already simultaneously attempting to control drones through the network, memorise all the array formulas they he had in his head and trying to remember all the different types of herbs and plants Skay had stored away in Jasmine’s databanks.

Finally, he got the message. The last time James had ever opened himself up to feeling anything for another person, let alone comradery and friendship, he lost everything. This created a strange reaction to his fear of being alone.

He didn’t hate being alone, but rather, hated the idea of being alone forever. However, he could never open up enough to create anything more than a superficial relationship with anyone.

This wasn’t the case with Skay. Whether he accepted it or not, he’d come to rely a great deal on Skay over the past few months. He opened up quite a bit while he was here, and very quickly, that ended in disaster. Perhaps Jasmine, who spent her entire life closed off to everyone and only discovered what an emotion really felt like when Skay sacrificed his soul to give her life, understood somewhat James’ mental condition.

Although their two situations were vastly different in many ways, it could be rationalised that they were similar in some. James, who was closing himself off again, had failed to realise just how much Jasmine must be hurting, especially having the first emotion she ever felt be grief and sadness.

He only realised it at the end of these few weeks, when even Jasmine had stopped her efforts as much to distract him, and grown somewhat despondent herself. Not only Jasmine, but James’ poor mood had been affecting everyone. Exsue most of all, was upset at James being upset, and had many times stomped her foot while cursing that she hadn’t dropped a lightning bolt on Skay back when they first came through the Gate Way.

Seeing this rapidly declining mindset of his core members, James called an emergency council.

-James Office-

Seated at their round table, seven people and a spirit body, sat drinking tea. Now that Skay was gone, the core of the guild had lost a member. Harvy, who had basically always been considered a part of the core membership, filled the seventh spot again, as a placeholder until they found a new greed.

Jasmine floated in place, apparently drinking spirit tea, because her teacup was as ghostly and ethereal as her body.

Eventually, James broke the silence. “We’re going on a road trip.”

Everyone shared strange expressions, and James spoke again before the chance to question him came. “I don’t care what you’re all doing. Or what you’ve been doing the past few weeks. Apart from the lab, none of you should have any duties to fulfil now. That said, it’s time for us to leave the city and start gathering experience.”

Goliath nodded his head sternly. Of everyone here, he was probably the least affected by Skay’s death. He’d rarely interacted with him except for testing weapons and equipment. So he didn’t really develop any kind of bond with the man and simply thought him some kind of Mad Old Wizard.

He was also the one who wanted to go out into the world and test himself the most. There was also another reason which he never mentioned to anyone, but James was fairly certain there was someone he wanted to search for.

Exsue, who spent millions of years trapped in the monolith, also wanted to get out and see the world again. She also believed that it would help James’ mood if they got out of Tech City for a while.

The least enthusiastic was Kelly, who hated the idea of leaving the lab where she didn’t actually have to worry about anything and could sleep as much as she wanted and play with whatever she wanted. With the thought of having to go and actually do something, she decided to voice her objection.

“I can’t go! I have too much to do! You’re ... um ... ship thingy! I’ve still got loads of work to do on that, and it would waste my time if I had to...”

“Denied.” James flatly refused.

Amusingly, the next least enthusiastic was Fatty, who had many theories on what would happen if they left the city for an extended period of time. So far, apart from the endless forest, they’d never left Tech City for more than a day at most.

“I can’t go! I know that the overlords are out there watching, just waiting for a chance to pounce and take us away. If I have to go outside the city for more than a day, they’ll surely...”

“Denied.” James once again flatly refused.

Seeing no further objections, James smiled like the devil. “Don’t worry Fatty. With us around they’ll probably be less likely to succeed, but if you stay here ... well, let’s just say that a lot of spies from other nations have been slipping into the city lately. I’ve told everyone that you’re our new lead scientist and without the rest of us here, you’ll most likely have disappeared before we even get to our destination. By the time we get back, you may be buried in a dark torture dungeon on the other side of the continent.

“And you Kelly. Well, you don’t even have to do anything on this trip. You can just idle about and do whatever you like. If you stay here though, I’ll give you very specific instructions for what I expect you to have finished by my return. If even one thing isn’t complete, then I’ll remind you of that time when we were studying for our apprenticeships, and I discovered what a Mega was.”

Hearing this declaration, both Kelly and Fatty gave a shiver like they’d just stepped in a cold puddle, then gulped in unison and nodded obediently. James’ customary sinister smile spread from ear to ear.

Finally, the ever curious about what James was up to Exsue, asked the question on everyone’s minds. “So, where are we going JayJay?”

“To the capital for starters. I have something to collect from the Dragon Vault. While in the city, you guys can just go about and sightsee or whatever. I don’t really care. Then, we’ll go and do some visiting. I want to explore the capital for a day or two before we leave.

“Our next adventure will be a return to the Black Lands. We’re going to be harvesting some more space stones. After that, we’re going to Nahtiro. Emily told me there’s an alchemist there that can artificially create Spirit Jade. Unfortunately, he only takes on two apprentices every four years, that timeline will be 3 weeks from now, and most likely, it’s going to be a bloodbath ... in a metaphorical sense.

“From what Emily’s told me, this person spends a month testing the alchemy potential of his would be apprentices. The best two candidates will be apprenticed to him. This will be the only chance we have to get the formula. Well, unless we just storm the place.

“Which I doubt will be easy, seeing as he most likely keeps something so valuable with him and we have no way to take down a Tower Realm cultivator without excessive force, and most likely destroying the formula. Meanwhile, you lot, along with the Ghost team, will be infiltrating the three great nations. Your job will be to start a war.

“That’s my plans. By the time we’ve done all this, we’ll only have a short while until the War of the Worlds, and all of us will be participating. We can’t let these fellows have it easy. We all will be entering the competition as members of the Yori Empire. Any questions?”

For once, the first reasonable question was voiced by Fatty. “If we’re pushing the three nations to go to war with each other, won’t they all hold out until the tournament is over? If Yori wins, then won’t they all decide to focus those war preparations on Yori?”

James devilish smile returned, and he hunched over as a low rumbling chuckle echoed from his chest, and he pawed his hands together in a very maniacal and evil manner. “Why does any country go to war Fatty? Heh heh heh haha haHAHAHA! You’ll know when the time comes. HAHAHA!”

As everyone, except Exsue who seemed to be having a blushing moment like she’d just fallen in love, made disgusted faces like they’d met some creepy pervert, James laughed most heartily and most evilly. He was still occasionally chuckling and rubbing his hands together in that creepy manner as he marched into his room leaving everyone to just sit in the office sharing worried glances.

Even Jasmine, who could be said to be an occupant of James’ own mind, wasn’t sure what to make of this behaviour. When she returned to his spirit realm and asked Goldy, he smugly patted his chest while gallantly staring off into the distance. “No need to worry Jasmine, sometimes, a man just needs to vent his frustrations on the world.”

A Few days later, a new, slightly larger, modified version of the Velocity took off from Tech City. This Velocity Gunship was outfitted with rooms for the core members to live on the ship. All the space that it normally had in the back had been segregated and reinforced with 9 newly installed refurbished rooms.

Now that Jasmine was a spirit, and mostly because she was trapped in James’ spirit realm where he could keep an eye on her, he’d given her the go-ahead to begin automating the weapons on the gunship. Much to the displeasure of the gun crew that normally operated the guns that rotated around the outsides of the ship.

Luckily for them, they were given paid leave in Tech City to live it up like kings until the core members returned. At which point, they would be hired to man much bigger and far more frightening guns on the Mobile Base.

Jasmine herself admitted that even though quantum entangled spirit particles, hereby referred to solely as Q-energy, transferred information instantly, it seemed to be subject to the surrounding primal/free energy saturation and her own cultivation.

This meant that if they ever passed through an area very rich in primal energy, she’d get fuzzy broken coms, which would affect the operation of the ship. That was why she insisted that the ship be properly crewed. Which from James’ understanding, was the equivalent of nearly 100 members.

Unless Jasmine/James were personally on board the ship, preventing interference, then the ship would be captained by Harvy, and crewed by members of the Guild.

That, however, was far off in the future. This temporary moving base allowed for all the basic amenities. Meditation chambers with adjustable energy and pressure saturation. Well-furnished bedrooms. War-Room, which coincidentally had the round table dragged in here by Harvy. And a few other basic living commodities they’d grown accustomed to.

As the ship flew out of the city, James stood in the cockpit as Jasmine tried to teach him how to control the guns. Every now and then as they flew along, some poor bastard’s barn would be blown to smithereens or some poor, defenceless, usually harmless creature, grazing in the fields and plains, would suddenly disappear into a flaming crater.

It wasn’t uncommon for a flock of birds to get a sudden fright when the green blur that was the Velocity shot past at supersonic speed and sucked half their flock through the Jet Turbines. It seemed to add at least 10 minutes to their short journey as Exsue purposely veered off course every now and then.

James couldn’t get mad at her, after all, he’d just been ‘accidentally’ obliterating people’s farm animals. Besides, this trip was to let everyone unwind for a bit and relax. If Exsue was relaxed by the sudden murderous suction of the Velocity Engines decimating a flock of cute little birds, who was he to tell her otherwise.

Besides, he got a few chuckles out of it himself.

-Yansho City-

As they flew into the air space near Yansho City, they dropped their speed down to a mellow cruise. Three things stuck out as James surveyed the city ahead of them. The first thing was the flying creatures. There were hundreds of them everywhere, and all of them had someone on their back who was holding a set of reigns.

This wasn’t that surprising, because a great many visitors to Tech City fly in on birds. They then very quickly discover that Tech City has a clear air zone policy. In other words, only Brotherhood members and the security forces are allowed to fly within the city limits.

The second thing James noticed was the number of buildings that had been built and were still being built that looked identical to those in Tech City. He remembered a while back that Jasmine had been selling design plans for the high rises. They even went one step further and agreed to sell the array patterns that stabilised the buildings.

Amusingly, even with the array patterns, not many people knew how to decipher them. They only knew where the pattern had to go on the building. To make it worse, there was hardly anyone on the continent who had the same level of catalyst research as the Brotherhood, so these arrays made by others were weaker.

They also didn’t have the reactor cubes to power everything, so they instead had to set up a system where people would offload energy into the building. Surprisingly, the use of properly refined spirit energy boosted the efficiency of the arrays, but unfortunately, having so many different types of energy poured into it all day caused the array to weaken and decay faster.

The third thing that caught James’ eye was the sheer volume this city took up. From a glance at the edge of the city, it spanned onwards to the horizon. Which is saying a god damn lot, seeing as the horizon was a significantly longer distance away than earth’s horizon would be.

At the low altitude they were flying, he could just see the other side of the city. Which meant the city had to be more than 30 kilometres in radius. After a few more internal calculations, he guessed that the city had to have at least a million residents to be safely protected by the monolith.

As they slowly flew into the city, a trio of men flying on the backs of Huge Black Hawk beasts flew up alongside the Velocity while yelling something. Exsue made a motion with her fingers, and the voice of the oldest man with white hair and bushy grey eyebrows rang across the bridge.

“Halt! Halt! You are flying an unregistered artefact! Land now and prepare to be inspected, by order of the Emperor’s Dragon Guard!”

Exsue started making a motion to slightly shift the Velocity over so the man was directly lined up with the Jet Turbine. Seeing Exsue preparing to test the structural integrity of the engines with a bird the size of a small car, James clapped her on the back of the head.

“Take us down Exsue. No need to start our first day in the capital by making enemies with the local enforcers. I’m sure Artimus has told them to expect us at some point.”

Exsue made a cute pout and then shook her arms a bit. In a matter of minutes, the Velocity curved around in the sky and landed on top of some slum houses on the outskirts of the city, crushing them into debris. James didn’t hear any screaming as he walked down the lowered ramp, so thanked his lucky stars Exsue hadn’t just killed someone.

He couldn’t help but let out a long sigh.

Just as he reached the bottom of the ramp, the three Black Hawks landed in the centre of the dirty slum streets. The riders dismounted and approached warily. The lead guard just had the unpleasant experience of almost being sucked into the jet engine, and his displeasure was painted across his aged face.

Following beside him were two younger guardsmen. One looked stern and disciplined, the other young and fresh faced. James could tell the new recruit was the arrogant type and crossed his fingers hoping the first action he took in the Emperor’s city wasn’t killing a City Guard.

As the three approached, the other core members joined James at the base of the ramp. Seeing 7 people standing at the base of an unknown flying artefact giving off waves of True Spirit Realm power, the surrounding residents of this slum decided to back far away and observe from a distance.

The Guard leader stepped up to only a few metres away from James and looked over his crew one by one. He then looked back to James and grunted. “Passports!”

James shared a look with his compatriots. He then glanced suspiciously at the Guard and then at the surroundings. Finally, with a frown, he focused back on the lead Guard. “Passports? Who the fuck has a passport in this day and age? Do you walk around these slums asking residents of the dodgy wooden houses for their passports?”

The Guard was taken aback momentarily. He then frowned slightly and released his Palace Realm pressure. To his great surprise, there was no reaction at all from the 7 people standing on the ramp. Kelly even went so far as to yawn, then with complete disregard turned around and walked back into the ship.

Exsue then grabbed James’ arm and bit his shoulder. “Don’t take too long Jay Jay! I want to visit the Nexus!”

She then disappeared along the corridor of the ship this ramp extended from. Goliath, in the hope of getting to battle, stuck around and just grunted like a savage. Harvy, being captain of this ship, also chose to stick around.

Fatty, seeing that there was already enough people for an even battle, chose to withdraw to his room and finish eating ... whatever it was that he could eat.

Seeing the complete disregard shown for him, and most especially because it was shown right after he’d used his spirit pressure, the guard leader’s face fell into a scowl. Before he even had the chance to make a move, a 3D hologram was projected off the ship between the two parties.

After a moment, the hologram changed from a fuzzy static into the shape and form of Rex. Seeing Rex suddenly appear out of no-where, the trio of Guards stepped back a moment. However, they didn’t drop into a kneeling bow, because they didn’t trust some strange magic created by the flying artefact.

Once the hologram solidified somewhat, Rex turned to James with a big grin. “Haha! James you scoundrel! I haven’t spoken to you since I gave you the location of that tower realm lightning beast. Did you have any luck in your attempts to capture it?”

James smiled wryly. “I’m afraid not Rex. The beast we found wasn’t even close to tower realm.”

Rex frowned slightly and scratched the blonde goatee that was now growing on his chin. “Is that so? I’m sorry James. I’ll try and find another one. I had it on good authority that beast was above the palace realm. Tell you what. I’ll start asking around and see if we can find another one.”

James smiled at this reply. Rex was clearly either a very good liar, or he truly didn’t know. Either way, James wasn’t too worried about it. If Rex had been planning to kill him, he’d most likely have made more than one move.

“It’s fine Rex. I don’t know what realm that beast was in, but it was well beyond tower realm and served my purposes perfectly. That’s not why I called you up though. I’ve got a few Guard’s here that are seeking passports? Are passports even a thing?”

The hologram of Rex turned around and eyed the three Guards. Seeing the leader, Rex smiled. “Oh? Hang Sou? You trying to rough up the rich looking visitors again? I’ll vouch for these fellows. Give them a flight pass and let them into the city.”

Seeing the hologram speaking to them directly, Hang Sou, the leader of the guards, frowned slightly. He then smiled viscously. “I’m afraid that I can’t confirm your identity sir. If you are the young Prince, please forgive me, but simply seeing some apparition created by a strangers artefact isn’t evidence enough.”

He then reached to his hip and drew his sword while speaking to the other two Guards. “Captcha these scum. They dare impersonate the Crown Prince! If they resist, kill them!”

With that said, he launched through the projection of Rex while swinging his sword, fuelled with water spirit energy, directly towards James.

Rex and James both gave an audible sigh at the same moment. James suddenly blurred and reappeared behind the charging Hang Sou. Rex’s image turned back to see this and sighed again. “I’m sorry James. I still haven’t been able to clean house of those from my brother’s camp. Unfortunately, you may have to kill these fellows. I’ll take responsibility.”

Hearing that directly from Rex, James’ face warped into a twisted smile. Hang Sou spun around and darted back towards James while flipping the top off his canteen. Meanwhile, Goliath had already engaged the arrogant looking fellow and Harvy had led the disciplined bloke away a little.

As James blurred again and danced around Hang Sou, he spoke with Rex. “It’s fine Rex. We’ll be visiting for a few day’s while I stop in at the dragon vault. We should catch up sometime when I’m done.”

With that, Jasmine closed the connection and the projection of Rex faded away. James then turned his full focus onto Hang Sou. He’d never actually personally fought another Palace Realm cultivator. Normally, he just allowed them to walk into a slug from an arc cannon. He’d killed palace realm spirit beasts, but those creatures were dull and stupid.

Before now, James was reticent to directly battle a Palace Realm cultivator. But after the strange deviation when he merged spirit realms with Jasmine, he felt he had the qualifications to keep this man at bay if not directly defeat him.

With that thought in mind, he jumped back a few paces and readied himself by reaching to his back and extracting the now ever present scimitar that had been wielded by Latsoe. The moment it left the sheath it had sat in, a strange vibration spread in the surrounding spirit energy.

Even other cultivators could feel the sudden strange change in pressure. James swung the scimitar around a few times experimentally, then dropped into a combat stance and beckoned for Hang Sou to attack.

Seeing a True Spirit Realm pup goading him into battle, Hang Sou could hardly contain his humiliation and rage. He flicked his long thin sword around a few times, and then suddenly launched towards James. James sped up the rotation of his hands of time breathing technique and released wind lightning and fire energies into his body simultaneously.

With the constant practice in his breathing technique, and the strange deviation created by Jasmine’s introduction to his spirit realm, James had reached the stage that he could maintain 3 elements permanently and up to 5 energies for about half an hour. 4 energies was about 1 hour.

In this situation though, he planned to test himself. As such, he limited his release of energy. The lightning empowered his mind and sped up his perception and thought processes. The wind reduced his weight and quickened reaction speeds. The fire energy gave him explosive power and heat resistance.

In addition, Wind and Fire energy was the basis of the Scimitar he now held. The moment Hang Sou launched forwards to strike with his sword, James filled the scimitar with fire and wind. As Hang Sou swung his sword down towards James’ neck, James flicked the scimitar around and created a whirlwind of fire reaching a dozen metres into the air and blocking off any view of him within.

The moment Hang Sou’s blade touched the edge of the flame whirlwind, James scimitar flicked out from within and deflected it. In the same moment his blade was deflected, Hang Sou had launched a series of water bullets from his canteen.

A sudden puff of steam spread out from the flaming tornado and covered everything. Visibility dropped to almost nothing and the flame tornado was interrupted and dissipated. When Hang Sou swung his blade again at the location James had been, it passed through nothing but air.

Then Hang Sou saw James standing a few feet back, surrounded by the mist and steam, smiling like the devil. The whole reason Hang Sou had used this technique was because he could use his spirit energy to detect the interaction between the water particles in the air and any objects moving through it.

To his great displeasure, James remained invisible within the mist. If anything, the mist seemed to be circling around and hiding him away from sight. The only way something like this was possible was if James also had water element.

Before he had a chance to wrap his mind around that notion, he felt the strong sense of death and a powerful killing intent descend from behind him. He spun with his sword in a defensive posture, just in time to deflect the lightning fast strike of James’ scimitar.

With that brief moment of contact, a wave of flames poured out from the scimitar. Hang Sou was forced to use more water from his canteen. As he poured another rain of water bullets into the flame wave, he forced as much water spirit energy through his meridians and into the canteen as he possibly could.

Slowly, more water seemed to materialise out of nothing and fill the canteen again. Although this seemed useful, the materialisation of spirit energy was incredibly exhaustive on people that didn’t have an artefact that assisted the process and even more so if they didn’t understand how to use their Spirit Pressure to enforce their will on the universe around them.

In this case, Hang Sou’s canteen was just normal. Although he could sense the sudden fluctuation of killing intent that came from James when he was about to strike, that came from years of subconscious training and being alert. It wasn’t a result of actually understanding anything about Spirit Pressure or Intent.

James on the other hand, had both an artefact that assisted his materialisation of fire from his energy, and also had a rudimentary understanding of Spirit Pressure. Unfortunately, this was the first time he’d done battle with anyone that had such a honed sense for killing intent, and was at a loss as to what exactly was going on.

Nonetheless, with the sudden increase of steam and mist in the air, James once again disappeared in a swirling cloud. Using his levitating steps, which was basically making himself light as a feather to eliminate noise, James circled around again.

Using his Scrying, he saw everything Hang Sou did within the mists. At the same time, he released a steady, controlled spirit pressure into his immediate surroundings that froze Hang Sou’s energy particles and prevented him from using them to detect James’ movements.

After circling around for a while, James once again attacked. Once more, a split second before the strike had even left the dense mists into Hang Sou’s line of sight, Hang Sou was reacting. James began to realise there was something drastically wrong with this scenario, but no matter how much he Scryed Hang Sou, he couldn’t find any clues as to how he was detecting him.

James then ramped up his speed to maximum, and like a ghost in the night flittered through the fog. His attacks then began to increase. They rose rapidly from one or two every few seconds to one or two every second and then got even faster at a continuous onslaught from every direction.

If nothing else, he was rapidly wearing out Hang Sou’s spirit energy by making him constantly refill his canteen.

James’ attacks then lulled slightly and went through ups and downs, sometimes attacking a hundred times in a minute or other times attacking only once or twice. Finally, James discovered something odd when he, like an idiot, tripped on a rock in the middle of his attack.

The first strike to actually hit Hang Sou wasn’t even deliberate. It was entirely accidental because James had tripped slightly and fallen forwards.

When James noticed this, he backed away from Hang Sou and started probing him with long distance attacks. He flicked the scimitar about and launched an endless serious of wind blades through the mist. Once he began doing this, he found that the further he was when he launched the attack, the more unlikely Hang Sou was to intercept it fully.

By the time he’d done some testing, Hang Sou was covered in scratches and cuts. He tried to wave a hand and force all the water in the air to re-condense or move away, only to have a wave of fire come from out of nowhere and evaporate it all into a cloud of steam again. It was then trapped here by James’ spirit pressure and just mulled about reducing Hang Sou’s sight.

Finally, James had an idea and backed a good 100 metres away from Hang Sou. Then, with all his might, he infused nearly a quarter of his energy reserves into the scimitar. Using his newly discovered magnetism, he then lined it up, and launched it like a bullet into the mist.

Moments later, a loud scream was heard from the mist and James smiled like a demon. With a wave of the hand, the mist cleared and revealed Hang Sou impaled through the back by the scimitar. Also, his body was covered in strange burns and had smoke rising from him everywhere.

James retrieved his Scimitar and returned to the ship to find Kelly excitedly encouraging the Black Hawks to board it. He smiled wryly and moved inside. Moments later, Goliath walked in, covered from head to toe in blood and carrying the very expensive looking sword the arrogant man had been wearing on his waist. He also carried a flight pass which he gave to James.

Harvy naturally didn’t take a souvenir and simply boarded while wiping the blood from his scythe.

Once again, the group set off toward the inner city.

-Yansho Inner City-

Taking a page from Tech City’s book, the inner city of Yansho now had towering skyscrapers everywhere. Unfortunately, they hadn’t unlocked the technology of controlled spirit energy reactors similar to Tech City, so the height they built to was somewhat more conservative.

In the centre of the city was a tall hill that was entirely occupied by the royal palace. At the base of the hill was an old temple nearly 100 metres in height and very much similar to designs of a Mayan temple. Once they entered the airspace of the palace, hundreds of guards flew up to surround them on Black Hawks.

Some of them had even stranger looking mounts. It appeared a few were even flying something similar to wyverns. These Guards, which were presumably Captains or Generals, appeared to be having some difficulty controlling their mounts the moment they got more than a few hundred metres from the Velocity.

The wyverns refused to approach closer than that and roared violently at any effort by their rider to encourage them closer. In the Gunship, Exsue was laughing madly while making strange, very quiet roaring sounds now and then.

James immediately noticed a connection and once again slapped the back of Exsue’s head. “Play nice Exsue. You can have fun with the flying lizards later.”

Exsue complied with a sour pout and brought the ship into land at the base of the mountain in a big courtyard next to a huge golden gate.

James strolled out from the ship and met the 4 wyvern riding Guards. Each one was aged and dressed in golden and purple armour. Each one looked ancient and gave off the sensation of a tower realm expert, and their armour and weapons were clearly even more ancient. James restrained his curiosity to Scry these people, remembering the Emperors warnings from the last time around.

He gave a simple salute to the men, to which they showed no reaction whatsoever. James was starting to wonder just what was going on when Rex came out from the golden gate with a large retinue of nobles and influential individuals.

He moved up and grabbed James by the shoulders while smiling broadly. “I hope you didn’t have any further troubles on your journey here. After your call, I sent out the message to avoid intercepting you until you arrived here. I hope you don’t mind, but we can’t let you fly on the mountain. It’s bound to create trouble for the both of us if you act so accustomed.”

James smiled after hearing this. He understood the undertones of the message. ‘We’re being watched and if we let you do whatever you like, people are going to start getting ideas.’ After a brief handshake and introductions, James and his fellow members followed Rex onto the palace grounds while being escorted by a meandering bunch of royals trying to introduce themselves.

Following behind them was the retinue of Guards that stopped them in flight. As they walked away from the ship, James sent a mental command and the hatchway of the ship closed. Then a series of lights began to circle around the ship like search lights, and the turrets circled in the opposite direction.

Once they’d reached about half way up the hill and while Rex was pointing out palaces and mansions that dotted the roads, a loud siren wailed from the base of the hill. Everyone turned back to see red lights and turret cannons all focused on a group of people trying to approach the ship.

As the siren wailed, Jasmine’s voice came over the speaker of the ship. “Please stand back. Unauthorised access to this ship will be met with the death penalty. Please stand back. Unauthori...”

James smiled wryly as he watched that suspicious group of blokes slowly back away from the ship. Even from this distance, James could see them dragging bags of notebooks and strange artefacts. They clearly had intentions of trying to investigate the Velocity while its occupants were busy.

Since Jasmine shared James’ spirit realm, and he could instantly talk to her in there, she opted to have the Guild Seal, or in other words, herself, left in the ship. This allowed her to babysit the ship until they returned.

Rex just chuckled awkwardly as he glanced over at James. “Sorry about that James. Can’t blame a guy for being curious.”

The fact that Rex readily admitted to this being his ploy only surprised James for a moment. He then chuckled and continued on up the mountain. “It’s fine Rex. After all, I would have probably done the same thing. By the way, where is this Dragon Vault anyway?”

Rex sighed a tense breath and followed along. “It’s in the Palace actually. It’s not well known, but the Dragon Vault is actually on the other side of a Gateway. No one knows what world the gateway leads to because it comes out deep underground. Every time someone has tried to dig to the surface of the world they leave and never return.”

James cupped his chin in thought. “Perhaps, it’s a universe where Earth covers the vast emptiness of space and what should be planets are instead empty hollow spaces. I would be interested in seeing such a wondrous thing.”

Rex seemed momentarily shocked by the concept. He then glanced over at James. “James, you’re not some astronomy cultivator are you?”

“Astronomy cultivator?”

Rex looked at the sky for a moment as if deciding whether or not to mention it. He then glanced over at James again and started to explain as he continued up the hill. “It’s a type of cultivation deviation. It doesn’t rely on the natural elements of the world and instead draws its energy from the countless stars of the night sky and the endless void of space. As a deviation though, it’s highly frowned upon.”

James was shocked for a moment. “What do you mean frowned upon?”

“Well, on the continent of Atsunari, there are legends that speak of an ancient council of wise cultivators that once worked in tandem with the Ancient One. The Ancient One was the most powerful cultivator Ascension Star has ever seen, and the stories say that he was a deviator.

“He cultivated a different path from the majority of everyone else. When he ascended into the next realm, the powers that were left behind outlawed deviators across the planet. Because the Ancient One was so powerful, they were forced to acquiesce their assistance to him. After he had left though, they made a system to prevent it from ever happening again.

“Of course, they don’t particularly care about a weak little nation like ours. But if you are a deviator and you ever rose to the higher echelons of the world, they would seek you out and destroy you to avoid ever losing their positions as the most powerful again.”

James stopped in his tracks and stared off into the Sky. The Wizard, The Monk. He felt that these two great powers were definitely from this council of wise men. He was certain though that ... he had long since deviated from the norm. Hell, he was certain that Goldy was a deviation and the wizard actually met him.

Finally, his feet moved on as he smiled. “You know, I think those stories may be just that. Stories.”

Rex gave him another curious glance, then continued pointing at buildings and telling James about them.

-Dragonheart Palace - Throne Room-

James and his companions strode into the throne room of the empire and were greeted by a crowd of reputable and powerful people. Politicians, businessmen, royals. People from all sorts of factions and powers in the empire were there.

James found the whole thing incredibly suspicious. For starters, what the hell were all these people doing here? James only came for the Dragon Vault, but all these strangers appeared to have come along for some other reason.

As they were announced to the hall and stood in front of the emperor, the palace became quite as if everyone was expecting something. James and his companions all simply stood there looking at the flashy furnishings of the palace, they then started exploring while everyone watched on, horrified at their total lack of decorum.

Fatty was already off to one side eating something, Harvy was trying to touch flowers only to see them immediately wither and die. Exsue was chasing the royal cat around the palace hall, and Kelly was inspecting the weapon of one of the generals.

Jessy seemed to be flirting with a soldier, who despite his best efforts couldn’t stop himself being drawn in. Goliath had simply sat on the grand red carpet and begun cultivating, and James was still looking around accessing the situation.

Seeing every looking at them like they were barbarians, James made a confused face then glanced around. He then noticed the smell, looked down and noticed the smudge of some animals shit on his boot. He then made a big production out of wiping it into the carpet.

It wasn’t just on the carpet, he seemed to be making an effort to grind it in their real deep like. Once he was happy with his handy work, he produced a small canteen and used water energy to thoroughly wash his shoe before stepping back onto a clean part of the red carpet.

He then gave a rather sloppy bow to the Emperor, who sat on his throne staring down at this sideshow of characters with disdain. Seeing this display of total disrespect, the royal soldiers prepared to step forward and act.

The Emperor simply waved his hand and they froze in place. Or at least most of them did. One of the guards stomped forward and raised his sword. “You vile scum! How dare you tarnish the empires reputation with your feral...”

Before he finished his statement, and when he was only a few feet away from James, a sudden burst of intense spirit pressure fell on the hall. It was mostly focused directly around James and was powerful enough to drop this palace realm practitioner to his knees. Within a metre of James was almost 40 m/s2 of acceleration being applied to every single particle.

That’s about 4 times normal gravity, and enough to make an 80-kilo man suddenly weigh 320 kilos. Even a tower realm cultivator would have trouble resisting that force. The only thing preventing James and his companions from being affected was their rings, which muted the effects.

That said, the amulet that was creating this effect was very rapidly depleting its power. In the mere second after its activation, it had already burnt through an eighth of its energy.

Before an uproar could even begin, James scimitar flashed like lightning and returned to its sheath. In the same moment the clink of it returning rang out, the head of the palace realm guard fell to the floor and pressure from the amulet disappeared.

For everyone in the True Spirit realm, this happened instantly, and was almost impossible for them to track. It just looked like the man fell to his knee and a sudden strange beam of light had appeared, and the man was dead.

Everyone else above that realm, which was more than half this throne room, sensed just how powerful that sudden force near James was, and all saw James returning the scimitar to its sheath. Only the very few tower realms had actually witnessed him even swinging the blade let alone drawing it.

Silence reigned supreme ... until the Emperor decided to take back the reigns and spoke. “My apologies James, it seems, some people don’t yet know the nature of our relationship or your true status. It appears some of my guards are yet to be informed.”

James stared hard at the emperor, smelling a suspicious plot. He now had two choices, he could deny everything, which most likely would result in the Emperor taking it as an injustice to the imperial court and surrounding and executing James and his companions.

Or alternatively, he could play along, which potentially had either terrible or good ramifications. It all fell on just how much he could trust Artimus. Most likely, Artimus was planning something and fully intended to use James in this situation to achieve some goal.

Deciding that he needed more information first, James decided to play along. “It’s fine Arty. The man has paid for his indiscretions with his life and is the only one at fault for failing to read the atmosphere.”

Artimus smiled like a wily fox and stood up from his throne. “Very well, though I’d have preferred there not be any blood spilt on such a grand day as today, some things can’t be helped. Ladies and Gentlemen of Yori, it is my pleasure to announce that James and I have agreed to the annexation of Tech City and the surrounding 100 kilometres of land.

“In exchange, James has agreed to take part in the upcoming War of the Worlds tournament as the representative of my Empire. We both agreed that our empire is surrounded on all sides and never know when we could be used as the battlegrounds of the three great nations.

“As such, James is hereby granted permission from this Emperor to annexe the first Free City seen in Atsunari for the last 100,000 years.”

Artimus then walked down from his position on the throne and shook James’ hand while handing him a parchment stating almost the exact same thing as he had just said.

James smiling took the parchment and shook the Emperor’s hand. He was trapped somewhat. This ploy was clearly a means to create distance between the empire and his Brotherhood. It allowed James to have a reason to represent his Empire in the upcoming tournament and also gave him the opportunity to make him into a scapegoat if anything went wrong.

Not only that, the empire was most likely facing a great deal of pressure from numerous factions to be allowed to move troops towards Tech City. The only problem with allowing that would be that the city technically belonged to the empire.

If Artimus agreed to allow troops to siege a city inside the borders of his land, not only the public, but the higher echelons of the political structure would begin to doubt him. By annexing Tech City, the 100 km around it were appropriately no longer owned by the Empire, and the Empire had rarely prevented anyone from travelling through their territory to another one.

Mostly because they sat in a strange stalemate between the three great nations and no one would ever bother attacking the Yori Empire to take its tiny bit of land unless they were sure they could hold back the other two nations.

James was now in a pickle. Tech City was now independent of the Empire and could no longer rely on the cursory treaties and stalemates of Yori to protect him. At the same time, he had now openly accepted that he would represent the Yori Empire at the tournament, which he’d already planned to do, but he was now no longer a member of the Empire and afforded no protections from them.

This created a situation where the Yori Empire had politically washed their hands of him and his guilds, while still employing them as mercenaries. If someone attacked Tech City and wiped out his guild, then the War of the Worlds wouldn’t matter, the three nations would never go to war, and Yori Empire would simply retake the city allowing the normal stalemate and quite of the continent to return to normal.

If Tech City managed to defend itself, then the War of the Worlds would happen, Yori Empire would be assured their chance to rise up and take the land of the three great nations and protect it, and James would only be a contractor that they could cut ties with and throw to the dogs if things got too messy.

James looked the Emperor in the eye with an eerie and disgusting smile painted on his face. Just looking at it, Artimus got a chill down his spine and had the strange sensation he’d just stepped in a pile of crap, which he both literally and figuratively had.

He’d now pissed James off with his little political games, and also just stepped in the crap James had spent a good deal of effort stamping into the red carpet.

Once this little ceremony was over, James followed Artimus off to the vault as his companions left to explore the town. Harvy offered to return to his ship and take command while Jasmine returned to James’ spirit realm.

As they travelled down the dark halls and endless flights of stairs into the depths of the mountain, Artimus felt the unnatural smiling eyes of James peering at the back of his head and very slowly drilling directly into his brain.

As they walked, he gave a bashful cough to remove the awkward silence. “Ahem! Allow me to apologise for springing that on you James. As a leader yourself, I’m sure you understand why I did what I did. I must protect my Empire at any cost.”

James continued to smile with his eyes closed into slits as he continued to stare. Then he spoke in a somewhat light-hearted but condescending tone.

“Oh? It’s fine Arty. I certainly do understand. Don’t worry, I won’t take it personally. However, have you considered what’s going to happen once everything is over? You surely can’t be expecting the rest of the continent to lay down as you fortify yourself with a huge swath of land and lick your wounds.

“Perhaps not now, or maybe not even in 100 years, but eventually, everyone will wake up and realise that without me, your empire would return to nothing. What will you do when you’ve secured some land, and then the whole continent turns against you?

“I won’t be able to step in and help. After all, I’m the director of a free city right? I have to consider the lives of my people right? I certainly hope that by the end of your war, you have someone capable of stepping up in the next War of the Worlds to take first place. Otherwise, you may be forced to defend your nation from every side.

“I hope your people haven’t grown too soft living in their little cage these past few thousand years.”

Before the Emperor could finish considering all this, James distracted from the topic of conversation. “So how did your family name become Dragonheart anyway? Your ancestor slay a dragon?”

Seeing the sudden change in topic as a lifeboat from all the unpleasant thoughts James had been feeding into his head, Artimus began to tell the story of how the Gateway deep under this hill led to the dragons den of another world.

The dragon would come to this world and leave the mountain to hunt and collect valuable spirit artefacts and resources. Then it would return to the Gateway, and it’s lair on the other side, where it stored its horde. Then a powerful cultivator, who was Arty’s ancestor, came to this place thinking it a good place to cultivate.

Naturally, a battle ensued when he discovered the dragon. When the battle ended, his ancestor was fatally wounded and dying. In order to preserve his life, he took the heart of the dragon he’d slain and put it in himself.

From then on, all his descendants were born with the innate talent of metal affinity, and his clan became the powerful Dragonheart Clan.

With the power of such a rare talent being innate and born with every generation, the clan naturally quickly grew stronger. By the time the ancestor died, he’d united the nations nearby and created the Yori Empire. Unfortunately, he died before he could use the power he gained from the dragon heart to expand the empire and take land from the three nations.

James pondered on this story for a while and eventually filed it away under fairy tale. He figured that the metal affinity this family had was naturally thanks to the belief that they could unlock it, and not some gift stolen by taking a dragon’s heart.

By the end of the story, James found himself standing in a huge underground hall nearly 200 metres long and wide. At the front of the hall was a massive gate spanning half the height and width of the hall, covered with murals depicting the history of the Dragonheart’s ancestor from birth till death.

James watched on as Artimus made a series of hand movements then pushed out a hand towards the door. James felt a release of spirit pressure that was quite well directed and then a rumble spread through the hall as the massive gate creaked and groaned, opening to show a huge black and red ... pool.

It looked like the wall was actually a pool that somehow managed to defy gravity, and sat directly on the wall behind the gate.

The water within the pool was filled with strange black and red colours spinning around and forming odd patterns. James was stunned. ‘Is this supposed to be what a gateway looks like?’ He thought to himself.

Artimus, seeing this behaviour, smiled knowingly. “Never seen a gateway before? Don’t worry, they’re not all like this one. Most Gateways are invisible, except perhaps to your kind. Scryer’s that is. Don’t know why this one is like this ... perhaps because of the dragon or some other reason. Well, it doesn’t matter too much. On the other side is the Dragon Vault, where we keep our all our clan’s treasures and knowledge.

“Remember, you can’t bring anything out with you. Oh ... and don’t touch the guardian. It knows you’re coming, but it’s not particularly happy about it. I’m sure you’ll understand if it decides to show itself.”

With that, James felt the sudden force of the Emperors boot on his back, and was launched like bullet into the gateway, leaving behind nothing but a splash and a few ripples.