Chapter 17: Because we’re soulmates dummy!

-Brotherhood Guild Hall-

At first, everyone thought it was a scam, but after a few curious and adventuress souls had gone through the process, rumours began to travel. Eventually, they didn’t even need the sign out front.

A massive wave of interest began to stir throughout the city as every commoner with a son or daughter scraped together every copper they could find till they had a hundred just so they had a chance of sending their children in. People began to crowd the front door of the guild and a line formed of desperate commoners from the wealthy merchants and businessmen to the lowly field ploughing commoners and poorly treated servants.

The uproar was so huge that almost the entire market plaza was filled with people trying to file into the Guildhall and half the businesses in the city were closed shut. Jessy actually had the chance to hire almost all her staff, most of whom willingly jumped at the chance to get the hypno and work it off with the guild.

In the Guild foyer it looked like a chaotic mess, as the 5 new receptionist girls employed by Jessy hurriedly took people’s money then gave them a ticket. A few unruly guests made an ass of themselves occasionally until Jessy strolled up, stroked their arm, and then they collapsed on the floor jutting their hips into the sky madly. Ever patron of the guild made a wide margin around her whenever this scene happened.

Down in the arena, Harvy, who was now covered from head to toe in bandages like a mummy and smelled of mint, was leading people over to an open area until they’d packed about a hundred in. Then James pressed on the Black-Pad and everyone spasmed and jerked about with their eyes unnaturally glued to a projection on the wall as strange sounds rang out from the arena speakers. It very much resembled a bucket of live fish dumped on the ground flailing and flopping about.

After about 5 minutes of that, they were led over to a large bench with a whole stack of mead barrels. Skay was busy pouring in a questionable substance labelled 616.2 into the barrels and then half filling mugs with mead. As a person drank it, they felt their body grow warm, and then James would give them a stick and tell them to imagine their spirit power and pour it in.

Strangely, whenever he asked someone how they envisioned their spirit energy they would reply with something like “Well, I didn’t envision it as anything.” When James asked about how much they knew of cultivation, basically everyone would say that cultivators had power over the four elements.

When this happened repeatedly, he realised that perhaps it’s entirely the fault of this misconception that people rarely unlocked exciting elements. Or if they did, maybe it’s this misconception that limits them from ever perceiving they even had it.

No rare talents popped up from the crowds, and not a single person exhibited a reaction even close to when the 4 current members of the guild unlocked an element with the stick. This process continued throughout the majority of the day until close to sunset, when Skay ran out of whatever he’d been feeding to those poor hapless fools. They nominated Jessy to be the spokesperson who had to tell the massive crowd outside that they could no longer supply their services for the day and anyone still interested should wait until tomorrow.

Once the disappointed crowd dispersed, the city settled into the night, and the Brotherhood sat at their round table in the Guildmaster’s office.

Jessy looked up from a report just handed to her by one of her new hires. “Looks like we didn’t do too badly. Thanks to your little promotional stunt, I’ve hired about 15 staff to fill out the essential roles in the Guildhall. I have a few on the back burner as well. They offered services in exchange for the hypno but I’d already filled out my staff.”

James swished his hand impatiently. “Who cares about the commoners, we probably won’t have many decent members joining the guild for a while. What about our intake. How many people did we get through today and how much did we make?”

Jessy flipped over some parchment then pulled another document out. “Apart from the 15 new employees who we hypno’d in exchange for working here, we serviced ... About 8000 individuals today. That makes 80 gold coins which is about an eighth of what we could probably get if we sold one of your spirit batteries to the Gau Clan. On auction to the whole city, we’d probably get double that again.”

James put a grin on his face. “Well, 80 gold coins isn’t bad for a day’s work. If we’re going to keep doing this, let’s have some fun with it. Let’s start advertising that we’re seeking fresh new members and anyone that can reach the half barrier realm or better is welcome to apply.”

James then thought for a bit and signaled Jessy to start scribing as he had some thoughts on how their guild would operate. Guilds would usually take commissions and jobs from people in whatever their line of work was. The merchant’s guild, for example, specialised in marketable contracts and the builder’s guild in building things.

James had decided his guild wouldn’t specialise in anything. He would take any job from anyone to do anything, as long as it was possible to do it. This would serve two purposes. Firstly, he could gather information and make contacts with every trade and walk of life. Secondly, it created a method for members to earn money and resources and also created a competitive atmosphere for newer members.

He wasn’t sure how it would go, because from what he’d heard, most guilds controlled their Job intake and the people they sent out to Jobs so that they could suppress others and grovel to the powerful. James already knew his approach would undoubtedly step on the toes of the other guilds and the powers behind them, but he would eventually be upsetting them anyway.

While fleshing out this idea he began to add some new rules and changed some things in the setup of the guild.

The new guild rules were as follows.

1. All members must swear an oath of loyalty to the guild.

2. Anyone that can swear an oath is free to join. There are no limitations to class or background.

3. Anything the guild sells, members get a discount price of 50%.

4. Members can accrue Guild Merits from Job completions to trade in for gold, resources, skills and techniques.

5. All members are free to act autonomously and have no requirements from the guild apart from protecting its interests whenever possible.

He also had Jessy scribe down some miscellaneous stuff, like how merit points would work and what sort of things they’d be selling and trading. After this had been done, he turned to Skay. “Old Madman, how much more of that 616 can you make and how much does it cost us to make it?”

Skay smiled a small smile then wrote down a list on some parchment. Then he grabbed a fresh piece and drew a strange circular pattern on it containing some intricate and elaborate designs. When he was done, he pushed it over to James.

When James reached out a hand to collect them, he felt his spirit power gather rate speeding up, even though he wasn’t in meditation. His eyes opened in shock then quickly closed as he lapsed into a silent moment inspecting his gathering rate.

When he was done, he could tell the Old Madman had managed to find or create a pattern that draws in primal spirit energy. Once he had that thought, he looked at the other parchment and saw a list of very common and reasonably cheap herbs along with ‘Helper x 3’.

Skay began to explain before James even had to ask. “I can grow what we need in ... about 3 days. I’m just going to need some people tending to the gardens on level 4. Also, this array pattern isn’t one I made. It’s one that the computers pattern recognition picked out as ‘most likely to draw in spirit energy’. I honestly only have a few ideas on how these fucking things work, but I suspect you’ll quite enjoy them if I’m right. Mostly just because I believe they’re similar to an electrical circuit diagram. This small scale primal gathering array works without any catalyst, I’m fucked if I can figure out how, perhaps just the ink alone has some spirit energy that allows it to successfully create a circuit. On the other hand, anything bigger than that must be produced with a catalyst as paint ... or carved into a catalyst.”

James cupped his chin and thought about the implications of this. Suddenly an idea struck him, and he could no longer sit still. “The Lab Skay! There’s something we gotta try right now!”

Skay grinned madly seeing James getting excited over an idea. For the past few days, James had been playing Guildmaster and hadn’t been in the lab as much. Without him around, Skay had noticed a good deal of his research slowing down significantly. Although it wasn’t so bad as to significantly limit him, it was enough for him to notice that James had been a driving force behind a good deal of his earlier research.

Seeing the boys running off to play mad scientist, Jessy gave a sigh then called in one of the maids to brew some tea as she started sorting out how to run the Guildhall efficiently when James eventually started pulling in those poor unsuspecting wretches from the city.

-The Lab-

“Old Madman, you remember how we crushed some lightning stones into dust and used it to paint the Arc Cannon Rail?” James was busily searching through bench cupboards and yet to be unpacked boxes from the move. Finally, he pulled out a little jar of white liquid labelled LS3 Paint. (Lightning Seeking Spirit Stone Paint). Once he had it in hand, he pulled Harvy over to an open area of the floor then took a photo of the array pattern he just got from Skay.

Skay was busily trying to imagine just what James was thinking, when suddenly it clicked. His eyes widened for an instant and a sickening smile showed his teeth as his licked his lips and pulled out his Black-Pad. After a few button presses, he began dictating.

“Begin new Array Project. The test subject is a simple array pattern for drawing in primal spirit energy using. LS3 based paint as a catalyst and lightning based spirit power as the driving force.”

After making that short note, he went to help James and Harvy who’d projected the image onto the ground from James’ Black-Pad. After painting the array pattern onto the floor with great care and detail, Skay stepped back. Once he felt a safe distance, he lowered his Spider Eyes and then after a second thought began to run around the lab turning on a bunch of odd equipment he’d been developing.

Once he saw that Skay was ready, James pushed Harvy into the array pattern. “Harvy, you’ve got a crucial job. Just stand right here and feel free to describe any changes you feel.”

Having said as much, James moved to the outside of the pattern then knelt down and started pouring in spirit power. It didn’t even take much before the array pattern lit up like a Christmas tree and James could notably feel a massive influx of primal spirit energy. After only a few seconds, he could feel that he wasn’t able to put any more spirit energy into the paint and it was just going straight into the floor.

Skay was busy dictating and recording odd things, and Harvy appeared to be in a trance. After half an hour and nothing changing, James quirked his eyebrow. He tried to pour in some more energy and realising the array was still full he walked over to Skay. “You know old madman ... I thought it would run out of spirit energy. I think at this point it’s self-sustaining somehow.”

Skay’s eyes glittered with madness as he mashed away at computers and his pad intermittently. “I suspect your right boy. Come have a look at this.”

James looked at a screen Skay was pointing to and saw a graph that started off at one then slowly rose over a time period of half an hour to 25 where it was starting to level off. Connected to the screen was a little device that looked like it was made of some unique and unusual materials. After closer inspection, he could tell it had a little bit of plant matter hooked up to an odd gem he’d never seen before. One side was painted with LS3 Paint and sat in a little Black-Iron box with a multitude of cables running to the computer.

After blinking a few times, he couldn’t help glancing at Skay only to see a massive shit eating grin. “Hahaha! You’re right boy, I’ve figured out a way to measure spirit energy. Although, at the moment I can only measure it in the local area, and specifically only Primal Spirit Energy. If I can find something better than this plant I may be able to build something the size of a USB stick that you can take with you anywhere to measure spirit power. Hell, if I could, I’d fucking figure out a way to measure a person’s spirit energy. That, I suspect, is much further in the future though.”

James cast his eyes back to the screen and saw that the Primal Energy had slowly risen some more to 26 times the average energy. “Hey, if we set up one of these in the arena and just had people meditate in it for a half hour do you think they’d generate enough energy to use the testing stick without your 616?”

Skay thought about it for a short time, then gave a nod. “If it’s draw rate is based on its size and the purity of the catalyst we probably could. If we make an almost pure LS3 paint and create an array that spans the entire arena, it would probably reach primal energy levels approaching the hundreds. If it takes more than half an hour to generate the tiny little bit someone needs to unlock an element, then they have literally zero talent for cultivation, and we probably can’t help them even with our different methods.”

After this discussion, they processed some new paint and spent the entire night painting the array pattern onto the roof of the arena level. Then after charging it, they painted over the whole thing with conventional paint, so the entire roof was white, and the array was concealed. It made the arena exceptionally bright, and they ended up having to remove a third of the light stones from the ceiling.

-In the dark of midnight.-

After some more playing and testing, James made an excuse and disappeared off into the town. After a short time of walking, he came to the conclusion that he was lost and mumbled as much to himself before moving to step in another direction.

Just as his foot touched down, he froze. His face assumed it’s standard dead eyes and detached countenance. After a moment he turned with a scowl and started walking in a different direction. After a few more turns and some narrow twisting streets, he came to a large courtyard in the centre of which was a huge glistening black rock that reached up into the sky a good 40 meters. Its entire surface was covered in bright, intricate and bizarre moving patterns and it somewhat resembled a giant shard of black glass.

After observing his surroundings and seeing no one nearby, he walked up to the rock. With some hesitation, he reached out his hand, placing it onto the monolith. His face quickly became completely slack and blank as if his body wasn’t even currently occupied.

James vision grew blurry and twisted, until moments later he found himself standing in an entirely empty white space that reached out in every direction to infinity. Overhead sat an enormous blue sun made of lightning that stretched out crossing half his field of vision and mighty bolts of lightning swarmed out from it across the white space striking the ground far beyond James’ range to perceive.

Once he’d had a few minutes to observe the situation and calm down the lightning sun slowly morphed and formed until it was the shape of a titanic Chinese dragon towering up into the heavens and its tail stretching off into the distance. James’ heart nearly exploded when the giant head leant down and looked at him. The head was so big it looked like he could stand on one of its massive fangs like standing at the summit of a mountain.

After just staring for a while the dragon eventually spoke in the voice of a bratty teenage girl.

“Hahaha! Oh my god, like, finally! It only took you a month. Fuck sake James, felt like I’ve been waitin’ here for about fucken ever. Christ, I was almost ready to just endlessly blast you with telepathy coms till you were fucken forced to come down here. By the way, loving the whole dark guild slash cult thing you’re running. Never seen a dark guild popping up their Guildhall in plain sight in the middle of a city. Hahaha, it’s fucken brilliant. Oh, fuck! I’m so fucken excited. You don’t understand how fucken long I’ve been stuck in this fucken rock, just doing damn memory implanting every time some new little turd is born, or some stupid fucken stepper gets sucked through a gateway nearby. Fucken’ hell! Thought I’d be in here for fucken ever James! You understand, For. Fucking. Ever! That’s the time it takes for everything in existence to begin and then eventually end. Oh well, I guess you probably...”

James just stared. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was one of those people that just had a stroke and lost all expression and motion, just dying standing up staring off into the distance like a statue. James was never sure what to expect when he started getting weird visions from the monolith. He wasn’t entirely sure whether to believe the monolith was actually communicating with him in his mind. For a time, he thought he’d just finally lost a little part of his mind from the fact that something had been playing in his head.

When it first happened, he’d just discovered the monoliths existence and was freaking out, yelling inside his head for it to get out. He’d just met Elder Gau for the second time and had asked about the monoliths range in preparation to try and escape. It was at that moment when it first happened. A birds-eye view of the entire area for 50 or so kilometres around the city was forced into his head. Everywhere inside of the 35km radius of the centre of the city looked ordinary but everywhere outside of that was painted red.

Then in this vision, he saw himself stepping over the demarcating line between normal and red when a massive lightning bolt descended from the sky and turned him to ash! Then the vision changed, and the words Oath to the Heavens was transmitted into his mind as if he had just had the thought himself.