Having fulfilled his purpose, James retreated to his Forge in the Lab. He had so much he was trying to focus on recently and decided to distract his scattered thoughts for a short while to work on a project he’d been putting off for a while.

In the forging room, James stood at a bench looking at an assortment of dark stones. These were his space stones. After some careful investigation, he discovered that the pocket space inside a stone was not relative to the size of a stone, but rather to the density of free energy which permeated the stone.

While scrying he could discern this energy from other faint energy particles easily. He also determined that the energy in these stones was rather weak and not particularly well refined. Unlike in something like a piece black-iron essence which didn’t just have a lot of a specific type of energy, but the free energy was also incredibly dense and had obviously been refined any number of times.

Similar to when he refined his spirit energy, instead of quantity of energy particles he instead increased the quality of the energy and density of each particle. Looking at the space energy in the stones he could see endless numbers of impurities, tag along particles that had half fused or fully fused with a space particle, and excess earth particles and every space energy particle were quite a distance from each other and rarely were there particles that were near each other.

After this realisation, he concluded that he would need to heavily process these stones. After some further thought, he started forging something else instead. After three days he’d forged, instead of an item, a new room.

This room was an idea he’d thought of a long time ago, but only now started trying to design. After some thought and back and forth with Jasmine, he’d managed to create this little room only a few metres in length and width.

From all appearances, this room was incredibly dull and normal. However, anyone with the intuition or a strong soul would immediately sense the whole room had a soul of its own, very much similar to when an artefact was given a soul.

James sat down a few feet from the centre of the room then took out the bag with the Spatial Stones. He then also took out a few of the Greater Spirit Storage Gems they’d mined from below the LS3 Quarry.

He then made the strange motion of reaching out his hand to place a gem onto something invisible. With this action, the room hummed slightly, and a spirit array pattern suddenly emerged from the floor in a ring of lights.

As if like some magical inscription written on the air itself, the ring array rose up and suspended the gem in mid-air.

James smiled like the devil as he watched this. Shortly after, another inscription pattern rose up from the floor and started shining lights over the Gem. When it was finished, it disappeared back into the floor like some ethereal, ghostly hallucination.

Following which some more inscription patterns started shimmering to life around James looking like some holographic computer screens. James was ecstatic. This was actually technology Jasmine had developed long before now to use in the Mobile Base she’d been so diligently working on.

Not only this, she’d developed an absurd number of array patterns for a whole multitude of different mundane purposes. She even had array’s that could wipe your ass if you wanted. To which James politely declined when she’d asked.

Following the shimmering to life of these new arrays, strange figures, shapes and colours began to appear. To most everyone else, these simply represented gibberish, however to James, who had designed this system with Jasmine, it all meant something.

That little scanning array was actually one of the most complex parts of this entire artefact. It’s ability to scan something and the rooms ability to interpret and display these scans was actually a product of a great deal of research into using San’s Eye Crystal’s as a catalyst. The ability for the room to interpret and display this information was a result of the rooms immature young soul.

Although this seemed complex, the tasks this little soul had to accomplish were a great deal simpler for it because the array patterns basically did most the work for it. It was essential only there to act as a buffer between the array patterns and James and to allow James to interact with the room properly.

Once these little screens popped up, James reached out to one that amusingly looked like the recycling bin on a person’s desktop. Moments later a serious of arrays popped up on all the walls, and a huge suction force suddenly appeared for all the spirit energy in the room.

Within seconds the entire room was devoid of spirit energy, with the exception of James’ body, which naturally didn’t leak any spirit energy thanks to having long since stopped his hands of time breathing technique, and the storage gems and spatial stones.

With the room purged of all its spirit energy, James then touched another array, and another colourful array sprang to life. This time, the array came from the roof and descended onto the Gem. In his Scrying field, James carefully watched as the array pattern descended. In his Scrying field, he could see the array generating an abnormally huge amount of pressure.

As the pressure slowly increased on the Gem, James watched as all the free energy, refined energy and primal energy impurities were slowly washed out. When this was done, the only energy remaining in the gem was a strange crystal-like energy which James was fairly certain was the free energy this Gem naturally produced and was the energy that allowed this gem to store other energy so proficiently.

With this step finished, James then pressed another button, and the energy that had been forced out was once again purged from the room. He took the gem from the centre of the array and then repeated the process with one of the spatial stones.

Unlike the Storage Gem, he was far more careful with the spatial stone. The reason for this was twofold. Firstly it was because the Storage Gem’s free energy didn’t fuse with other energies unlike with the spatial energy.

The energy of the storage gem instead attracted refined energy to it like orbiting planets. The particles would fall into an orbit of a storage particle and then wait there until they found a method to release. At which point they would very quickly try to rush out from the storage gem into whatever it was that was trying to draw energy from it.

Secondly, it was precisely because the spatial energy in the stone was somewhat fused with other particles. If he just blasted it with pressure similar to before, it would instead drag those fused spatial particles out and greatly reduce the quantity of the stone’s energy.

Thanks to the soul he’d imbued this room with, it was capable at least of controlling the focus of spirit pressure from its arrays. Thanks to this, James invented the method of creating two opposite forces. The first was an array that sat on the floor under the Spatial Stone. It had a rather specific job, and its pressure was used to lock the spatial energy down, preventing it from moving.

Only then could James use the other array from earlier, which blasted away at any spirit particles which the soul of the room couldn’t identify as being native to the material in question. In this case, it got rid of any energy that wasn’t Spatial Energy.

Once again, James started this process. However this time, he remained incredibly focused with his scrying field and personally controlled the speed that the pressure array from above descended. At least this way, he could immediately stop or slow its fall if it was starting to force spatial particles out of the stone, which theoretically, it shouldn’t.

Regardless, much to his regret, no matter how hard he tried, the array continued to force fused, and half fused spatial particles out of the stone.

He could only assume that the soul of the room was still too young and inexperienced to tell the difference. As such, he changed his plan. He took out the Storage Gem he’d just purified and placed it on another array under the Spatial stone.

He then allowed the room to continue purging the Spatial stone until nothing was left except pure spatial energy. All the foreign free energy and fused spatial energy was instead pushed into the storage Gem, which readily accepted it.

Once this was done, he continued this process with all the stones. Once this was finished, he then placed a spatial stone into the array. This time, instead of trying to force any energy out, he pressed a different array, and a whole number of arrays fell from the ceiling.

They then aligned themselves like 6 faces of a cube around the stone. Moments later each flat array side suddenly focused a little beam of light onto the stone and started carefully, but very mechanically, cutting away at it.

Once this was finished, all that was left was a little stone ring, cut so smoothly it glistened in the light of the room and reflected everything around it like a polished mirror. James then scooped up the cut off excess and along with all the other spatial stones threw them back into the array.

Each stone or piece of stone then hung suspended around the ring within the array as if stuck in cobwebs. A few more pokes at the array screens, and suddenly the 6 cube sides shimmered, and the array patterns began to morph and change.

Once again an enormous pressure was exerted onto the spatial energy in the stones until it had all been forced out. With the ring as the dead centre of the arrays, all the energy was being forced inwards until all the pieces of spatial stone were empty of spatial energy and it had all been focused into the ring.

Once this was finished, James fiddled with some more arrays, collected up the empty stones, then pressed a few more arrays and left the room. The ring still sat floating in the dead centre of the room, surrounded by array patterns which seemed to be intermittently flaring to life now and then.

The last thing James had set for the room to do was an experiment he was curious about. With all the energy focused in the ring, he was curious what would happen if he left it under the focused pressure of the arrays for an extended period of time. What he was hoping to see was all the spatial energy fusing together to create fewer particles except with more density and quality.

James then went to an empty, clean room. These were the rooms set up to purge all spirit energy so that he could run experiments in them. When he entered, he drew some array patterns around the room and then connected them to the spirit power grid of the building.

Once these patterns had fired up, James carelessly threw the left over spatial stone into the arrays where they were all rapidly sucked into the centre of the arrays. This little experiment was something else he was curious about.

According to his understanding, free energies are created between the interaction of primal energy and a specific substance or material. If that was the case, what would happen if he left the space stone in a huge compression array that was feeding endless amount of primal spirit energy into its epicentre?

Two things, he was hoping. First, the massive pressure from the array would be like the pressure of the earth crushing coal into a diamond. He wanted those assorted stones to be compressed to the absolute limit until they became a single stone and eventually ... hopefully, something more powerful ... like an ore essence.

Secondly, he wanted the primal spirit energy being forced into the stone to properly interact with the material and create more spatial energy. He suspected that both of these processes would take an incredibly long time, but seeing as he was going to be so god damn busy for a while, he didn’t mind waiting to see the results.

As James tiredly marched out of the forge room and through the lab towards the elevator, Jasmine finally took the chance to distract him. “James, I haven’t bothered you because you were so focused, but it appears Sully has returned and is rather eager to find you. I’ve been delaying, but he seems to be on the verge of having a fit.”

James let out a long sigh. After some thought, he decided to ignore the old bastard. Instead, James went up to his room and climbed into bed. He wasn’t aware of it yet, but he’d been so intensely focused on his Storage Ring project that almost a week had passed by outside.

-Monolith Plaza-

The next day, before James could even rub his bleary eyes of his sleepiness, Sully barged into his room raving about terrible apprentice piety and how he, as a poor decrepit old master, was stranded alone by his disciple to fend against the world by himself.

James felt nothing, not even twinge of guilt at having ignored his master. Instead, he chose to silently crawl out of his bed and begin preparing some tea while he munched on some nearby fruits.

Seeing his one and only disciple completely ignoring his existence, Sully was enraged. “Damnit boy! You could at least show some concern for your master. And let me tell you now, if this is all some cruel trick you’ve played on me, I don’t care if the heaven’s oath strikes me dead, I’ll kill you right now!”

James just waved his hand nonchalantly and poured himself some tea. After a few moments of continuing to ignore Sully, and enjoying the morning sun coming in through the window, James finally stood up and got ready.

As if a whole different person, he walked out of the bathroom with a totally different attitude. Once again he had reverted from the cold, unconcerned and not in the least bit caring man who’d been woken up earlier, to the happy to help and concerned for his master’s well-being, young, innocent disciple!

“Master! I’m glad you’re finally back! I hope your trip wasn’t too dangerous. Let’s go down to the monolith right now, and I’ll try and call in that one last favour he owes me.”

Sully almost spat blood from the sudden shock of James’ lightspeed turn around in character. He couldn’t tell if he should be laughing or crying. Nonetheless, his dream of annulling this oath which he’d so impulsively, and regrettably, uttered as a youth was on the verge of being fulfilled.

Even James’ strange behaviour couldn’t drown out his excitement. This exuberant excitement also helped to cloud his mind enough to not pay too much attention to James’ behaviour and to simply brush it off as James not being much of a morning person. If he’d taken the time to consider further, he might have realised how odd James was acting, and it could possibly have prevented him from losing so much blood in the short future.

As they left the guild hall, and after James had gone to the lab to retrieve something, James noticed Sully not bringing anything with them. “Master, aren’t you going to bring your tributes for the monolith spirit?”

Sully arrogantly lifted his nose looking rather proud of himself for some reason. “Naturally I have everything I need with me. Being as powerful a cultivator as I am, I have my own means.”

James eyed him suspiciously and then looked him up and down to see if there were any bulges in his purple robes. Seeing nothing, James suddenly had a thought and then looked over at Sully with sparkling innocent eyes.

“Master, it couldn’t be that you have ... a Storage Ring?”

Sully almost missed a step and fell on his face at James’ sudden query. “Little brat. How do you know about storage rings?”

James then made a show of doing the same thing that Sully just did, raising his head up and looking down at the world arrogantly and pridefully while saying; “Being as powerful a cultivator as I am, I naturally have my means.”

Sully almost spit blood at the audacity of his disciple. ‘This little bastard! Just you wait, your training is going to be like hell on Ascension.’

James was rather shocked that Sully had completely forgotten about him stealing and entire room’s worth of precious herbs previously. Either Sully’s acting was terribly good, or he’d actually completely forgotten about such an important matter.

It wasn’t long before they found themselves standing in front of the ever glowing monolith. The moment James came near, the monolith started to surge and flash with excitement. Seeing this, James could only smile wryly. Once he stood next to it, he reached out a hand and made contact.

As is usual, James was sucked into the spirit realm of the monolith, within which sat the lazy looking shaggy dog that was Ruff. Before James even managed to get his bearings, he was blown off his feet by an unstoppable force. Looking down at his chest as he laid on the ground, James discovered Little Blue rolling around on him and jumping up and down playfully.

Seeing that there would most likely be no way to avoid it, James then began their age old game of cat and mouse. Unlike prior times, James had a huge advantage. Not only had he been regularly cultivating and long since surpassed Little Blue in cultivation, but he’d also significantly increasing his skill in Fleet Feet.

In a matter of minutes, balls of arcing lightning were flying all over the place, and Little Blue was tired. With the most important thing done, James then turned to Ruff. “How’s it goin’ Ruff?”

Ruff raised up his head from his tired sleeping then slowly stood up and transformed into is human form. “Little Junior James. It’s not too bad. Ruff! I can see why many spirit beasts chose to go into a monolith way back then. It’s very much a perfect method of cultivating an understanding of humanity. Ruff! So, what seems to be today’s oath you need to break?”

James sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. He almost, only almost, felt guilty for not having visited at all since he stuffed Ruff into the monolith. “I’m trying to fleece this old man outside. He needs an oath dispelled so he can take more than one disciple. I agreed to help him out on the condition he gives me everything he’s got. Of course ... as far as he’s concerned, he’s making an offering to the spirit of the monolith. What do you say? Can you help a brother out?”

Ruff seemed to daze out for a moment as he inspected Sully standing anxiously out in the plaza. After only a few second of inspection, he nodded. “Sure, he’s got lots of good stuff in that space ring. Ruff! But what do I get out of it?”

James considered for a short moment then came up blank. What could he possibly give to the spirit of the monolith in exchange for this favour? Coming up with a loss, James just shrugged and looked at Ruff. “What do you want?”

Ruff, without hesitation, pointed at the little blue ferret. “Take your pet with you this time. Ruff! As nice as it is to have someone here, it’s incredibly distracting while I’m taking care of the monoliths duties and trying to cultivate.”

James felt a headache coming on, but after a short moment of thinking about some things he decided it shouldn’t be too hard. He nodded his head in agreement. “Sure, just make sure to push him out to me when I activate the monoliths arrays.”

With that, he left the monolith spirit realm and returned to the plaza. Then, without saying anything to Sully, he levitated up into the air and started to activate the little array to transfer from the monolith.

Unlike the glorious scene of Exsue’s escape from the monolith, Little Blue was just shot out of the monolith in a little arc of lightning, like a very unwanted furry little blue ball.

After rolling along the ground a few times, he got up, shook himself then scurried over and climbed up onto James’ shoulders to take a nap.

While this was going on, Sully’s face went through a whole number of expressions. Mostly, though, he was shocked. Did all monoliths spit out little spirit beast pets? Before he could get too distracted, James drew his attention back to the task at hand.

“Master, The spirit of the monolith is willing. It wants to know what you’re willing to offer it though.”

Sully shook for a moment then very quickly waved his hand in front of him. Moments later a mountain of rare herbs, plants, materials, ores and even artefacts appeared in a huge pile reaching almost 4 metres off the ground.

“All my worldly possessions!” Sully said without reservation.

James almost couldn’t stand from the sudden shock of it. How badly did Sully want to take more apprentices? He, without even a thought or hesitation, offered up everything he owned to annul this oath.

James imperceptibly nodded his head, and all of a sudden heavenly law descended onto Sully from the sky. At the same time, with a flick of his hand, and while Sully was distracted in his moment of euphoria, James sucked up everything into his own space ring.

Even though Sully had been distracted by heavenly law, he didn’t miss the little nod and the shake of James’ hand. He only now realised he’d been fleeced. It was rather comical to watch as he spat a spear of blood from his rage moments after the heavenly law descended.

James quickly realised he’d been noticed, but without even a change of expression, he rushed forward like the good little apprentice he was and helped his now pale gaunt looking master to stand. “Master! Are you okay? I know, I know. This has been a very trying and powerful experience for you. I’ll take you back to the guild to rest for a time. Don’t push yourself to hard master!”

Sully, hearing James acting so sincere and the epitome of a caring, good disciple, spat another mouth full of blood. James was now certain the man had to be on the verge of anaemia. While he was helping Sully to his feet, and while Sully’s guard was lowered, James flicked his hand, within which appeared a little thin needle glowing with a strange murky grey spirit energy.

A small prick later and Sully suddenly forgot everything that had just happened in the last 30 seconds. Right up to the point where heavenly law descended onto him. Feeling slightly confused and as if he’d missed something important, Sully climbed to his feet with James’ assistance.

“Don’t worry Master, I’ll take you back to rest. I’ve never seen anyone have such a reaction to annulling an oath before. Your oath must have been very powerful for you to have suddenly spat blood and passed out for a few seconds.”

James quickly supplied an explanation for Sully and then without further ado, began to drag him back towards the HQ building.

In the monolith, Ruff was shaking his head with a solemn look on his face. “That poor man. He’s got no idea what kind of monster he’s taken on as an apprentice. I just hope he survives through this trying experience. Ruff.”

After putting Sully in one of the rooms on the upper floor, James returned to the lab to begin cataloguing his haul. He made a mistake, however, in that he forgot just how powerful Sully’s Scrying field was.

Unsuspectingly, he once again made Sully spit blood in a rage when he, by habit, scanned his surroundings only to witness James pouring everything he’d just sacrificed to the monolith out into the lab a few hundred metres underground.

Quite a few of these things, James had never seen or even heard of. Even Jasmine with her encyclopaedic knowledge hadn’t seen any records for some of these things. That only made them more valuable in James’ eyes, and very quickly everything had been stashed back away into his ring.

Now that he had a moment, he inspected his ring with scrying. He noticed that the spatial particles, through an entire night of constant pressure, had slightly begun to fuse and be refined. With this notion, James then investigated the size of its space within.

“Holy crap!” he muttered. Within the ring, the space was almost a 70 metres in length width and height. That was enough to store an entire small hill, or a small lake. Hell, he could secret away an entire building in here.

In comparison to the space created from the refining of the stones into this ring, this space was huge. Altogether, the space in the ring had only been about 2/3rds of the space it had now. James suspected this had something to do with the proximity, quantity and quality of the spatial energy that he’d managed to fuse into this single stone ring.

If he’d been able to keep all that space energy that had been fused or half-fused, he might have been able to create a space larger than the total spaces of the stones before they were processed.

After playing with it a few more times, James then went about and started to pack all sorts of things he considered essentials into it. The first on the list was his personalised Arc Cannon and Arc Pistol. Both of these had been designed and forged by him personally and were almost works of art both in their design and operation.

Through the use of different free energies, he’d managed to reinforce the black-iron essence based alloy which he used to create it with. In addition, the battery packs he’d created for it were all crafted with purified Greater Storage Gems as the base of the storage gel and the entire thing was covered in inscription arrays to stabilise and increase the output.

The Arc Pistol was very much the same, and they both were beyond any other similar weapon ever crafted in the guild. Thanks to his effort in their construction, as opposed to the short life span of the original models, which general only had a few dozen shots in them at most, James’ cannon and pistol were limitless in their fire lifetime.

Not only that, they were so structurally sound that he could use them as melee weapons in combat to bludgeons people to death. Even the war hammer that he’d recently forged for Goliath, which was entirely focused on destructive melee damage, couldn’t hope to destroy James’ Arc Cannon when its arrays were powered up.

After some thought, James stopped by the room with the spatial stones inside and discovered that there were already a very small number of spatial particles starting to form. He also noticed that the pressure had crushed the stones into dust and compressed it into a single larger perfectly spherical stone. He was aware that this was only the very beginning of this experiment and wandered off again, putting it to the back of his mind.

-Alchemy Lab-

The next day, bright and early in the morning, Sully assembled his new apprentice hopefuls in the alchemy lab. James, Norman and Kelly all sat around in the lab looking at Sully. Seeing how relaxed and disrespectful these brats were, Sully wanted to give them all a good thrashing.

Seeing as they were the first disciples he’d ever taken on to share his knowledge with, he’d thought they should at the very least show some more respect for their master. Naturally, James respected few to none and believed everyone should earn his respect before he gives it to them. Even the elderly, who many people view as older and wiser.

James just considered old people old, and nothing more. They were still just people, with maybe a few more stories and life experiences. That is hardly deserving of respect in his opinion. After all, a frog can live its whole life trapped at the bottom of a well, but the only thing it can teach you about the world is the colour of the sky.

Kelly, being of the character she is, was aloof and uncaring. If this were just going to be like some boring lecture, she’d rather not. She was mostly self-taught anyway and only came along for the novelty. Norman took his cues from his Guild Master and although his desire to learn all the secrets of alchemy trapped in this scruffy bum’s head was almost tangible, he was aware that the guild master had grander plans in the long run and would undoubtedly meet other experts with even more knowledge eventually.

Seeing them just blankly staring at him and leaning this way or that in their chairs, Sully’s eyebrow started a strange twitch, not too dissimilar to James’ when he was suppressing his desire to just detonate the spirit reactor under the Spire and watch the whole continent burn in chaos.

Finally, after an extended silence, Sully started with the basics. ‘Seeing as you little shits want to act so aloof and arrogant, I’ll have to take you down a peg or two.’

“The first, and the most important thing that any alchemist must learn is how to differentiate materials and herbs as well as their properties and common uses.” Saying such, Sully flipped his hand over and summoned a stack of books almost as tall as himself from his space ring.

He held onto these, and a few other things he felt the monolith spirit wouldn’t want. Basically, the only thing left filling his spatial ring were stacks and stacks of old books and research notes. Sully then put the books onto the nearby work bench and continued on as he paced back and forth with his hand behind his back.

“I expect each of you to memorise everything in these books by the end of the month. In Alchemy, we generally qualify other alchemists with a set standard. To become a first tier alchemist, the ability to recite these books by heart is the most important thing. The next is the ability to create a potion or pill at the first tier. Usually, simple herbal mixtures and recipes are the limit.

“To reach the second tier a person must be able to refine a second tier pill or potion with an alchemical furnace or cauldron. This is when an alchemist first starts to learn how to control a flame with their spirit energy and how to properly mix and extract the properties and parts of ingredients to achieve a desired outcome...”

“Hey, is this one in the implant?” Queried Normans voice from behind. Sully turned to see all of his books, with the exception of three or four, simply tossed onto the ground like rubbish. His heart, finally having taken too much strain for the short time he’d known James, collapsed in his chest.

He felt the blood draining from his face and quickly took out some pills and stuffed them into his mouth to stabilise himself. Before his condition improved too much, he watched James flick through the book Norman gave him then just toss it over his shoulder like more rubbish to join the others.

Sully spat some more blood from his mouth. By this point, he was surely anaemic from all the blood he’d spat in rage and madness. James was starting to think that Sully had some sort of sickness or condition that caused him to spit blood at regular intervals.

Seeing Sully spitting blood again, and his eyes turning red and his skin growing clammy and pale, James rushed over. “Master! Are you okay? You seem to have some horrible problem. Don’t worry, on my world we have medications to help alleviate anaemia.”

Having said as much, James rushed over to the corner of the alchemy lab that was almost entirely automated and produced standard medications and drugs from earth, he then grabbed a bottle of pills and rushed back over. Without fanfare, he poured out about 20 of them and stuffed them into the weak looking Sully’s mouth.

He then, out of nowhere, produced a water skin and started pouring water into Sully’s throat almost drowning him. Sully, who was already weakened, frail and in sudden shock, accidentally swallowed the pills.

When they’d already travelled down to his stomach, he quickly pushed the very ‘worried’ and ‘trying to be helpful’ James off him and backed up to create some distance.

“You shitty little brats! What do you think you’re doing just chucking my books around like that?! Those books contain thousands of years of research and study into ingredients used for alchemy. You haven’t even read them! How do you expect to memorise them if you’ve fucking destroyed them?!”

James sheepishly scratched his head then picked up the books to put on the table. “Sorry about that Master but we already have a copy of most of these books in the university. I can already tell you every letter, word and paragraph in all of those books.”

Sully was stunned for a moment. He looked down at the pile of books, which at conservative estimates should have taken months to read and understand, then looked back at the sheepish looking James, bored looking Kelly and nodding in agreement Norman.

“What nonsense! You think these books grow on trees? You think your minds are Heavens Gift? Fine then! Let’s see how well you know these books!” Sully marched over and reached out to grab a book. The moment his hand touched it, Kelly started speaking.

“Silvester’s book of deep forest botany. 382 pages. That book contains descriptions, pictures, uses and effects of nearly 800 different plants, animals and ingredients that can only be found in well-forested habitats. Of the 800 alchemic ingredients it describes, there are 12 that have the wrong description or picture. Also, nearly 150 of the herbs and plants are found in Gretel’s Compendium of Fauna for Alchemists.”

Sully’s hand froze ... then not wishing to be trumped by these little bastards, he flipped the book open to a random page. “Page 203.”

Kelly thought about it for a brief moment then started speaking again. “Page 203 has 4 plants described on it. This chapter of the book pertains mostly to mushroom like ingredients. 203 has the Aliobla, Carason, Dal’I and Dello, shrooms. Each one has similar properties, which is to reduce swelling and encourage clotting of open wounds. The two exceptions are Carason, which is the total opposite and increases blood flow and heart rate making it easier to bleed out and Dello, which not only reduced swelling but acts as a mild pain inhibitor.”

Sully’s eyebrow started that twitching once again. He then reached for another book only to have the same thing happen all over again with Norman. As he was reaching for another book, he glanced over to see James’ reaction. Seeing James just staring back with his most innocent wide-eyed expression, Sully suddenly felt a chill run up his spine.

Thinking better of it, he chose not to test James as well. James laughed in his heart as he watched Sully reluctantly taking his hand back. “Don’t worry master, although we have most of these books, some of them we’ve never seen before. Especially this one.”

James encouraged as he picked up a book of handwritten loose paper. Sully perked up at this note because he recognised that book. It was actually a compendium of ingredients he himself had jotted down over the years and had a great number of rare or interesting things described in it that Sully had to toil endlessly over the years to research.

James flicked open the book and rapidly, like lightning glanced at every page. He then re-opened it to another page as if interested in something he saw there. Suddenly, his nose twitched. No warning came for poor Sully’s heart as James suddenly sneezed violently, and the book was all of a sudden covered in snot and mucus.

Sully couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw how much James had managed to project from his nose. There had to be at least a few cups worth there. How was it even physically possible to retain that much in one’s nose?

Sully’s already frail weakened heart didn’t get much chance to recover though, as James suddenly reared back once more and let out a massive sneeze that seemed to shake the entire lab. When Sully opened his eyes from this sudden outburst, he discovered pieces of his book scattered all over the lab.

James wiped his nose then sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “Heheh. Sorry about that Guildmaster. Don’t worry though! I’ve already memorised all of it, so I’ll be sure to write up a new copy for you.”

Sully’s knees began to shake, and once more blood tried to force itself up from his throat. Through a great deal of effort on his own part, he prevented himself from rushing over and bludgeoning James to death right then and there.

As if having survived a major war and somehow come out the other side, the very deflated Sully turned and slowly began to drag himself out from the lab looking incredibly miserable. His whole body shuddered when James threw out a parting farewell.

“Don’t worry Master. I know you’re sick with some strange disease. You go rest up. It shouldn’t take us more than a few days to memorise these few books we’ve never seen. You can come down again and start teaching us in 3 days at the most!”

That said, James collected up the 3 or 4 books with information that was missing from their vast database then headed off to scan them all in. While he did that, Jasmine was busily recreating all the pages of the book James had ‘accidentally’ demolished.

Three days later, the trio once more sat in front of Sully. Sully after testing them on the few books they claimed to have fully memorised in the past few days, buried his shock and awe in his heart, then once more began his lecture from where he’d left off.

“As I was saying a few days ago, a second tier alchemist starts to learn to control a flame to refine pills and potions. There are two methods for this step. The first is an external, third party flame which you have a means to control, most people use storage gems for this purpose. This is also the most difficult method, and an endless number of people are stuck at this stage because they can’t create an elemental fire.

“The second, and far easier method, is to use your own spirit power and manifest a flame yourself. I was too excited in the beginning and never bothered to ask, but all three of you have the fire element correct?”

James knew he did, and after scrying, he realised both Kelly and Norman didn’t. In fact, he only just discovered that Norman was still only in the barrier realm and had the affinity of water. At the same time, Sully scryed the three of them and discovered the same thing. Before his hopes were entirely crushed, James looked over at Norman then said something that made Sully’s head spin.

“Norman, we’re going to have to give you a few more elements. If you want to become a strong alchemist, you’re going to need fire. You’ve finished all the basics at the university right?”

Norman gave a shocked look then nodded. James cupped his chin for a while then nodded. “What’s something you love more than anything in the world. Something that you think about endlessly or always feel. For example, Kelly is a lazy bitch and never does anything unless she absolutely has to or actually really wants to. Because of that, she unlocked an element called sloth.”

Norman then crossed his arms and stared hard at the ground for a while in contemplation. “The only thing I really love is alchemy ... and probably drinking.”

James, hearing this, then went over to the side and grabbed a bottle of Heaven Six Rice Wine. Showing no delay, he popped the cork then blurred like a ghost in front of Norman and shoved it into his mouth.

In a matter of minutes, Norman had ingested the better part of the bottle and was well and truly on his way to becoming drunk. James then walked him through the steps and in less than half an hour, Norman was permanently drunk. He’d unlocked the abstract element of Sloshed, Drunk, Intoxicated.

James had now happily and without regard completely ruined another person’s life solely for his own amusement. Shortly after that, and now with a great deal more effort, they managed to unlock fire, giving him the three attributes of fire, water and Fuckin’ Pissed.

Amusingly, about the only way to settle him down and get him back from the brink of a permanent state of alcohol poisoning was to keep feeding him grog so as to maintain equilibrium. It seemed though, that no matter how much or little he drank, he would always remain in that state.

After this short interruption, James motioned for the once again stunned Sully to continue on. “Ahmm ... Ahem! Yes, well. Apart from Kelly, you two should have fewer problems than most with this stage. The third tier is the two skills of cumulative refining and precision refining.

“Cumulative refining is the ability to focus the medicinal effects of a huge number of ingredients into the smallest possible space. To achieve this goal a person needs to learn to use their soul energy so as to compress the medicinal spirit energy into the smallest area and burning off the excess wastage. This requires a constant process of compressing, burning the waste and repeating. Eventually, the accumulation of many refinements such as this will result in a pill that contains the medicinal effects of hundreds of plants.

“Precision refining is the use of your soul energy to separate out certain energies to eliminate contamination of the final product. Many ingredients will have properties that have undesirable effects while at the same time having properties with tremendous use. The ability to properly separate these energies with precision is essential for good alchemists.

“At the fourth tier, you can be considered an Alchemy Master. To reach this level requires you to not only be able to develop and refine a 4th tier pill, but also requires you to master the most important part of later stage medicine refining. The use of your soul to purify and extract the essence of ingredients with precision refining and then combine certain energies into a single energy. You then not only need to focus the flame for the refining part but at the same time use your soul energy to properly fuse different aspects of ingredients to achieve another goal.

“This is called splicing. Through the use of your flame to agitate the materials, and your soul energy to manipulate them, you can fuse two different types of energy together to create something that has the combined, different or totally opposite effects. Learning how to predict the outcome and results of such fused medicines and learning to skillfully splice different ingredients is the key to being considered a Master Alchemist.”

Finished with his basic instruction, he turned to see the surprised and awed faces of his little disciples. To his consternation he instead found Kelly sleeping leant over a bench, James showing a very strange expression, and Norman busily drowning himself in more alcohol.

“What? You don’t even care! You all jump at me so enthusiastically to teach you then sit here like dullards just staring off into space?!”

Seeing Sully preparing to wind up into a tirade of injustice, James quickly jumped in to try and placate him. “It’s not that Master. Your descriptions and introduction the four tiers were very informative. It’s just that ... well ... I’m also a Forge-master so a great deal of this sounds incredibly similar to techniques forge masters use.”

Sully’s eyes opened slightly shocked. “Oh? Well, you’re not far off. Forge Masters and Alchemists do share quite a few similar methods to our refining processes. You’ll find, that similar to some things which are forged with other elements like water or wind energy, there are certain pills and potions that can also only be refined properly with these elements, or even a multitude of these elements.

“That’s why a great many alchemists often learn how to properly control Storage Gems for refining even if they already have the flame element. This is also one of the reasons I was so insistent that you become my apprentice. With all four elements, your ability to refine properly will never be hindered by such a thing.”

James nodded a few times sagely. “Very well then Master. Where should we begin our training?”

Sully smiled evilly as he swished his hand and produced a potion recipe. “Since you’ve all managed to memorise everything I had for you, you will all start your first exam. Your task is to go and gather these herbs and follow the recipe here to create a simple tier one potion called the Passing Fire Potion.”

James moved over and took the recipe. After a few minutes, he assessed the nature of the potion and what it does. He then gave a sideways glance at Sully as he asked; “Master, how will you determine if we’ve passed or not?”

Sully grinned even wider. “That’s easy. I will come with you to make sure that you have correctly identified each herb you’ve collected without any help. Once you’ve brewed up the potion, I will check it for purity and inconsistencies then you will drink it. Naturally, if you haven’t made any mistakes, it should be basically harmless but reveal very glaring properties which will help me to ascertain if it’s working or not.”

James, being no fool, could tell that the name was a misnomer. It should instead be called the Pissing Fire Potion. Because after you ingest it, your piss will become like fire and burn like lava every time you go to take a leak.

James reviewed the formula once more, then handed it to the now rather quiet and introspective drunk, Norman. He then turned back to Sully. “Well then, I guess I will go first.”

Sully quirked and eyebrow. “Go first? I’m not going to accompany each of you out to the mountains individually. All of you should come at the same time.”

James smiled innocently and started walking to the elevator. “There’s no need for that Master. We should have everything we need in the garden.”

Sully’s eyebrow then began to twitch as he followed James to the elevator. After a few moments with customary elevator music, James and Sully stepped out onto underground floor number 3.

The third floor of the HQ’s underground structure was the largest by far. It had incredibly rich spirit energy and was kilometres vast. It was built with shallow rolling hill landscapes and covered in vast meadows of different species of grasses. As they walked up to the crest of the first shallow hill, Sully visibly shook and almost collapsed.

On the other side were rows upon rows of common spirit herbs stretching off into the distance. Every now and then were some trees or shrubbery. There were even small stretches that were just different kinds of grass. After a second glance, Sully realised that the sky had a single blazing sun and wispy clouds floating about. Every now and then he would spot one of those infernal souless flying creatures shooting about tending to certain herbs or picking and planting different things.

Every now and then he would see certain herb gardens that were segregated by shimmering almost invisible array fields. These gardens often had rarer herbs that only cultivated in certain environments. Some were filled with flames or ice and snow. Others had ponds and a few even just looked like a cube of water suspended in mid-air growing herbs and plants only found at the bottom of lakes or in the sea.

James flicked his hand and produced a spray bottle. He then rather liberally sprayed a very toxic smelling substance over himself and went to pass it over to Sully.

“You should put some of this on master, the bugs can be rather severe.”

Sully looked at the spray bottle with disdain. “What bugs? I’m a Tower Realm Practitioner brat! I’m not afraid of some bugs. At worst, they’ll break their teeth and stingers off trying to bite me.”

James just smiled innocently and put the spray bottle away as he picked up a wicker basket left near the crest of the little grassy knoll in front of the elevator. “Don’t be silly master. Bugs don’t have teeth. They have mandibles.”

As they strolled along a little cobblestone road, Sully only grew more impressed. Even in his wildest dreams, he could never imagine building a place like this. It was truly an alchemists paradise. Before walking a short dozen odd meters, Sully caught site of a blur shooting here and there across the fields. After squinting a little and focussing a little harder, he realised it was a bee of some kind.

It shot about all over the place at mind boggling speeds. Even he, as a tower realm cultivator, was having trouble keeping track of it. Very soon he began to see more and more.

James started to explain the herb garden as they strolled along and he every now and then stopped to inspect and pick a herb.

“This underground garden was built by a great man. His mind was truly unfathomable. He managed to use array’s to create nearly 20 different environments all segregated from one another like every type of herb’s in a little world all of its own. After discovering them in the Endless Forest, we brought these bees over here to help all the herbs and plants propagate.

“They zip about collecting pollen and pollinating for us. We’ve discovered quite a few strange plants that have grown from cross-pollination between two different species of herbs from completely different biomes. One of my favourites is the Blazing Snow Lotus Master. We haven’t had a chance to experiment with it yet, but I’m sure it will be extraordinary!”

Sully made a strange face then scowled at James. “Blazing Snow Lotus? Boy, are you just making things up? I’ve never heard of such thing before.”

James smiled slyly. “Of course you haven’t Master. It’s a mutation created between the cross-pollination of the Ever Blazing Sunflower and the Eternal Icey Snow Lotus. It’s quite unique because it’s the only combination of two incredibly rare herbs we’ve managed to rescue after it started growing. We had quite a bit of trouble creating a biome that it found suitable to grow in. Eventually, we had to invent a world where it snowed fire and burned ice, if you can wrap your head around that.

“That’s not all though. Everything in this garden is closely monitored and watched over by that late genius’ sole daughter and heir. Nothing on this level goes unnoticed by her. She’s actually got quite a knack for this herbology stuff and has managed to produce many interesting plant species. The main ingredient for our spirit wine actually comes from a combination of Soul Feeding Ferns and Vast Starry Grass.”

Sully once again received a huge shock. He’d lived a long time and devoted his life to alchemy. He’d seen almost everything on the entire Atsunari continent that could possibly grow from the ground. Soul Feeding Ferns just happened to be something he searched for endlessly for its unique properties in regards to helping strengthen the soul and increase soul cultivation.

Similarly, Vast Starry Grass, which gained its name due to a strange phenomenon in which it reflects the night’s sky at the darkest hour before dawn, was renowned for its properties in helping assist spirit energy cultivation.

Sully wanted to reach over and strangle this disciple out of sheer envy. Before the chance came, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his leg. By instinct, he suddenly jumped back a few paces only for another stabbing pain to come from that soft place on the leg right behind the knee ... yeah, you know the one.

Very quickly, Sully’s legs started to ache as more and more stabbing pains started coming from everywhere. He rapidly raised up his robes and discovered his legs covered in little red ants about the size of a grain of rice. With a wave of the hand, he brushed the little bastard off with some spirit energy.

To his great surprise, he discovered little red welts popping up all over his legs that stung like vinegar on a cut lip. Some of them were even bleeding.

Seeing this, James smiled like the devil but soon returned to his oh so innocent disciple act. “I warned you, Master. The bugs here are quite territorial and vicious. The little Fire Eating Ants are the least of your problems now that you’re bleeding. Normally the bees won’t bother you if you don’t bother them, but curiously enough they seem to hate the smell of fresh blood.”

As his sentence finished, a low hum began to envelop the surroundings. What was once only a few bees blurring about had abruptly become a horde that seemed to appear from nowhere. All charging madly towards Sully.

Without a second thought, Sully rushed up to James and gripped his robe as he started to frantically shake him. “Are you mad! Why would you let Blood Seeking Bees live in your garden? Those things are a scourge. Quickly! Give me the spray!”

James complied, pulling out the spray. Without any courtesy, Sully grabbed the bottle and started spraying it all over. The moment he sprayed it on the welts on his legs, he couldn’t help but draw in a sharp breath. ‘Just what the fuck is this stuff made of! It’s like putting my legs into a river of knives.’

Once he was done, the swarm of bees arrived, buzzed around him a few times seemingly confused then buggered off back to where ever it was they came from. Having averted this harrowing life crisis, and have no doubt, it was harrowing even for him at the tower realm, Sully shot an accusatory glare at James.

James just smiled innocently and took back his bug spray. “I tried to warn you, master. Sometimes you’re just too stubborn.”

James then continued along the path as they travelled through garden after garden and James inspected various herbs and picked some now and then. Suddenly after walking about looking at things for nearly half an hour, James froze.

Sully looked at him curiously and then gazed off in the direction he was looking. At first, he couldn’t be sure what James was looking at until a very unremarkable white flower in a field of white flowers suddenly caught his eye. The eye catching part was the single red petal among its white petals. Out of every flower in the field, it was the only one.

James then waved his hand, and the apparition of a beautiful young lady with a solid material Seal placed in her chest suddenly appeared. Sully’s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull. ‘Holy shit! Is that a trapped soul? Just how many secrets is this kid hiding? He must have some kind of remarkable background to harbour so many secrets!’

Ignoring Sully and James, Jasmine floated out like a ghost over the field of flowers until she was right next to the little red petal flower. It was a truly beautiful sight. Wearing a thin white dress and looking like the descent of an angel from on high, the breeze in the underground valleys blew and made her dress and hair wave.

Even Sully, they ancient old alchemist, felt his heart move at the sight. Very quickly the concerned peaceful expression on the face of Jasmine turned into an absolutely vicious and demonic snarl as she suddenly lifted and arm, coalesced a massive fireball the size of small car and then smashed it violently right onto that little flower and directly in the middle of that field of flowers.

What was once a heart moving sight of beauty suddenly devolved into an archaic flaming purgatory as Jasmine begin to laugh madly and continue to drop car size fireballs onto the crater that had become the centre of the flower field.

Flames sprayed out everywhere, lighting the beautiful little white flowers on fire. The sky seemed to dim, and embers of the flaming flower field floated off with the wind. In the centre of this carnage to the peaceful scene was the wildly laughing Jasmine, who by now looked more like some devilish ghastly apparition from hell than an angel.

Sully wasn’t even sure how to react to this sudden change. James just remained standing there smiling brightly and innocently. After this went on for a few more minutes, and before Sully could work up the courage to ask just what the hell was going on, Jasmine finally seemed to grow exhausted. She then started peering down into the crater she’d created as if checking to be sure she’d obliterated that stain on her perfect white field of flowers...

Which was ironically now a huge flaming mess.

Seeing Jasmine smile brightly and start descending into the pit, James finally explained to Sully. “That’s Jasmine, Master. She’s the young heiress to everything that genius I mentioned earlier left behind. She’s quite adept at many things, but this garden brings her the greatest joy of all.”

Sully almost found it hard to believe. “What joy? What heiress? She’s clearly just mad and trying to destroy all her old man’s hard work! Those Pure White Poppies take dozens of years to grow to maturity, and she just demolished an entire field of them to eliminate one oddity of the bunch.”

James scowled a little. “Master, please don’t belittle Jasmine. She cares a great deal for this garden. Not because of some petty little plants, but because of what it represents. This garden is an Eden for herbs to evolve, cross breed and grow. She wasn’t destroying anything that couldn’t be replaced. What she was doing was feeding something that would be incredibly difficult to cultivate again for at least another year.

“It might just seem like an oddity to you, but you clearly aren’t a master of herbs as much as potion refining, otherwise, you’d have noticed that at every corner of this field is a garden being used to cultivate some rather special and rare herbs. This was done so that we could create something new.

“I’m sure you already know, but the Pure White Poppy is a rather useless herb. It’s rather common and has no powerful medicinal effects apart from being used to increase the potency of other herbs. What we are growing here isn’t just some pathetic little Pure White Poppy. Furthermore, here, in this Eden for herbs, the spirit energy is so thick and the conditions so optimised to perfection that we could regrow this entire field in only a few weeks.

“Come with me master, perhaps, even you can learn something new today.”

Sully, although not happy with how his apprentice was talking to him, would be the first to admit that cultivating herbs wasn’t his forte. Most of the time he simply bought or hunted for what he needed. After all, who apart from the Brotherhood with their advanced array technology could afford or had the ability to create an environment like this that reduced the time it takes for herbs to grow by dozens of times.

After following James along a path near the Poppy field, they came to a rather special looking herb garden. This garden had 2 other types of flowers already planted in it, in neat long rows counting in the tens. Both were Pure White Poppy’s, but each one had an out of place petal. One with a blue petal and one with a green petal. As they arrived, they watched Jasmine slowly planted the third Poppy in a section of this garden.

To Sully’s surprise, this poppy seemed to be brightly glowing and almost on fire. Despite that, it looked healthier than ever. After planting it, Jasmine left the field and then started to make adjustments to the array patterns. Soon the temperature in that little garden rose, and the Red Petal Poppy started sucking up the free fire energy being poured in by the arrays.

Jasmine then returned to James spirit realm with a contented smile. Sully now realised, they were trying to use the Pure White Poppy to create a new breed of poppy that contained the four basic elements.

‘Madness! If they truly achieve their goal, they’ll have created something that doesn’t exist. A plant with the four elements ... Is it even possible? What could it do? The possibilities are endless. If such a plant existed, it would be the perfect base for hundreds of different types of recipe. This type of plant cultivation ... it’s revolutionary. They’re going to change everything.’

Sully’s mind spun furiously as he tried to fathom just what sorts of things this plant could be used for.

James, seeing him finally realise what Jasmine was trying to achieve, and why she suddenly became so excited, gave a slight smile from the corner of his mouth and started moving off again.

By the time they returned to the lab, Sully had a new understanding of the field of herbology. Before, it was a means to and end for him. He needed it so that he could refine potions and become a powerful alchemist. He now realised he’d missed so many important things during his cultivation of alchemy.

This field of study, herbs cultivation, was incredibly important he realised. Just this short stroll through the gardens revealed an endless number of things he’d never understood or considered regarding the herbs he used.

How they’re grown was almost as important as how they’re processed. He suddenly thought back to all sorts of failures he’d had during refinement. Although he could tell whether a herb was of good quality and proper age of ripeness, he’d never considered what environment it had grown in. This simple oversight could drastically change the results of a refining.

Even with his scrying he couldn’t always catch everything and quite often all it would take is a little hidden spirit energy that seeped into the ingredients when the plant grew to disrupt an entire refinement process.

Sully sat down heavily in a chair as he dazedly watched James chop, grind, heat and mix ingredients according to the recipe. He then also watched him suddenly start doing it all over again. Seeing James already half way through another process of a tier one potion, Sully frowned for a moment.

“Little Apprentice. You’re not trying again, are you? If you failed such a simple recipe the first time around, you should give up alchemy now. It’s no harder than cooking a stew at this level. You don’t even need a constant temperature for your flame and can just use that little flame from the table you’ve got there.”

James smiled over at Sully. “Of course not Master. This time I’m refining the Refreshing Chill Potion. You can consider this just me doing the extra practice. My Pissing Fire Potion ... errr ... I mean Passing Fire Potion is over there.”

James signalled over to a test tube rack with a clear red liquid. Seeing James had already long since finished it, and worse still had discovered its nefarious effects and was already brewing a counter agent, Sully couldn’t help but have his brow begin twitching.

Distracting himself from thoughts of herbology for a moment, he stalked over and picked up the test tube. He scryed it ... scryed it again ... shook it ... then scryed one last time. He was stunned. Just what kind of method did the boy use to create this concoction? Although he obviously didn’t use any more advanced techniques like precision refinement or culmination refinement, the solution still came out very pure.

Normally, even he himself, without those techniques, would find it difficult to produce something like this without some time and consideration. When he had this thought, he glanced over and noticed James had quite a bit of strange equipment set up on the bench. After watching James continue with his creation of the Refreshing Chill Potion, he noticed him follow all the standard methods only to then put the solution at the beginning of this contraption of strange glass pipes, beakers and decanters.

It then went through once and came out the other end as a clear bluish solution. James then bottled it up and tucked it away in his robes. “Master, if you’re curious, we can teach you these simple methods. They came from our world, where no one knew what spirit energy was or could even detect it and interact with it. Because of that, we developed many simple and even advanced methods of mixing separating and filtering chemicals.”

Sully considered for a moment. Then, after already having received the shock to his system that was his visit to the gardens, he swallowed his pride as the Master and agreed. After all, he’d already learnt something today, if he was going to learn more, why not agree to it now while he was on a roll.

James smiled enthusiastically then pulled out a little black cube from his space ring. Moments later a little screen popped up in front of Sully. It then started to make noises and flash violently. Turns out, even a tower realm practitioner is susceptible to the stupor that’s created when receiving an implant.

When it was finished, Sully came back to himself, wiped the drool off his chin, then jumped back to distance himself.

James smiled innocently again. “There’s nothing to worry about, master. It’s just a little memory implant. Think of it similar to Spirit Jade. Now, you just have to meditate on it for a while, and you’ll understand.”

The day carried on, and eventually, the trio got passing marks. Even Norman, who was now perpetually drunk. Strangely, whenever he focused in on alchemy he was like a totally different person, and it was almost like he’d never even had a drink before in his life.

By the end of all of this, Sully was so thoroughly shaken up by everything he’d learnt that he decided to postpone more master-disciple lectures for a week or two while he went into a short closed door cultivation session. Instead, he gave the Trio a list of recipes from Tier one to Tier two and a handful of manuals describing how to control your flames and other such tips and tricks.

He then ordered them to practice these things for the next two weeks and try their hand at refining a tier two pill.

-Tech City-

A few days later, James found himself standing on the southern wall of Tech City, looking out into the vast wavy sea of golden grain which moved off into the horizon. Far in the distance to the south-east was the Black Forest Mountain.

For quite a while now, thanks to quite a few contributing factors, the average saturation of primal spirit energy in and around Tech City had risen quite high, quite quickly. It wouldn’t be a lie to say that the average saturation in Tech City was now one of the highest in the continent.

It was now high enough to actually drag up the average saturation of the Atsunari continent. If the whole Yori Empire had a saturation of only 30% of Atsunari’s average before, it had now been dragged up to almost 200%. That, obviously, is nowhere near the almost 2000% of the Jetsu Mountain Range, but it nonetheless began to attract numerous Spirit Beasts and cultivators toward Tech City.

Thanks to that, even with regular subjugation missions, the Black Forest was teaming with more vicious spirit beasts than ever before. Luckily, thanks to the monolith, that was no longer a concern. What was a concern was all the greedy people that had now set their sights on Tech City.

Everyone had some inkling of how the primal spirit energy worked. For every 100 parts used, 105 would suddenly appear to replace them out of the void. What this meant was, a place like Tech City, which was burning primal spirit energy just to power itself, and had the densest population of practitioners, even though only true spirit and barrier realm, would be drawing in, storing and using copious amounts of primal spirit energy.

This then caused the average primal spirit energy saturation in the area to skyrocket. Just standing in the city, one can feel a vast difference from any other mundane city on the continent.

It was this reason, as well as the fact that Tech City was now considered a free city, that an army had suddenly appeared far to the south and were making preparations for a siege. This army wasn’t made up from any of the great nations, but instead filled to the brim with guilds, sects, clans, bandit groups and every other kind of faction under the sun.

Although the bigger national powers desperately wanted to capture and claim Tech City, as well as all its resources and technology, they were all facing a crisis of one kind or another in their own countries and couldn’t afford to divert attention to this tiny little eyesore that was the Dark Brotherhood.

This ragtag army was instead acting as a mercenary army, each faction and group hired and employed by the Profit Sect to eliminate their now most hated enemy.

In the past month, thanks to Gold James launching the Continental Markets, Profit Sect had taken a monstrous hit to their net worth. Although they owned any number of businesses and industries to help them control the markets, the Continental Market, and the Brotherhood delivery service, made them almost obsolete.

Only making them even more enraged, it appeared that no one from the profit sect could operate one of those little black boxes to connect to the continental market and use it for trade. It became obvious that the Brotherhood was directly cutting them out. Seeing as their profits and businesses were now being harmed, they had no choice but to actually take the Brotherhood seriously.

Feng received no short amount of abuse from his seniors and elders when they found out this was basically his fault. Thanks to his screwing this whole thing up, he was put in charge with fixing it. According to the Elders, they didn’t care how he did it, but he must get his hands on their technology and reduce their threat to the Sect. Either by placating, trading or eliminating. Whatever worked best.

Feng had contacted Lucas within the first week, only for Lucas to let out a long sigh, throw out an ‘I told you so.’ and hang up on him. By this time, he’d come to realise that his most trusted assassin had still yet to return. Seeing as the Brotherhood was still churning away like always, he could only assume he’d failed.

This then led to an attempt on Feng’s part to incite the surrounding three great nations into taking action. He quickly found that this was almost impossible. He wasn’t sure what was going on there exactly, but it almost seemed like everyone was going mad.

He contacted the leaders in the Northern Commercial Nation of Baquerro 4 days in a row. Strangely, it seemed like every time he spoke to them, they’d completely forgotten their previous arrangements and agreements made the day before.

With no other options, Feng turned to this route. He called in every favour he had and spent nearly every dime in his own substantial treasury to assemble this army of almost 30 different factions. With their rapidly dwindling influence over the markets, the Profit Sect was only growing more incensed and decided even if they couldn’t get this technology, they would eliminate it.

The breeze blew across the fields of golden grain as James stood with arms crossed surveying the gathered mercenary army off in the distance. As he stood there, General Weist, in charge of Tech City’s defence, stood behind him barking orders left, right and centre to his City Guards and tried to prepare his men and the city for a siege.

Standing nearby, also surveying the approaching army, was General Gallin who was in charge of the Star City Guard. He and Weist were both young and fresh in the art of war. They’d been trained up by Goliath and put into their positions mostly just because someone needed to do it.

Despite their young age, the duo both held themselves with considerable military bearing and seemed completely unflustered by this event. They had long since guessed that such a day would come to pass and had tirelessly drilled their soldiers in preparation. Gallin walked up to James, and seeing James with a somewhat scrunched up brow as he looked at the enemies he smiled confidently.

“There’s no need to worry Master James. We’ve long since prepared for a day like this. Your city will be perfectly fine.”

James distractedly gave a ‘yes, yes.’ Meanwhile, in his spirit realm, Jasmine placed down a knight on a chess board. “Checkmate. James, you are a thousand years too young to challenge me at chess.”

James sat but in his chair with arms crossed looking somewhat sulky. “Hmph, stupid chess computer!”

Jasmine, not taking his jibe at her to heart, only giggled and poured some more tea. “You’re not worried about this oncoming army?” She asked James.

James, as if a switch had been flipped, suddenly smiled brightly. “What army? They have at most a few tens of thousands. If I had to guess, the most powerful practitioner among them is barely palace realm. The Profit Sect truly underestimates us.”

Gold James, seeing a moment to brag jumped in to proudly start spouting off about how well defended their city was.

Back in the real world, Weist was finished with his preparations. Behind the wall of the City, nearly 2000 black armoured guards stood. Each guard had a Mk 3 Arc Cannon and was suited up in the Brotherhoods Mk 2 Combat Suits. They also held a Mk 3 Air Board looking like well-ordered lines of armoured surfers.

Weist then turned back and moved up to stand on the other side of James. “Master James, we’re ready.” James smiled brightly, and his eyes shimmered with a sinister light.

“Good, I’ll let you maintain command Weist. I’m just here for the show. Make it a good one.”

Weist, hearing the orders of the Sin of Pride, couldn’t stop his face from warping into a devilish grin. “Certainly Founder.” he replied before turning and stalking off to the inner side of the wall’s rampart.

James’ eyebrow quirked for a moment, and he glanced at Gallin. “Founder?”

Gallin gave a wry smile as he scratched his neck. “That is what everyone has started to refer to you as. Because you have elected a new Guild Master, but still essentially retain full control of the guild.”

Gallin then quickly rushed out another sentence. “That is to say ... No one believes anyone could take this guild from you Founder. Even if Guild Master Gary or Vice Master McCord were both tower realm existences, everyone knows the true heart of the Guild, AI, will only ever follow your orders.”

James just smiled. ‘Take the guild from me? Hah! Who would dare try?’ He thought to himself quite proudly.

Moments later, the Invading Army came to a stop about a kilometre away from the walls. They were all formed up in strange formations, and there were all kinds of different flags showing all the different types of factions the army was made up of.

Once they’d stopped, an old Palace Realm cultivator marched out from the force. Using his spirit energy to increase the volume of his voice, he began to throw out their demands.

“We seek to negotiate with the City Master!”

James waved his hand, to draw the man’s attention as his voice cheerfully rang out, and his face was creased with a shallow smile. “Ahoy hoy! Yes yes yes, what demands do have little fellow?”

The face of the Palace Realm Cultivator became savage when he heard the young man on the wall calling him a little fellow and acting so shameless, as if this whole thing didn’t concern him in the least. Taking a deep breath to control his rage, the cultivator pulled a parchment from his robes and began to read.

“We, the United Front for Free Trade demand the release of any affiliated member that has been unlawfully captured within this city. We also demand that the technology for the Continental Market as well as the cargo transport methods be released to us due haste. Lastly, we demand the wanted criminal, City Master James, be relinquished into our custody for trial by the people and control of the Free City of ‘Tech’ to be given to the United Front for Free Trade for governance.”

The man then rolled up the parchment and glared at James. “Little Boy, you think too much of yourself! We have 24,000 trained True Spirit realm and Palace Realm combatants. Forged in the fires of war! Your city might be filled with cultivators, but most of them will only be commoners playing at cultivating. They are not our match. Relinquish these things, and we can forget any enmity and your people will survive court martial.”

James just smiled. Before he had the chance to reply, Weist stepped up to the wall with a stern face. “Piss off you git!”

His voice echoed out from the wall across the assembled army of cultivators.

Voices and thoughts began rumble out from the invaders.

“He’s mad right? There’s no way he can stand against our army.”

“Ignorant country bumbkins! They think because they made some useful stuff they can keep it. Only the powerful can keep their possessions. Let’s kill everyone in the city!”

‘That man is either too courageous or too stupid. Either way, he’s going to die in this city today.’

As the crowded army started to murmur and curse back, Weist lifted his hand into the arm. With a chop of the arm, a huge boom resounded out across the lands. Everyone saw the distant top of the spire, held aloft above the city like a great beacon, suddenly flare with light.

Seconds passed, and nothing happened. Then, without warning, a strange shimmering force field came to life above the heads of the invaders. Everyone watched as a huge cylindrical slug, fired from the Devastator cannon atop the spire, spun madly against the shield.

The shield was slowly pressed downwards as if a great weight was settling onto it. At first, the invaders thought the formation was actually going to break. The dome-like shield flexed even further until reaching only a few feet above the heads of the combatants lined up in the centre of their strange formation.

With the huge load created by the Devastator Slug, weaker practitioners that had been feeding spirit energy into the formation started shaking and collapsing.

Finally, after a few more seconds, but what seemed like hours to the invaders, the shield started pushing back the slug. The slug’s rapid spinning began to slow down. All the assembled invaders finally released a tense breath.

James, who stood up on the wall, was shocked. What the hell was that translucent shield? Having spent a great deal of time working with array patterns, James could tell this shield was very similar, but somehow subtly different.

It finally clicked. He surveyed the orderly formation the invaders were in and recognised it as very similar to a force field array. “So it’s like that...” he mumbled to himself.

Weist, seeing the slug now being forced back by the shield, and rapidly slowing it’s spinning to a near stop, just grinned as madness filled his expression.

He raised his arm and chopped down again. Another boom shook the lands, and the spire top flashed with bright lights again.

Just as the first slug was about to finally stop and be blown away by the shield, a second slug fell from the sky like the finger of God smiting sinners.

The collision between the two slugs cause the arrays to activate, and suddenly a massive suction force spread out to almost a kilometre in radius. Blood-curdling scream started to rise up, and the invaders desperately tried to escape the suction only to be pulled in like some invisible tentacle had reached out and grabbed them.

Thousands died in an instant, and the formation was suddenly broken. Weist then yelled a command, and huge iron doors opened up on the empty wall turret emplacements. Turrets filled with supersonic death slowly rose up in a steamy mist from within the wall towers and then all turned to aim down at the invading army, which was well and truly in disarray now.

The palace realm cultivator that had marched out to the front started screaming orders and trying to rebuild the formation to protect against these long distance death machines, only to suddenly have his head explode. Only a split second had passed before the boom was heard. Up along the wall, a man dressed entirely in black pulled back his sniper rifle type arc cannon and replaced the slug.

He then rolled back over onto his stomach and began searching for more high profile targets. Finally, the short life span of the compression bombs died out, and a huge crater was revealed with a single highly dense ball filled with dirt and corpses remained.

It fell to the ground and buried itself deep underneath the earth. The invaders finally started to reorganise a little and prepare to charge forwards. Another boom rang out from the spire, and the turrets along the walls started to hum to life and spray death across the enemy lines. It was truly a monstrous scene.

Weist and Gallin stood atop the wall looking more and more vicious by the second. James, standing nearby, could feel the blood lust radiating off them like standing next to a heater.

By this time, many of the worried citizens of Tech City had climbed high buildings in the city to peer over the outer wall and view the carnage. Many people grew sick from the scene.

Infiltrators that were scattered around the city were rapidly reporting back to their parent factions, filling them in on what was going on and describing the scene. A great many other people had set up Spirit Recording Stone and similar artefacts that acted as a camera to capture this gory moment.

Less than 20 minutes later, the turrets stopped firing and the spire no longer resounded with loud booms. The invaders had been reduced to only a few thousand, all of whom were trying to flee at top speed.

Weist walked back to the inner side of the wall and looked down at his Guard squadron. “You all have been graced by the walls of this city. You stand here now because this city has given you something precious. A home, a family, an opportunity. Today, you will show the City Master that you are worthy of your post. You will prove that you have earned your title of Tech City Guardian.

“This City, our home, you will give your lives to protect it, or I will take your lives myself. These filthy invader scum dare to march here, crush our crops and cower our people. Take no prisoners, for the Jail is Full.”

Although this was a lie, and everyone knew that the dungeons had enough room to fit thousands, they still complied with this order in their hearts. Everyone in the Guards loved Tech City. Most of them not even because they had families and loved ones, but because Tech City was a wretched place where they could commit all the evil they wanted as long as they didn’t cause too much trouble.

Plus, by this point, the enemy had basically already been decimated. They just had to fly around picking off the escapees.

With that in mind, the Guard Squadron let out a ground shaking “For the City!” and then shot off into the skies on their Air Boards to start the hunt.

James smiled to himself then turned to leave now that the show was over. He’d learnt something interesting about using people to create arrays with formations and felt standing around out here watching for a while had all been worth it.