The next two months, until the War of the Worlds, passed rather quickly for James. He spent most of his time training his combat and practising forging and alchemy. The incident with the mercenary army spread far and wide, and the tickets that had been bought up for the war of the world started to find their way onto the black market or disappeared from the hands of the smaller factions that had managed to nab one at auction.

The two nations of Soel and Hastoel were starting to flare up even more violently. Hastoel’s political infighting devolved to a vicious state. Noble husbands had been found sleeping with the wives of friends and allies. Wrathful wives and husbands started viciously attacking each other either politically or in the shadows.

The leaks of the upper classes dirty secrets only grew more numerous, and many factions and the majority of the populace began to resent those aristocratic families that were in power. The entire nation was in turmoil as resentment and enmity between each other started to escalate to the brink of civil war.

Soel had actually banded together, and faith in the Order of Sun’s only grew more intense as the populace sought out some order of comfort in their now famine stricken lives. The Red Barron and the Ghost of Famine were now on the most wanted lists with bounties reaching into the millions of gold coins.

To date, the few people that had managed to corner or attempt to catch these walking calamities had all died miserable deaths.

Regardless of the increased faith of the populace as they raced to churches in hopes of seeking redemption from the gods, the nation’s famine only continued to worsen. By now all the major crop production towns and cities and been swallowed by plague and drought.

Few to no places across the nation still had any substantial amount of crops growing. Unfortunately, these places weren’t enough to sustain the nation. With this calamity looming over their heads, the Order of Sun’s began looking for new ways to feed their people.

They tried numerous times to use their contacts with the Northern Commerce nation of Baquerro to import food, only to discover they acted as if any discussions had never happened the very next day. Worse still, anyone they sent to investigate the Capitol would suddenly disappear.

The southern nation of Hastoel was even harder to seek support from because no one there trusted each other and the nation was in a state of civil war and constant turmoil.

The three nations to the south and west had long since allied each other in order to hold back Soel. They were revelling in Soel’s misfortunes and just waiting for a chance to start pushing for war to try and take land in their weakened state.

Apart from the Northern Nation, seemingly ignoring everyone else and pretending they never spoke to any of the other nations, everything seemed eerily normal in the northern nation.

Yori Empire, trapped in the middle of these three nations was surprisingly quiet. One would think that being the centre of the three great nations, it would be targeted quite extensively by the two nations that were now on the brink of calamity or collapse.

On the contrary, the two great nations that were currently in an uproar never even thought to look to Yori Empire for help or concern. After all, it had been, and always will be, a piddling little neutral zone that no one really cared about.

Every now and then James would get in contact with his trouble making companions and laugh his ass off at their status reports.

The Profit Sect, having already taken a huge blow twice now, had started trying to get in contact with the Brotherhood to discuss. Even though they started trying to create some political channels with Tech City and the Brotherhood, they continued to send assassins and infiltrators.

Almost all of these people would disappear the moment they stepped into the city. The AI’s pervasive big brother like security was almost omnipotent. The one or two infiltrators or assassins that actually got into the city and guild or close to James, often ended up being recruited or killed. Those were their only choices.

Thanks to the Profit Sects Efforts, Green Ninja had assembled quite a powerful arsenal of skilled shadow practitioners.

After the second month, Harvy returned and reported that his progress in the underground was fast and he was already considered by the undead populace as the Underlord of the 2nd level of the Crypt.

When he appeared to report to James, James had been in the middle of talking to Sully. Seeing Harvy, who had only decayed further than before and appeared to only be skin, bone and bandages, Sully almost lashed out to instantly kill him.

More surprising for Sully was that Harvy had somehow materialised out of the Shadows. James also was curious how exactly how he did that and learnt something interesting. Apparently, moving into the True Spirit Realm didn’t lock your elements. It just made it incredibly difficult to master a new element.

Thanks to his living in the pitch black underground crypt and slaughtering undead, Harvy had somehow unlocked this darkness element. James wasn’t so sure that it was just a matter of spending time attuning to an element and was probably something more to do with Harvy specifically. After all, Harvy was a deviator, and his cultivation path was definitely not the same as others.

Having already over succeeded in his primary mission, James sent Harvy to the university to join a batch of rookie guild members who wanted to learn how to fly the velocity. The class was small, and the AI did most of the teaching with implants and the simulator. Thanks to his prior experience with captaining a velocity, Harvy was the second best out of the whole class.

The best in the class was a skinny young man with golden blonde hair and blue eyes by the name of Charles. Turned out, he was from earth. Originally, he was abducted into a faction from Char. Said faction had been hired to come here and attack Tech City only to then be obliterated.

The man holding the Clan Seal that he had an oath to was unlucky enough to be sucked into the blast radius of a compression bomb from the Devastator. Luckily for Charles, he and his compatriots were then freed from their oath because the Clan Seal had been crushed into dust.

Thus, they made their way here.

They weren’t the only ones who started turning up at tech city. By the time the War of the Worlds came about, nearly a hundred Earthlings were living in the city or part of the guild. Quite a few had skills that made them quite useful to the guild.

Originally, when James discovered there were more earthlings here from Kelly, he had a brief notion of going to rescue them all. Very quickly he changed his mind though. He didn’t really care that much about them. As long as they didn’t get in his way or oppose him, he could care less.

Despite that, he made a little effort and put up a Job on the guilds job boards for an Earthling Rescue Mission. By this point, the AI had drones and other recording devices across half the continent. Thanks to this, the AI had a list of hundreds of earthlings that were still trapped in a guild or clan somewhere.

Some of them were lucky enough to have been picked up by a sect, or weren’t noticed when they came through a gateway, so those people were living their lives mostly freely.

Interestingly enough, he heard rumours of a few of them possessing rare or abstract elements. Even other people possessing one of the elements of sin. These people were all top priority to be dragged back to the guild. Everyone except Pride. Anyone who had the sin of pride was hunted and killed immediately. There can only be one Pride after all.

While all this was going on, Tech City was winding up for a huge commotion. The day the war of the worlds came, Tech City was filled to the brim with traders, tourists, powerful factions and commoner alike. Every inn, hotel and spare bed had someone sleeping on it.

Not just that, the outer city, which was the town’s slowly building up outside the gate of the inner cities walls, had thousands of practitioners building little dodgy wooden shacks to sleep in for the next few days.

Originally, James had intended to only have competitors that bought tickets enter the competition, but two months ago he instead announced that those tickets would only be seeded spots. Another 50 slots would be opened to allow competitors who couldn’t afford to buy a seeded slot to compete for a chance to enter.

Although there was some dissent from the factions that forked out huge sums of gold for their ticket, there was nothing they could do about it. It’s not like they were going to throw their seeded spot away and potentially lose a chance to win a velocity or the help of the guild.

As the day had approached closer, James had released an even grander prize list. Third place was a spatial ring with about a square meter of storage space.

This was made using the residue spatial particles built up over the past month from the pressure formations. He started calling the stone in the centre of the formation a Seed Stone. As it grew more spatial energy, he would harvest it with his Forging Chamber and then pour it into just a normal metal ring.

Because the properties of the metal ring didn’t resonate with the spatial energy like spatial stone did, the effects of forging a ring with the spatial energy were drastically reduced. Nonetheless, it allowed him to keep the same amount of spatial stone that he had so he could make more spatial energy.

When people found out something so rare was going to be a prize, people started seriously training or seeking disciples that could contend in this competition. Many factions didn’t look favourably upon the first and second place prize, first because they were too small a faction to need the Brotherhood or second because they were too powerless to keep hold of an artefact like the velocity. Everything was different though when the third place prize became a spatial ring.

Not just that, but all sorts of interesting prizes were listed. Fourth place was the guild paying and supplying the materials to forge this placeholder a customised weapon to their exact specifications.

Because of this, the competition became an event that could be finished in a few days to an event that could take almost a week.

The opening day of the War of the Worlds, everyone who wanted to compete had to climb to the 15th floor of the spire. For most true spirit realm cultivators, this was incredibly difficult already. Apart from seeded teams, there weren’t many true spirit practitioners as monstrous as James who could climb beyond that.

James once again stood at the base of the Spire and addressed the whole city via the drones.

“Boys and Girls, if you wish to apply for the War of Worlds, registration is simple. All you need to do is ascend the spire to the 15th Floor and meet one of my guilds Halls Masters. They will register you and check to be sure you’re a true spirit realm practitioner.

“I should warn you all of two things beforehand. The first is, this competition doesn’t disallow killing. If you join to compete, you must be prepared to die or hope that your opponent is merciful. The second is also rather simple. I know there are means for tower realm or palace realm cultivators to suppress their realm to the true spirit level or hide their true cultivation.

“If you are one of these people, please stop your pointless effort now. The moment you enter the spire today, you will be crushed to death.”

James finished this statement with a rather malicious smile. When he was done, he turned and walked into the spire. Taking that as an invitation to start, people started rushing wildly into the spire.

There hadn’t even been a few hundred people in the spire yet before an old man in red robes stepped past the main door into the first level of the spire only to suddenly freeze in place. The pressure directed specifically onto him was immense. Using everything he had, he gave a roar and circulated his cultivation base to try and back out of the tower.

Unfortunately, the moment he released the seal on his realm and returned to his usual palace realm cultivation to escape, a huge array pattern shaped like a hand descended from the roof of the first level and clasped into a finger pointing formation.

Everyone watched on, shocked, horrified and awed, as what appeared to be the hand of God slowly fell onto that old man and squashed him into a mushy paste. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the gory remains of his body were indistinguishable.

The hand then shimmered and disappeared. James, who was already on the 15th level watching this on a screen with the Hall Masters couldn’t help but chuckle. This array was purposefully designed and built for today by James. His sick sense of humour couldn’t help but be unveiled in this brutal display.

He wanted everyone to know that he is like a god in this city and regardless of how powerful you are you will still be squashed like an ant under his finger.

Naturally, screens were put up all over the city by the drones so that everyone could watch the fierce competition. Why else would all these people be coming to Tech City?

Seeing this display of might, everyone drew in a cold breath. Some palace realm and tower realm practitioners faces became stony, cold and unreadable. Whatever they were thinking, no one could tell.

Seated in there very luxurious rooms in the most lavish hotel in the central district, the seed teams all had varying reactions.

Of the sixty spots open for seed candidates, nearly 20 teams had been formed. Of the nation’s on the mainland, Soel and Hastoel had 4 candidates each. Strangely, Baquerro sold off their tickets long ago but didn’t seem to realise they’d done it or even acknowledge that today was the day for the war of the worlds.

The five western nations of Chor, Sargie, Lanthoe, Lokio and Jecuro all had 2 members in each of their teams.

Bietsu, Pomit and Castello each had 1 candidate.

Nahtiro, the island nation far in the south, didn’t have a single team but rather had 4 teams from each of the respectively powerful factions that ruled the island together. Each of these teams had 5 members showing just how powerful the southern nation’s factions really were.

The strangest team, which James still had no idea how they even got a ticket, let alone numerous, was the Tillion Unity. This was the island nation that was controlled by bugs. Interestingly the Bugs were very humanoid in appearance, except instead of having skin they had a carapace or shell or some other insect-like qualifier. They managed to secure 4 slots.

The Gollian Empire, which was an island nation from the far west, and it’s neighbouring island nation of Sully Isles, both had 2 spots each.

The United Islands had 5 spots. From what James had heard they’d expanded a huge amount of wealth and resources for this chance. The Island nation was in frightful need of assistance due to the Tilion Bug people attacking from the south and Pirates attacking from the west.

The last few teams were from assorted powerhouses scattered around the continent. This made up 3 teams of two and single one man team.

All of these seed teams were put up at the Hotel along with whatever important dignitary that had escorted them here for this competition. Quite a few had hoped to use this chance to try and set up some contacts in Tech City and most importantly set up a relationship with James.

Unfortunately for them, all of their efforts were rebuffed. James had no intentions of making friends with these people. After all, they are all just ants in the grand scheme of the world, and he would one day stand above them like a giant ... if he wasn’t already essentially doing just that.

As the first day continued on, a few more attempts to infiltrate the competition happened, and similarly to their predecessors, these people became a mushy paste. When night eventually fell, the Hall Masters had registered a few hundred new competitors.

Sitting in the room of central hotel were the competitors from Nahtiro. A rather dignified and arrogant looking young man was watching the screen where the final dregs were ascending the spire in hopes of signing up. He was quite handsome and well built, with long brown shaggy hair and clean shaved face.

“Humph! What use is this elimination method? That pathetic little tower is hardly an accurate measure of strength. I could probably walk to the top and then back down without sweating.”

Seated on a nearby couch, a very elegant young lady with long blonde hair was lounging around while eating little cakes and talking to some of the others about the upcoming competition. She smiled wryly and glanced at her brother, a young short-haired blond boy seated next to her who can’t have been more than 15 or 16.

“It’s not as easy as you might think. Betto and I tried to climb it yesterday. I couldn’t make it past the 21st floor. Beyond that, it’s only even more difficult. Betto was forced to give up on the 34th floor.”

Seemingly shocked, the neat arrogant youth spun and stared at Betto with wide eyes. “Betto, even you couldn’t climb to the top of that tower?”

Betto just shook his head quietly, seemingly more focused on the little cakes on the table in front of him. The arrogant youth turned back and stared hard at the screen as if trying to discern its mysteries.

“Just what kind of genius mind came up with the arrays for this ‘spire’? And where the hell are they getting the power to run this thing?” he mumbled to himself.

Also seated in the lounge room area they were in, was an old man with long grey hair and hunched back. He carried a gnarled and twisted walking cane and seemed for all the world like a boring plain old man. He too stared intently at the screen with some consternation on his face.

Similar scenes were playing out in the other rooms about the hotel. These powerful groups only now were starting to realise that what they’d seen of this guild’s power and technology was only the tip of the iceberg. It’s not that they didn’t have the same sort of arrays or even similar understandings, but rather that they simply could not imagine the methods that these people used to implement them.

Furthermore, they would never guess that the energy for these advanced arrays was actually being supplied by such incredibly dangerous and volatile device as the Cube Reactors.

-Endless Forest-

Early the next day hundreds of competitors were gathered sitting in the backs of Big Bertas and hovering over some unknown part of the endless forest. The task was rather simple, everyone got a little badge.

This badge served two purposes. Firstly, it had a little marker that pointed towards the closest badge nearby. Secondly, it was considered to be worth 1 point. These competitor hopefuls were going to be randomly dropped into the forest and had to find and collect enough badges. Anyone who could collect 13 badges would pass.

Since there were only 643 participants, the last contender only had to gather 6 badges. Unfortunately for the last remaining six, everyone that hadn’t been killed when their badge was stolen will be hunting them like dogs in the hopes of getting back into the competition.

To make it even more exciting, when 45 participants for the arena battles had been chosen, everyone else’s badges are going to flare up like beacons, attracting every person who lost their badge.

To further add to James’ amusement, the area they would be playing their game in was considered a hot spot for true spirit and even palace realm beasts. From what James had recently learnt from Exsue, these level are actually more commonly called Core and Solidification realm beasts. It was only because Atsunari was such a backwards continent they didn’t really understand how beasts cultivated.

This little area was nearly 20 square kilometres and fully policed by drones and guild members that kept an eye on anything.

Because James wasn’t completely heartless, he gave all these people a chance to escape the forest when they needed to. Everyone only had to say the words ‘Babaganush’. Because a drone would always be following everyone to live stream this event back to Tech City, this method was more than feasible.

All these True Spirit Realm’s got told this on the way out here. Once they were over the forest, they were given a single talisman to help prevent their death by falling and then pushed out one by one from 6 different Big Bertas.

Once everyone landed, they waited as instructed. Soon, everyone had landed. At this point, James’ voice resounded out from the drones that were monitoring everyone. “You may begin!”

It only took minutes before battles started erupting all over the forest. Some were cultivators, and others were spirit beasts. With the help of the AI, people could cycle through and maintain watch over their favourite player or simply watch the Action Feed, which monitored the best and most interesting battles with the use of multiple drones.

Every pub, inn and drinking hole in the city had a few screens donated by the guild, which allowed everyone in the city to monitor the game.

It was a huge spectacle, and everyone loved it. Not many places in Atsunari could boast such a scene or the ability to properly monitor it. As the day wore on, numerous deaths occurred throughout the forest. There were only 6 people left with badges. Amusingly, against James’ expectations, all of them but one had more than one badge. This meant that there were still 2 more spots open and there were 19 badges remaining.

The contender with only a single badge was a young woman with long black hair, not more than 17 or 18 years of age in appearance. She was dressed in a Japanese kimono and wielding a long samurai blade. Strangely, she never picked up other people’s badges. She just killed anyone that came for her and left their bleeding corpse and badge, or badges, lying on the ground.

James wasn’t certain if she had actually understood the rules or not. He sat in his spirit realm with Jasmine and Goldy watching the excitement on a multitude of big screens scattered about in his realm. Eventually, curiosity got the better of him, and he addressed her through the drone that followed her around. “Young lady, are you not aware of the rules in this competition?”

The samurai girl stopped walking and then looked over at the talking drone. She silently nodded her head to the drone. James’ eyebrow quirked slightly. “Is that a yes, you are aware of the rules?”

The girl nodded again, just silently staring at the drone with an expressionless face. James pondered for a bit then asked another question. “Are you just here to kill people then? Why aren’t you collecting badges?”

The looked down at the ground for a moment, then in a voice as quiet as a mouse, finally responded. “Can’t count...”

James almost fell out of his chair. His eyebrow started twitching as he stared at the screen. Goldy couldn’t help but laugh loudly and almost fall out his chair from the hysterics. “HAHAHA! Good God! The girl’s thicker than a brick! Hahahaha ... She could have just picked up the badges until she had enough and we would then automatically come and pull her out of the forest. She must have thought that if she just killed everyone, there wouldn’t be anyone to contend with her for the spot.”

James sat there listening to Gold James. On the screen, the girl obviously heard his laughing and guessed explanation then looked at the screen with slightly widened eyes as if in shock. Her very quiet voice then came through the drone. “ ... tell me when to stop?”

James gave a “yes” and then all of a sudden the girl shot off in the direction of the closest competitor. It was minutes later that the girl appeared in a clear patch of the forest. In the centre of this little patch, two participants that had badges were busily going at each other with gusto.

Seeing two people, the sword girl then seemed to blur for a moment and reappeared right between the two. Her hand shimmered as if it was some kind of glitch in the video feed and then the heads of the two people fell from their bodies in a fountain of blood.

Before the first drops of blood had even finished their arc through the air to come back down, the girl had shimmered again then reappeared tens of metres away holding 6 badges. In a matter of seconds, she was already shooting off into the distance for her next target.

Gold James had long since stopped laughing after that spectacle. He looked solemnly over at James. “That girl’s very fast.”

James’ true spirit nodded. “I may not even be as fast as her.”

The Live Action Feed in Tech City just happened to be broadcasting that battle which that girl had suddenly interrupted. When this sudden interruption happened to the fight, with the fast, lethal killing blow she delivered that even the drones camera couldn’t fully catch, the entire city went silent.

A huge raucous then spread across the city as everyone started guessing at this mysterious girl’s identity. Sitting quietly in the dark corner of a pub, an old balding Japanese man couldn’t help but smile wryly and facepalm himself. Sitting across from him at his table was another man who was donned in a kimono and carried a samurai sword as well.

He was quite muscular and had rugged features. His head sported short black hair and a black moustache. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest and straight backed. He looked well-disciplined and had a rather dangerous aura about him.

As he watched the screen, he couldn’t help but glance at the old man. “She’s incredibly talented Master ... it’s just she will only ever love the sword. Things that require thinking ... well, if she ever faces a challenge she’d rather just kill it.”

The old Japanese man wiped his face tiredly and poured himself another cup of liquor. “I had hoped she would meet some powerful cultivators in this competition, but so far we’ve been greatly disappointed. Hopefully, after this game of the City Master’s is over, the seeded teams will be more challenging for her, otherwise, she may become too arrogant, and it will impact on her cultivation.”

The moustached man nodded. “Master, I suggested she come here because I’ve fought with the City Master in the arena before. He’s definitely powerful. Although our match was won by me in the end, I believe he was only using me to train his martial techniques. Even then, I felt that he was holding something back. If I had to face him in a true life or death situation, even I might be troubled slightly. That is why I recommended she come for this War of Worlds.”

The old Japanese man looked at his disciple from the corner of his eye as his lips curled into a smile. “Oh? That’s rather high praise, especially coming from you. Is not the City Master just a True Spirit Realm? How could he be a challenge for you? You’ve been in the Palace Realm for decades.”

Moustache just nodded with a stern look on his face as he stared at the table. “I feel that, in another 10 years, I may not be that boys match in battle. If we counted all the strange artefacts his guild produces, I might not be a match for him even now.”

The Master’s eyes widened slightly. “There artefacts are that powerful? Perhaps it’s time that I met this boy. He would surely make a good Junior Brother for you two from the praise you’ve given him.”

Moustache smiled wryly at the thought. “I’m not so sure it’s that easy Master. There is something incredibly strange with this city. Within these walls, that boy is like a god. Not just that, but I feel as if I’m constantly being watched, but I can never pin point where from. It’s almost like I’m being observed from so many directions at once that it’s impossible to discern the location.

“This is the reason why I left the City so soon the last time I came here, and it’s also why I feel that the City Master’s Guild is powerful beyond the what it’s shown to the rest of the world.”

The moment he finished his discussion, a young man with long brown hair in a ponytail, fit physique and well-defined features, sat down at their table and shuffled over next to the moustached man.

He then grinned at the moustache man. “You’re intuition is quite frightening Mr Samurai. To feel the ever present gaze of my city, even though it’s not alive and has no will or intention. Very mysterious.”

The Moustache man’s eyes almost popped out of his skull when he realised that the young man who just sat down at their table was the very man they’d just been discussing. He hurriedly stood up and gave a curt bow.

“City Master.” He said as his closed fist was enveloped in his open palm in salute.

James just waved his hand about nonchalantly. “Cut that shit out. It’s belittling to us both for a cultivator of greater power to be bowing before me, a lowly True Spirit Realm.”

The moustache man sat back down and warily eyed James. Instead of crossing his arms again, he kept them resting on his thighs as if preparing to quickly reach for his sword and defend himself if need be.

This action didn’t go unnoticed by James, but he ignored it and instead looked over at the Old Japanese Man. Then his eyes narrowed slightly. “Where are you from old man?”

The man looked back at James, seemingly unperturbed by this interruption. His faced remained a light smile the whole time, and his eyes were two slits. He was entirely unreadable. “We came from the Bietsu.”

James’ eyes squinted a little more. “No, I meant, what lab are you from?”

Hearing this question, the old man’s face made a minute twitch for the first time. He then surveyed James again and turned to pour some more liquor. James quickly reached out a hand to stop him.

“Don’t drink that horses piss. Come, it’s rare for brothers of the earth to meet freely, why not enjoy something a little special. If I had to guess, you’re from one of the labs in Japan. I have something you’ll love.”

Saying as much, James pulled a small bottle from his sleeve. He then uncorked it, and the sweet scent wafted out into the tavern. Suddenly, the entire tavern grew strangely quiet as everyone experienced the moment when they first inhale the aroma of James’ Spirit Alcohol.

James then conjured a flame and heated the bottle for a short moment, after which he produced three, slightly concave, little saucers no bigger than a palm. Pouring the warmed liquor into the three saucers, James pushed one towards each of the master-disciple duo.

He then waved his hand encouraging them to try some with him. “Come come. This is something a little special we cooked up here in the lab. It’s called Heavens Six Rice Wine. Which more or less is basically Sake. A drink from your native homeland old man.”

Saying as much, James raised his saucer. The Moustache man, who was now somewhat lost by the conversation the City Master was having with his Master, looked suspiciously at the little saucer. Before he could voice doubts, his Master nodded towards him, then picked up his own saucer.

After a “cheers” the three drank. James watched the old man’s face with some pride as he saw him have a visible reaction and his whole body shook. The man then looked at James with slightly wider eyes, which James assumed was as close as he could get this unreadable old bastard to making an astonished face.

“Good, no? Well, enough about that. I’m sure you have some questions, but I also have a few of my own. How is it that you are still at the True Spirit Realm, but have a disciple in the Palace Realm? My second question is, where did you get the martial techniques you taught to that girl? Some kind of ancient inheritance you lucked into or perhaps you’re part of a powerful faction?”

The old man chuckled. “Inheritance? Faction? No young man. I developed these martial techniques myself. I was once a rather strong martial artist back home. Thanks to that, I quickly developed quite an interest in martial techniques, and developed my own based on what I learnt back home.”

James frowned slightly then leant back in his chair. After considering it for a moment, he found it was most likely true. After all, using technology from earth, James and his companion had managed to develop some god-like things of their own. It seemed that not just the sciences from earth were useful here.

“So, you still haven’t told me what lab you’re from.”

The old Japanese man glanced towards his Sake cup. James got the idea, for a sip of his Heavens Six Rice Wine, the man would answer a question. James poured another round and toasted.

After taking a minute to enjoy the Sake, the old man looked back to James. “Tokyo Lab 2.”

Although this wasn’t much information, it was enough for James to confirm he was, in fact, an earthling. James poured another drink. After everyone had drank, he looked to the old man again. “Old man, what do you say to joining my guild ... actually, never mind. If you wanted to join a faction, you most likely already have. Instead, what do you say to an exchange?

“If you give us tips on how you developed your martial techniques, or even better, shared your techniques, we can give you useful information of equivalent value in almost any other area of cultivation. Alchemy, Forging, Arrays, Spirit and even Soul cultivation.”

The old man’s already half closed eyes fully closed for a short time as he pondered. Just when James was sure the bastard had fallen asleep, the old man nodded subtly. “It’s not that I don’t want to join a faction. I am well aware how useful it would be in this world. Rather, I have been looking for one strong enough to be worth joining.”

The old man pondered for a little more then finally looked back at James. “Young Man, if you can defeat my disciple in your little tournament, then I will bring my two disciples and join your guild. However, I have one more condition. You need to help me find someone. An old friend of mine that I suspect should have also come through to this world.”

James nodded. “Sure. Although your disciple is powerful, I can tell just from scrying you that you clearly haven’t fully unlocked your Soul Aura properly yet, otherwise you would have either noticed my scrying or I would have noticed yours.

“If that’s the case, your young lady probably hasn’t fully realised her Soul Energy yet either. As for finding someone. I shouldn’t have a problem helping you out with that. Who are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for Dr. Skay he should be from the...” The man’s words trailed off not long after he started talking. The moment he said Dr. Skay, he noticed James’ face become very overcast.

James stood up from the table. “If you’re looking for the Old Mad Man, then you’d best follow me.”

James shot out of the tavern. Behind him, the old man now had what must be the closest his face had come to a worried expression in a long time. His moustached disciple simply looked incredibly confused and appeared to still be trying to process everything he’d just heard his master discussing.

It didn’t take long for the trio to arrive at the Guild HQ. James led them down through the elevator and then along the winding paths of the Gardens. He then came to what looked like a very normal looking gravestone in the centre of a meadow littered with all sorts of mundane flowers. None of these flowers had spirit properties but were planted here just to make the place more scenic and peaceful.

James stopped in front of the grave. Marked on the gravestone was ‘Crazy Old Bastard With a Godly Mind’. As soon as they stopped, Jasmine appeared out of James’ spirit realm and borrowed some of his spirit wine to make and offering at the gravestone before once again disappearing.

James heard the old man behind him let out a quiet sigh. Deciding to give the man a moment, he told them to meet him after the War of the Worlds, then wandered off to busy himself with other things.

-Spirit Arena-

At last, the battles were about to start. James and all the other participants stood in the centre of the huge Tower Realm class arena and observed the surrounding cacophonous crowds which were cheering and screaming.

Seated in the best seats close to the edge of the arena, in luxurious ‘royal’ viewing boxes, were the elders and seniors of all the factions that had entered their members into this tournament. Even Artimus had shown up to show his support for his seeded candidate, which was naturally James.

Some were excited and jubilant while others were quiet and contemplative or confident and aloof. There was no small amount of yelling and taunting going on between some of the factions that had deep enmities with each other.

The seeded participants and the recent winners of the trials stood tall and proud as if on show to the whole world, which they more or less were. Some seemed quite attuned to the crowd and interacted with them in different ways, trying to hype them up or just greeting some fans and waving.

Others stood in meditation, and there was even one or two who just stood around seemingly unconcerned with this scene.

Soon, a sound resounded out in the arena, and the crowd suddenly realised they couldn’t hear anything at all. Not even themselves. Everyone thought that they’d suddenly been struck deaf. That was until they heard the sound of steady footsteps and everyone’s attention was focused on a raised platform that sat high above the masses and overlooked the entire arena.

It wasn’t long before the very rigidly moving figure of Gary strode out onto the platform followed by the Hall Masters of the Guild, McCord, and the Generals of the Guard. This group was the most important group of people in the entire city...

At least, they were for the moment. With the core council away on business and James being part of the competition, they were the most powerful people in the city.

Gary, who looked like he was having a hard time adjusting to all this sudden attention, was dressed in regal looking white robes covered from head to toe in exquisite embroidery. What no one would ever have guessed, was that this embroidery was actually a series of powerful array patterns that were so focused and powerful they could protect Gary from the direct strike of a Tower Realm cultivator.

After some more awkward shuffling, Gary stood at the front of the platform. He gazed around at the crowds and seemed to be on the verge of sweating bullets. He then opened his mouth to start talking.

“Welcooiu ... Ahem!”

James hid his face in his palms. It was only now made painfully clear to him that Gary had trouble with public speaking and being in the centre of attention. The first words and his voice broke like he was some squeaky little teenager.

Seeing the dilemma, McCord stepped up next to Gary and whispered something into his ear. Gary’s eye then scanned across the participants to find James glaring death at him. If looks could kill, Gary would have spontaneously combusted from the force of that stare.

Gary closed his eyes for a moment and collect himself. Then his whole aura seemed to change from the clumsy uncertainty it was, into a strong, noble and courageous aura. It was almost like he’d suddenly become a totally different person.

When his eyes opened, they seemed to shine with a burning intensity that caused even the more powerful cultivators to avert their gaze when he looked at them. James almost spat blood when this change happened.

‘Just what the hell kind of courage did this guy eat? He’s not even the same guy. Man this Gary really is mysterious.’ James thought to himself.

Gary finally seemed ready. Suddenly, his voice boomed out through the silent arena like the words of a god speaking from on high. “Welcome everyone, to the Dark Brotherhoods first official War of the Worlds!”

Whatever it was that nullified all the sound of the crowds didn’t seem to have any effect on Gary’s voice as it carried to every ear in the arena seats.

Gary then flicked his arm casually and in a practised manner. With this flick, a huge screen shimmered to life underneath his elevated platform. At the same time, guild members moved out into the arena with a table and a box.

Drones zoomed about to here and there showing what was going on up on the screen. Gary started to explain while the members set up the little table and box. “Many of you may not know yet, but today the City Master, and the Founder of the Dark Brotherhood will be competing in today’s event as a representative of the Yori Empire in exchange for the independent status of our city.

“To ensure everyone that we will be judging and assigning combatants impartially and fairly, each member will use the fairest and most simple form to determine lots. They will each take a lot from this box. Matching lots will compete in the first round and so forth for every consecutive round.

“I also would like to inform everyone that due to the nature of the rules in this tournament, in which a person may kill their opponent if they wish, Master James has offered a bounty on his own head to any competitor capable of killing him. On his body is a Spatial Ring. If you kill him, the ring and its contents are yours. To prove our sincerity, Master James has agreed to swear an oath to this effect.”

Saying this far, Gary glanced down at James. James repeated the terms of the oath and swore by it. Heavenly law descended onto him in the middle of the arena. If the sound nullification weren’t in effect, the crowd would have been going absolutely wild.

At the moment, they instead seemed to be shaking uncontrollably trying to hold in their urge to discuss or cheer. Some of them even seemed to be already trying to scream out even with the null field.

Once this was done, Gary led everyone through picking out lots. As they were picked out, the matchups were displayed on the big screen under his platform. When James picked his lot, he found himself paired up with one of the Seeds.

Glancing over, he assessed the young man he would be contending with. This young man looked like a monkey and was just as excitable. He had long brown sideburns and sat on squatting on the ground with his knuckles on the ground ... just like a monkey.

From James’ memory, this fellow was the competitor from Sargie. There were quite a few rumours about sects in Sargie studying wild animal and beast behaviour and creating their martial techniques from these observations.

Once everything was done, Gary waved his hand again, and seats made of light seemed to form out of nothing behind him on the platform. It all looked truly miraculous. After encouraging everyone to enjoy the show, Gary and the others sat down in their seats.

The moment Gary’s bum touched the seat, he reverted back to the confused, uncertain man that he had been before. The other thing that happened was the null field disappeared. Without a need for an invitation, the crowd went nuts.

All the people that had been very patiently holding in their comments, questions, cheers and screams couldn’t hold back anymore and seemed to almost explode when the opportunity to voice themselves came. The shockwave of the sudden huge wave of sound actually made the defensive arrays light up and shudder for a brief moment. Half the crowd was pretty sure they just received major hearing damage ... which coincidentally only made everyone even louder.

James gave an evil grin as he stalked out of the arena with his hands behind his back to go to the arranged seating area for the competitors.

This competition had 110 competitors. 50 trial winners and 60 seeds. Of the 110 people gathered to fight today, James had taken note of only a handful. He was tempted to use his scrying to assess if any dark horses who had been hiding their power were mixed among everyone. In the end though, he decided not to.

After all, this whole thing, the trial, the battles, the prizes. All of it was happening solely for James to meet other powerful cultivators to test himself against. Not only that, but also because he was easily bored and took a great deal of amusement from playing these sorts of games.

For the short term, as in the next 5 to 10 years, he suspected he would be trapped here in Atsunari until he was powerful enough to move to Gastalous. He could go now obviously, but initial drone probes of Gastalous suggested that the primal energy saturation was about 133 times that of Atsunari.

At the moment, tech city was generating only 2 times the average saturation of Atsunari. Mind you, that was over the full 100 km area that tech city owned as a free city. If you were talking about just inside the walls, then it was almost 4 times, and if you were talking about the ability of some of the meditation chamber, they could almost draw in 80 times the average of Atsunari in one go.

Unfortunately, things like the meditation chambers didn’t actually ‘use’ much primal spirit energy. They just concentrated it into a smaller volume. It was only array patterns burning energy and cultivators refining or using energy that encouraged growth in the primal spirit energy of an area.

This being said, it meant that Gastalous was promised to be filled with monsters well and truly beyond the tower realm. Being able to cultivate 133 times faster would give cultivators on this continent a huge advantage over the weakest shitiest continent of Atsunari.

Returning from this digression, essentially James was only doing this to amuse himself. Otherwise, it would be a long boring few years if he had to sit around like the old bastards in closed door meditation for decades at a time.

Soon, battles began to flare to life in the arena, and the crowd was going off their nut. The quality of disciples that came for this competition were in a class of their own. All of these participants were genius’ in their circles of influence. They stood out above their peers and could even fight above their realm, most of them being able to contend against Palace Realm cultivators.

It wasn’t long until a battle that drew James’ interest began. This battle was the first time he saw one of the Tillion bug people in combat. He found these humanoid creatures strange because no matter how he looked at them, he couldn’t sense a cultivation realm, so he had no idea if they even cultivated spirit arts.

Standing in the arena was a competitor from Lokio. He was an aged old man with a grey beard. It was already unusual to see a True Spirit realm practitioner that was old, so he also grabbed James’ attention. Either he’s been stuck in the true spirit realm for a very long time, or he started cultivating very late.

He wore plain grey robes with the emblem of the Lokio Royal Family on his back. His skin was leathery and wrinkled, and his face was slightly droopy. He had long bushy eyebrows which seemed to cover his eyes, and his grey beard reached down in front of his chest. He carried a straight ebony walking cane carved with countless patterns. The cane’s handle was a white fox with 3 tails.

His opponent was a very human looking young man no older than 17 or 18. The young man’s skin was shiny and brown, and he had two antennae poking out from his head. He was muscular and fit and only wore a pair of loose fitting long pants.

Apart from the antennae and smooth, shiny brown skin, he looked every part the human being. If you saw him in the darkness or from a distance, you would easily mistake him for a human.

James glanced over at the VIP box reserved for the delegation from Tillion Unity. Seated in the front of the box was a woman who looked only 30 odd. Her face was remarkably beautiful and her skin flawless, if not somewhat pale. The only thing was ... she had 6 huge spider like legs that stuck out from her back.

If James was to guess, she was the ‘Widow Queen’. From what little he’d learnt, this woman was the leader of the Tillion Unity and was incredibly powerful. She had, more than once, fended off multiple Tower Realm practitioners from the United Islands single handed.

At the same time as James glanced at the gorgeous women with spider legs on her back, the women glanced over towards him. The two observed each other for a moment, then mutually returned their focus to the fight that was just about to begin.

The bell to begin rang out with a crisp ‘ding’ and the crowd began to cheer loudly. The moment the bell rang, the old man whipped his cane out in front and pointed it towards the bug man. With a flick of the wrist, the cane began to spew little head sized fireballs out like a torrential rain.

A huge explosion sounded out, and a dust cloud rose into the air shrouding the bug man within. Having not seen the man making any movements to dodge or block, everyone assumed he’d just been roasted alive. As the dust settled and the old man returned his cane to his side to lean upon, the bug man was gone.

Everyone was stunned. ‘Where the hell’s the body?’ was a communal thought shared by many of them. They didn’t have to wait long before a rumbling began to come from the arena. The ground behind the old man shifted, and the bug man suddenly sprang out like a shadowy phantom.

The old man clearly had quite some battle experience, never having let down his guard for a moment. As soon as the ground behind him shifted, he spun and whipped his cane down imbued with a scorching flame.

The bug man seemed surprised by the quick reflexes of the old man and crossed his arms in front of his chest, defending from the blow. The strike connected and shot the bug man back dozens of metres through the air and rolling along the ground.

Leaving no time for the bug man to regain his senses, the old man quickly shot out in pursuit. As he raced forward with a mirage like movement technique, he made a series of hand motions, each one creating a different hand gesture.

James remembered that many people created hand gestures with their techniques for two reasons. The first was to help focus their mind and channel their spirit energy properly. The second was because some hand gestures contained elements of natural laws. Similar to how array patterns influence spirit energy in special ways, specific hand gestures can also assist in this process.

The reason James had never bothered to learn any or create some was that he didn’t need the help. His martial techniques were all rather simple and didn’t require any complex spirit energy control. It was also because he had Goldy floating around up in his spirit realm. Whenever he had to accomplish something complex, Goldy would join in to help out.

After the old man had channelled his martial art, his body was enveloped in a raging fire, and his speed exploded. He appeared next to the bug man like a mirage in a hot desert. He then raised up his open palm into the air and slammed it down toward the bug man. As he did so, a huge ethereal palm made of fire formed around his hand and descended with it.

“Palm of the Fire God!” Screamed the old man as his palm crashed towards the bug man.

The bug man, who’d just stopped rolling and started to get his footing was astonished to find the old man only a step away from him unleashing a powerful martial technique. The bug man’s antennae twitched on his head, and he made disdainful sneer.

From the kneeling position he’d finally landed in, he pulled back a fist and lashed out with a plain simple punch. As he rose up to meet the fire palm, the air began to vibrate and shake. James, with his mind currently running at maximum speed thanks to the Lightning and Soul Energy, watched all this as if in slow motion.

He noticed that the bug man didn’t seem to have received any damage from the early flame cane he received that had shot him back. James didn’t see him materialise any spirit energy to protect his body and was somewhat surprised. As he continued to watch, his curiosity finally got the better of him and, he very specifically scryed the bug man’s body.

He didn’t want to ruin the surprise and suspense of all the other competitors, so he focused in his scrying directly onto the bug man’s body. What he saw made his mind rumble. The man had no spirit energy inside his body. He was in every way a completely powerless bug.

Instead, what he did have was a powerful Soul Energy pervading every part of his body, and moreover, every muscle, fibre, bone and even his blood were incredibly dense. After this short moment of scrying, James returned to just watching from the sidelines.

An earth shaking ‘BOOM!’ came from the collision of the duo in the arena. Dust was stirred up and filled half the arena as shockwaves from the collision caused the protection arrays to shimmer to life at the edges of the arena.

The crowd watched on in a moment of tense silence until slowly the dust settled. The one left standing, to everyone’s great shock, was the Bug Man. He stood proudly with his arms crossed over his broad shiny chest and stared down at the weak old man who was left coughing blood and kneeling on the ground.

This was an upset! Everyone could tell, from the intuitive sense they had at true spirit realm, that the bug man had no spirit cultivation. Still, the crowds loved a dark horse amongst the ranks of the competition and suddenly stood up with screams and cheers.

Amusingly, because ascension star had numerous strange and interesting looking races thanks to the numerous gateways, racism amongst the common masses was rare. Everyone had long since adapted to interacting with various strange races. Because of that, they didn’t care that the man was a Bug Man. So, they madly cheered their joy at a good show. Even if it was short.

The bug man looked down at the old man with a sneer of disdain. He chose not to kill the old man, and instead just walked out from the arena after the old man had admitted he lost the will to fight.

James was somewhat confused by the bug man’s cultivation. Just what kind of cultivation was this? He seemed to be using his Soul Pressure to temper his body constantly. This gave him very powerful soul from the constant internal practice, and it seemed to also give him a very powerful body.

Powerful enough to contend with practitioners of Spirit Energy.

James looked back to the Tillion Unity’s VIP box and noticed the Widow Queen looking at him again with a slight smile.

It didn’t take long for James to learn just what was going on though, as some of the other contestants nearby started to discuss. The arrogant looking youth from one of the Nahtiro teams gave a ‘tsk’ sound.

“Body Cultivators! Those disgusting bug’s body cultivation is too troublesome.”

The blonde girl stood next to him with her little brother Betto. She nodded her head contemplatively. “It’s fine. As long as the City Master has made sure to test that they are only a Stone level body cultivator, then we can still defeat them. From what I saw of that battle, the Roach like man is definitely at the peak of Stone Body. He may even be close to breaking through to the next layer of body refinement.”

James, curious about this discussion meandered over. After some thought, he undid his ponytail and ruffled his hair then ran off and changed into some very plain grey robes. Just this simple act was enough to change his appearance entirely. For these competitors that had only stolen a glance or two at him while he was in the arena for the selection, it would be difficult to determine who he was.

He then sidled up along the group as they discussed the bug people. When they noticed him approaching, the Girl and Arrogant Youth both mostly ignored him. Betto seemed rather strange already and didn’t appear to care about anything, so it wasn’t unusual to see him continue just standing there staring off into the distance.

James walked straight up to them then made a salute. “Greetings little sister, big brother. I couldn’t help but overhear you discussing the Bug Man’s cultivation method. Do you think ... you could fill this humble cultivator in on what exactly it is?”

The Arrogant youth was just about to lash out and drive this strange, messy looking man away. He didn’t put any of these other competitors in his eyes and considered them all beneath him. Most especially the ones like him, who looked like they’d been dragged out of some little country town out in the middle of nowhere.

Before he got the chance, in a rare turn of events and shocking both the young man and the girl, Betto saluted James and began to explain. “Big Brother, the bug people of the Tillion Union have very powerful body cultivation methods. Most of them are born into the world with powerful bodies already. When they start to cultivate, they choose to forgo spirit energy cultivation and instead focus on body cultivation.

“I’m sure you noticed the incredible power of the Roach Man’s body. Without any spirit power, he was still able to directly confront a True Spirit Realm cultivators full power martial technique with his fist alone.

“They, of course, aren’t the only ones to cultivate body arts. There are many different methods, but they all follow a similar design. By using the power of their soul, they temper every part of their body relentlessly. Some body cultivators even use the power of their soul to draw in spirit energy and fuse it into their body.

“I don’t know if you know this, but everything that exists creates some kind of spirit energy unique to it. Even two rocks that are made of the exact same earth, can produce their own slightly unique type of earth energy. The body is much the same, and the bones, blood, skin and every other part has its own intrinsic kind of spirit energy that it creates.

“Usually, we spirit cultivators ignore this unique energy of the body. Body Cultivators, on the other hand, focus almost entirely on this unique energy. Instead of creating a spirit realm in their dantian to channel spirit energy, they just draw it into the bodies and fuse it into their own unique bodily energies.”

Betto then put his finger to his chin in a pondering pose and continued under the shocked expressions of his Sister and Senior Brother.

“In a sense, they can also be considered spirit cultivators, only on a different path. They also have realms of power similar to us. The initial realms and the only ones I’m aware of are the Mortal, Stone, Iron, Steel and Gold realms. They all correspond to a spirit realm equivalent such as Barrier, True Spirit, Palace and so on.”

Betto then gave another salute to James. “I hope this helps with your understanding.”

James looked at Betto with a strange expression then grinned brightly. “I look forward to fighting you Little Brother Betto.”

With that, James tied his hair back and walked off to change back into his standard light blue robes.

As he strolled off, the pair that had sat through the explanation in bafflement suddenly turned curious gazes onto Betto. The girl was the first to ask. “Betto? Who was that? Do you know him? I’ve never heard you talk so much to anyone but Master.”

The arrogant youth also had questions in his eyes. Betto gave a nod as he watched James’ back moving off to the changing room. “Mnm. The City Master. He’s very strong.”

As he said this his eyes seemed to brighten noticeably, and a frightening aura of bloodlust began to leak out from him, causing the other participants, and even his sister and Senior to back away slightly.

As quickly as it had come, it went. Betto returned to the incomprehensible boring looking young man who stared off into space.

Throughout the first day, 55 competitors got eliminated. Some of the battles were fierce and well fought while others, like the bug man’s battle, held no suspense or ended rather quickly.

James’ for example, ended almost instantly. That monkey like man was blown away by a spear of lightning the moment the bell started.

The Bug people’s battles were equally unexciting and just based on his intuition, James could tell one of them was not in the same class as the rest.

That night, after the first round was finished, he wondered over to the grand hotel in the Central District. After a short elevator ride, with customary coma inducing elevator music, James knocked on the door of the Tillion Unions room.

Having learned from previous mistakes in dealing with powerful opponents, the hotel tower was surrounded by drones under Jasmine’s control, and James was accompanied by Harvy and another person who was covered in black robes from head to toe and had a dark hood shrouding there face in shadows.

The person to answer the door was the young Roach Man. Seeing James standing at the door he gave him an arrogant look and crossed his arms over his chest to look more imposing. “We don’t want to deal with anyone else. If you have business with the Tillion Union, then you can go through official channels.”

James didn’t have to say anything. Just the fact that the man was talking down to James, Harvy reacted without a sound. His body seemed to be consumed by a black mist, and moments later he was standing behind the Roach Man, and his scythe was pressed against his neck.

Harvy’s croaky dry voice sounded out from behind the man. It sounded like Death himself had come to take his soul into the eternal cycle of reincarnation. “Seek Death?”

James waved his hand, and Harvy suddenly disappeared into a black mist and emerged behind James. James gave him a strange look while ignoring the now shivering Roach Man. “Harvy, is that some kind of teleportation technique? It’s quite powerful.”

Harvy gave a curt nod. Although his face was hidden in bandages like a dried mummy’s corpse, it almost looked like Harvy was happy with the praise he received from his Dark Overlord.

James turned back to the Roach Man who was touching his neck, which had a tiny scratch mark that was starting to bleed. “I am James, the City Master. I’d like to meet with your ... Queen?”

Roach Man, now realising he’d vastly overstepped himself, bowed with a salute and quickly shuffled back into the room so fast he left behind after images. He then quickly returned and bowed again. “This way please, City Master James.”

James followed the man into the main lounge of their conjoined apartments. Seated on a cushion at a little tea table, discussing the most troublesome competitors they may face, was the Queen and the three other Seed members of the Tillion Unity.

James gave a simple salute to the Queen but ignored the rest. The Queen waved her hand and sent the 4 Seed members of her team off to busy themselves with something else. James’ eyes followed a middle-aged woman whose body was covered in scars. She had a long proboscis nose and a pair of translucent wings on her back.

Although James wasn’t sure, he suspected the mosquito-like nose could indeed suck the blood from her opponents. More troublesome was the wings. To be able to easily fly at their level of cultivation without a great deal of spirit energy being wasted, was a very useful ability.

James sat down opposite the Widow Queen at the table. He then watched with some surprise evident on his face, as the Widow Queens 6 long spider like legs retracted into her body and disappeared. As this happened, he noticed the legs slowly becoming a strange energy that sped around her through her blood and meridians and redistributed to other parts of her body.

Once this was done, James found himself sitting across from a stunningly beautiful, but normal human. The only exception being her white as a sheet skin tone. Also, he noticed the pupils of her eyes were split apart strangely as if they were the eight eyes of a spider.

James retracted his gaze and, as was customary to him now when he was meeting with someone, produced a bottle of Spirit Alcohol. As he poured his alcohol, the Widow Queen was observing him and the two companions behind him.

After feeling that she’d gauged their strengths, although shocked in her heart, she started the conversation with a flirtatious smile and coy look. “City Master James, it’s a pleasant surprise for you to visit me so late in the night but I’m not sure how I should respond to such indecent advances.”

Hearing the opening statement of the Widow Queen, James’ face became shy and bashful. “Lady Queen, why not have a drink with me, perhaps I’ll get lucky, and your inhibitions will be loosened.”

The Queen gave a little giggle and raised her cup that James had just poured her. “To loose inhibitions then?” James rose his cup as well and echoed her. The Widow Queen, although putting up a brave front as if she was unaffected, was inwardly shocked. This young City Master was only becoming more and more difficult to see through.

The wine he’d just poured was calling to her very soul. The fact alone, that James could casually produce such a high class wine just for this little social visit, already made her question if he actually had a hidden power from one of the greater continents helping his guild from the shadows.

To make her sharpen her wits further, she was surprised by James’ quick retort. She knew she was beautiful, and she knew that she was almost irresistible to humans after she’d withdrawn her legs. Even old Tower Realm monsters would find it difficult to resist her charms, let alone calmly tease her back without even a blink of the eye.

What she could never guess was that James had spent most of his time here with Jessy nearby. That succubus would often wantonly release her lust energy everywhere. She especially did this when she lost control of her temper, which was frequently when she was anywhere near James.

Thanks to this frequent tempering of his willpower, James had no problems resisting lustful thoughts. Mind you, even if he did have issues controlling lustful thoughts for this ‘loin stirring beauty’, rascal was his nature. He would never let someone get the upper hand in discussions of sex. He was very much shameless in this regard.

After their toast, James placed his sake cup onto the table and looked into the Widow Queens Eyes. “Lady Queen, although I’ve no doubt we could tease each other all night long, and I’m certain we could spend the entire night getting up to all sorts of other indecent activities ... that’s not why I am visiting this time.”

He then poured another drink as he continued. “This visit is in regards to your participant with the Iron Realm body.”

The Queen smiled coyly and covered her mouth with her hand as if to suppress a giggle. “But Guild Master, what could be the matter with that. I remember the rules of your competition. You can’t compete if you’re over the True Spirit Realm. None of my team’s members are even in the barrier realm. I hope you’ll forgive me for not understanding.”

James smiled, picked up his cup and toasted the Queen again. Once he was finished, he placed it down again and looked at the Queen. Now, instead of the shy innocent young expression he’d had before, he was frowning. Not only that, but his tone of voice became somewhat more stern.

“Lady Queen, if you wish to play word games with the rules of my competition, then I suggest you learn the words properly. The rules state that you must be a True Spirit Realm cultivator to compete. The fact that not one of your competitors are even in the True Spirit Realm give me the grounds to simply disqualify all of them together.”

The Queens face finally changed slightly as her smile stiffened and her brow creased. “Do you wish to make an enemy of the Tillion Unity?”

James suddenly returned to the innocent, bright smiling young man of moments before as he poured another drink. “An enemy? Well, let me ask you this? Does a tiger consider a rabbit his enemy? Or a does a dragon consider a dog his enemy? If I’m not wrong, you are most likely the most powerful practitioner in the Tillion Unity. If that’s the case, I could kill you right now, and then the Tillion Unity wouldn’t even be a rabbit in the eyes of a Dragon to my guild. It would become a speck of dust which the dragon has accidently stomped on in its travels.”

Just as the Queens’ face was very quickly changing into rage and indignation, James pushed her cup over to her, and his smile became even brighter. “However, apart from your interesting body cultivation techniques, I don’t particularly care about your nation, or it’s people. In fact, I don’t even care that you have brought an Iron Realm practitioner into my competition. I came here only to let you know, that if our two factions ever do business again, you should avoid trying to play any tricks. This time around, you shall suffer only minor consequences. Next time, your entire nation shall suffer the consequences.”

Finished with his warning, James downed his cup then stood to leave. The Queen, understandably rather upset with the direction this little talk had travelled in, shot to her feet filled with rage. “Just who do you think you are to talk down to me like that you piddling ant! You stand at a mountain but fail to see it! Do you think you can just come here and threaten me as you please!”

James stopped then turned back. His face was now strangely impassive and emotionless. The Queen suddenly felt like she was being stared at like a bug. James cupped his hands into the sleeves of his robe and then spoke. “You seem to be mistaken, I did not come here to threaten you. Nor was my intention to intimidate. It was you who made assumptions and threatened me. I never intended to remove your participants from the competition, but now, because you have angered me, your participants will die in tomorrow’s matches.”

James then turned and left with his two companions, leaving the Widow Queen shaking in rage. She summoned her team and then began lecturing them and preparing them for whatever tricks James might have up his sleeve for tomorrow’s matches.

The next day the arena was once more filled to the brim. Gary once more stumbled out and got things underway. Because of the uneven number of participants left, he announced that one of the battles will be a 5 way free for all.

The crowds were shocked by this statement. A five way free for all? Isn’t that just a little unorthodox?

As soon as this was heard, the Queen sitting up in her VIP room suddenly had a bad feeling. ‘It’s surely not coincidental. I only have the four Seed Members. However, there shouldn’t be anyone that could stand up to all 4 of them together, so at least one will make it through to the next round of qualifiers. That is most likely when the City Master will move to eliminate him.’

Although this was her thoughts on the matter, she wasn’t sure how exactly James was going to rig the vote. It would be difficult to rig since everyone was pulling their lot number out of a box under the full view of everyone else.

As lot’s were drawn, she discovered that her fear had come true. Everyone else in the VIP boxes had realised something suspicious was going on when all four members of the Tillion Unity somehow ended up in the 5 man free for all.

However, none of them said anything. They had realised the day before that one of the Tillion Unity’s members was clearly the equivalent of a Palace Realm cultivator in Body. If they weren’t punished for that by the hosts of the competition today, then many of them would have risen up in protest.

At last, the poor bastard who would be trapped in a ring to fight against 4 people for the same side was picked. James pulled out the little ball from the box with his number on it. The crowd, the other competitors and even the dignitaries of the other factions were stunned.

The City Master was planning to personally take them all on? What kind of madness was this?

Nonetheless, James showed an exuberant smile. To everyone in the crowds, it looked innocent and naïve, as if James had no idea what was going on and was just happy to be part of the process. To those who knew him better and had interacted with him a few times, they all grimaced.

‘So this is the smile of the devil?’ they all unanimously thought to themselves.

It wasn’t long before the second round of qualifiers set off, and the arena was filled with battle after battle.

With the quality of participants battling this time being slightly higher, the battles were dragged out somewhat more and a great deal more intense. Sword girl, Betto and a few others all easily finished their battles and were showing promise as the most powerful cultivators, all of them not having shown much except fast and decisive victories with simple techniques.

At last, the most curious battle of the day, and the one with the greatest suspense for the audience was about to get underway. Standing equidistance apart, the 5 participants of the 5 man free for all were preparing for their battle.

The 4 bug people weren’t too worried. Although their Queen had warned them all repeatedly to be careful in this battle, they felt that she was perhaps just over reacting. After all, as the city Master and host of this competition, he can’t show himself to be acting too unfairly and shamelessly.

They would just wait for a moment of distraction and kill him before he could take advantage of any arena arrays or other such things.

Finally, the announcer told them to ready up, and the bell of the arena gave a ‘ding’ signalling the start of the battle. Moments after the bell sounded, as the competitors were just about to start moving towards James, a huge boom rang out in the arena.

The crowds watched in shock as the mosquito like cultivator was suddenly turned into a bloody mist. Everyone’s eyes then returned to James, who stood in his starting position holding a Black Arc Cannon engraved with bright golden array patterns that were all shining.

Although they’d heard about the Arc Cannon, the bug people of Tillion Unity had never seen or experienced them. For this weapon to be able to completely destroy the body of an Iron Realm body cultivator, it was truly monstrous.

The remaining trio of bug people immediately began taking evasive manoeuvres and pushing their movement arts to the absolute limit, all in an attempt to prevent James from locking on to them.

James, as if not even worried by them, just flicked his hand and his Arc Cannon disappeared into his spatial ring. He then flicked his hand again, and as if materialising from thin air, a long scimitar came into being in his right hand. In his left appeared his Black Arc Pistol.

As soon as he started pouring spirit energy into the two weapons, they began to emit shining light and caused the air around him to start vibrating from some invisible pressure. His Black Arc Pistol, referred to henceforth as his BAP, had numerous golden engravings covering every inch of it.

It’s shape and structure was remarkably similar to an ordinary pistol from earth, only slightly longer. It’s most distinguishable feature however, was the short black blade attached like a bayonet to the front.

Naturally, the scimitar in his possession was loot from the prior attempt on his life by Hastoel’s border general.

The moment these two weapons materialised, the Hastoel delegation shot to their feet, filled with indignation and anger. Unfortunately, the crowd had just recovered from the shock of James’ instant kill and was roaring with cheers and enthusiasm, so their protests and derogatory remarks were drowned out.

With his two weapons in hand, James launched forward towards the remaining trio of the Tillion Unity. Apart from the Roach Man, the remaining two participants looked no different from normal humans apart from strange skin tones, which wasn’t unusual in this world anyway.

Now that they had begun to engage in battle however, the female stretched out her arms, and they slowly deformed into the shape of grasshoppers scythe like front legs. In addition to this, her eyes began to expand and protrude from her head until she had 300 degrees of vision.

The man squatted slightly as his legs deformed and soon reformed into a shape similar to a cricket’s. Once he was ready, he made to jump and suddenly disappeared. Clearly, his speed and jumping abilities had been greatly increased.

A Mantis, Roach and Cricket. With the mosquito dead in the first second of the battle, these three insect people began to use all their skill to make evasive manoeuvres as they rapidly approached James, only to realise that he was also rapidly moving towards them.

The three of them all made disdainful faces, as if belittling James because he was rushing into his death. In this case, they would probably be right. James acknowledged that the body cultivation of these insect people was beyond his previous fighting experience and because of that he wouldn’t recklessly fight them 1 on 3, even with the assistance of his weapons, which gave him a huge advantage.

Now that they were aware he had such powerful weapons, naturally they wouldn’t freely stand around and make it easy for him to use them. Proactively locking him down in one spot and then slowly wearing him down would be their best option.

James, however, had no intentions of fighting the three of them equally. This farce was naturally a punishment, to tell the Tillion Unity, and everyone else for that matter, that he was not to be taken lightly and angering him would have consequences.

With a wave of the hand, Jasmine suddenly appeared in the arena, seeming like a ghostly visage wrapped around a floating guild seal. As she came into existence, a wave of shock rippled through the onlookers. At the same time, James waved his hand again, and a figure in a black cloak appeared nearby.

This was the same figure that had accompanied him to meet the Queen the night before. Strangely, this figure made no motions, not even breathing. If you were powerful enough, you would realise that apart from a strange hum, this figure didn’t even make any normal bodily sounds ... for example, a heartbeat.

This all happened in a split second, and James didn’t even stop as he continued rushing towards the 3 insect people. The appearance of these 2 strange figures in the arena, especially in the middle of a fight, caused the crowds of onlookers to surge into an uproar.

However, unlike as one would expect, the uproar wasn’t over the fact that James appeared to be cheating by bringing in outsiders to his battle, but at the first action of the beautiful ghost woman.

Instead of moving to engage the enemies, she turned to the still silent, unmoving figure shrouded in a dark cloak. She floated over to it and pulled back the cloak of the man ... or was it a man?

What people saw instead was a woman ... or women like humanoid creature. It was female in its appearance but strangely looked more like an artefact. It was a woman crafted entirely from metals and other rare spirit resources.

Her skin was shiny and metallic, almost looking like polished silver, her hair was long and black, and anyone with some experience could tell that the hair was collected from a tower realm spirit beast. The eyes were like two gleaming red gems. More powerful cultivators could instinctively tell that the metal woman was filled with all sorts of other odd spirit materials.

Even more bizarre, was the actions of the ghost lady. She walked into the metal woman. The seal, which was usually trapped in Jasmine’s chest, fused into the chest of the metal woman. Just as James was about to reach the insect people, the metal woman jerked, and a strong heartbeat suddenly encompassed everything and suppressed all other noise.

The three Tillion participants suddenly felt an overwhelming instinctive fear, as if their natural enemy and predator had suddenly gazed down upon them from on high. With that feeling in the pits of their guts, they all suddenly shot back rapidly. Moving as far from James and Jasmine as they possibly could.

The delegation of Soel was so shocked, they appeared to be on the verge of collapsing. Finally, the Pope, Solaris, couldn’t hold his tongue any longer. “Heart of the Golden Crow! They actually placed the Heart of the Golden Crow into this abomination!”

Just as he seemed to be on the verge of racing out of his VIP Box to destroy this abomination, a shimmering shield came into existence in front of his box, and a huge pressure descended onto him. Gary looked down from his golden chair of light, appearing somewhat displeased.

“Please do not interfere in the battles, Pope Solaris. Our city hasn’t had any enmity with your Order of the Three Sun’s.”

The Pope, feeling that enormous pressure and seeing the giant hand from the Spire seemingly starting to shimmer to life above him, could only restrain himself and calmly step back into his box. He then glared daggers up at Gary.

“Guild Master Gary, please excuse me for my rudeness, but that abomination must be killed. Our Order of the Three Sun’s cannot allow such a being to exist that would desecrate one of our sacred idols and a messenger of the gods!”

Before Gary could reply, the Widow Queen, with her six long spider legs extended, also moved to the front of her box. She felt the instinctive fear of her race towards such a creature and naturally, could not allow such a thing to exist. On top of that, she could tell if this woman entered the battle, all hopes of her seed members surviving would be drowned.

“Guild Master Gary! This is an outrage! How can you allow that ... thing, to interfere in an arranged battle in your distinguished guild’s competition. By your own rules, anyone that interferes is to be killed! Surely your guild’s word isn’t so flimsy as to be broken now. All the great powers of the continent have come to observe this competition, and it would not bode well for your guild if you were to break the rules for your City Master!”

Gary seemed to have stepped into that strange mindset he had the day before, and as he stood up to address the shouts of all the delegates and crowds of people, his body exuded a regal overbearing aura. He looked down at the Widow Queen and Pope, then glanced at all the other VIP boxes that had suddenly come forward to try and pressure him.

Finally, he waved his hand, and silence consumed everything. “Silence!”

Everyone discovered their voices suddenly falling flat. Even the most powerful tower realm practitioners from the various delegations, felt their voice suddenly leave them. It was almost like some kind of natural law.

Gary frowned slightly and glanced at James. Naturally, Gary knew more about James than anyone outside of the core group, however, he hadn’t been informed prior to this about what James had been planning for this battle.

James just stared back at Gary’s stern frown, then subtly nodded. Gary secretly released a tense breath in his heart.

“Founding Master, please assist this Junior in explaining what is happening.”

James surveyed the angry looking delegates and the excited looking crowds. He then glanced over at Jasmine, who appeared to swishing her arms about and wasn’t paying any attention to the surroundings at all.

He smiled somewhat bitterly. He had expected some upset over the appearance of Jasmine, but he hadn’t expected it to be so big that almost every delegate was demanding her death. Finally, he could only sigh and turn to explain.

“This is simply a construct ... I suppose, if you had to liken it to anything created before now, it is most similar to your Golems that many of you use to train younger generations. The only difference is, that I have put a soul into it. From my understanding, this is well within the rules of the competition.

“As the construct is simply an artefact, it falls well within the limitations for the rules of the competition. I would also like to add, that the soul I have planted into the construct is a part of my spirit realm and therefore, a part of me. This is not the sudden appearance of another contender, but simply me using two bodies.”

Jasmine, hearing her cue, then made a show of launching a simple martial technique from each of James’ 7 elements. Water, Wind, Fire, Earth, Lightning, Plasma and Magnetism. It goes without saying, that Pride still couldn’t be manifested outside of his body, apart from a strange aura that slightly influences other people. Even if he released this power, no one would realise it came from him.

Everyone was aware that James had numerous powerful elements. It wasn’t a secret, after all, he’d displayed them all countless times in the battle arena of Tech City. Due to the rarity of having so many affinities, everyone readily recognised that it was almost impossible for anyone else to accumulate and master so many spirit energies.

Either the construct allowed the soul within to wield these elements freely, which was almost impossible because so many pure refined energies would, without doubt, begin to violently clash, or the soul within the construct truly was somehow linked to James’ spirit realm.

The possibility of which was equally crazy, considering most people believed a person’s spirit realm was a physical location in the body, and not an abstract location like James’ was.

With the possibility of both being equally unlikely, many people chose to believe the one that was only slightly less unlikely, which was that this female spirit forged into the Guild Seal of the Brotherhood, was, in fact, a part of James’ spirit realm.

Although a great many people believed James’ explanation, they chose to pretend they didn’t. They naturally couldn’t allow James to bring such a seemingly powerful weapon into the competition. It would drastically reduce the possibility of their own seed candidates winning.

Unfortunately, they never had a chance to voice their concerns and scream their rhetoric and accusations to confuse the situation, because the natural law of silence pervaded the arena and nothing could be heard that was not allowed to be heard by Gary.

Gary gave a nod and then cupped his chin for a moment, seemingly considering what he should do. Naturally, Gary already knew what he should do. However, at the moment, James hadn’t given him any direct orders, or told him what he wanted him to do, as such, Gary was in somewhat of a predicament.

Although, to the outside world, James had left the Brotherhood to the new Guild Master and instead became the City Master of Tech City, Gary was well aware that the guild would never truly leave James’ hands. This then created the problem for Gary of whether to focus on the guild and worry about its interests or to focus on James and his interests.

It wasn’t long before Gary came to the realisation that these two things were the exact same thing. In Gary’s mind, James was the Guild.

With that thought, he looked down at the crowds to proclaim his decision in the matter.

“Due to the nature of this construct, and it being the first time this battle exchange has been hosted, the Brotherhood will consider it to be an artefact under the control of the battle participant. In the future, our guild will manufacture a method to determine the nature of a construct to its master, and all future constructs will be tested before they can enter the arena.

“At the same time, I can understand everyone will not feel totally reassured that this construct is as City Master James has said it to be, and therefore after this battle is finished, we must ask City Master James to not use it again for the rest of this competition.”

With that said, Gary waved his arms, which was the signal for the AI to release the null sound field. Gary then sat down as almost everyone else was placated. Apart from Widow Queen and the Pope, everyone was content with this ruling. In the end, all they cared about was whether their seed members would have to face up against James’ construct.

The Pope was dissatisfied by the fact that the Brotherhood didn’t even acknowledge his complaints of the abominations creation, and the Widow was naturally dissatisfied with the fact that all her seed members were most likely about to die.

Seeing her 3 seed members all cowering away in the corners of the arena, Widow Queen could only sigh. She then stepped forward to the edge of her VIP Box. “The Tillion Unity will be withdrawing its three seed members from this battle, and here on falling out of the competition.”

The Roach, Cricket and Mantis all let out simultaneous sighs of relief as they fled the arena battlefield. None of them wanted to face that construct. The fact that it contained the beating heart of a Golden Crow already swayed their hearts severely. The fact that it could use all 6 of James’ elements completely crushed their hopes of victory.

James smiled slightly as he gazed up at Gary, who was once again nervously looking about and seemingly completely out of touch with reality. He wasn’t sure how Gary even reached this position, but he was now certain Gary had some strange secrets hidden deep within him.

Despite his missing arm and scarred face, he still seemed to exude an aura of regal indifference and authority whenever he was forced to step up and assume his position of Guild Master.

On the other hand, Jasmine was rather upset with the Tillion Unity withdrawing. Seeing as this was her only chance to test out her latest invention, she was incredibly excited to do battle ... now, she was forced to exit the construct and merge back into James’ spirit world, never having gotten a chance to kill something ... err, or test the body.

With the most anticipated battle event of the day suddenly falling on its face and becoming this spectacle, the crowds of onlookers were slightly dissatisfied. However, there was nothing they could do and so unwillingly accepted the situation.