Chapter 21: Wrath

-The Lab-

While Harvy and Skay busied themselves with the now unconscious Galtin on an operating table, James went to check on their new residents. He had intended for the two of them to come train with them today, but circumstances prevented him from properly inducting Fatty and figuring out what his deal was. Exsue, of course, had still been unconscious.

To his surprise, they both appeared to be awake and were pacing around inside their rooms. The moment he opened the door to Fatty’s room, Fatty shot back against the wall with both hands holding his ass. “Stop! Wait! You don’t need to probe me, I can tell you everything!”

James just stood at the doorway looking on with a strange expression. Then a smile broadened his face, and he walked back out. “Let’s go Fatty you crazy bastard. We only locked you up for a little bit for our safety and yours. You ate a lot of energy yesterday so we couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t explode.”

Fatty cautiously followed James out to the main floor space of the lab. James sat him down then started putting some equipment on him. He took a hypodermic needle and drew some blood out of Fatty’s hand, then turned on the computer screen as he placed it in an odd little device on the bench top. As the computer started whirling away, he got a detailed history paying particular attention to Fatty’s spirit energy.

He had to stop Fatty multiple times when he seemed about ready to launch into one of his crazy conspiracies. Instead, he focused on exactly how he triggered this element and what symptoms he’d had recently.

After he was done with his very basic check-up, he sat down with Fatty and spent an hour explaining everything. He’d told some of this stuff earlier, but this time he was going to fill Fatty in on everything he could.

Once that was done, he left Fatty to try and digest it all as Jessy started explaining everything again in simpler terms. James realised from this that he’d apparently gotten a little carried away when describing cultivation.

During his questioning, he’d come to a new conclusion on elements that reflected a strong emotion. They clouded your judgment and influenced your personality. He’d already been suspicious when he discovered Jessy had been taking men back to her room regularly, even after she’d unlocked the water element.

Now that Fatty had appeared, with what James could only describe as the gluttony element and was endlessly hungry, he was confident that unlocking an element that was an emotion would alter your personality slightly. If not your personality then it at least changed how your body reacted to certain stimulus. In Jessy’s case, she was constantly horny. Fatty was constantly hungry.

That meant that although these elements were stupidly powerful in comparison, they also had drawbacks. It also meant that just to maintain control, you needed to be strong willed enough not to allow it to consume you.

Thinking this far, he wandered back and let Exsue out. As if to contradict Fatty’s earlier cautions, Exsue threw herself towards the doorway with a huge smile and jumped onto James. No one was quite sure what to think when they saw James walking back trying to pry the girl off himself as she kissed his face everywhere and humped her hips into his waist with her legs and arms wrapped around him.

The moment she attached herself to him, James felt like he’d suddenly contracted an STD. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t get rid of her. Eventually, he just gave a loud sigh and let her come along sitting on his back. Although she wasn’t weighty, the constant hip grinding and gasping into his ear was incredibly distracting, for him and everyone else in the lab. Making it worse he felt a wet spot on his back that just seemed to be growing larger.

After some time, and some now empty phials of questionable content later, Skay finished up with Galtin, and he was tossed into a room to recover. Now everyone in the Guild was together. Skay, James, Jessy, Harvy and the two newcomers, Exsue and Fatty.

The first thing discussed as they all sat down was Exsue and Fatty. Jessy specifically questioned the nature of their relationship only to be glared at in a vile manner by Exsue and snubbed with a “Noneya business”.

Fatty, although still suspicious that everyone was disguised aliens, agreed to join the guild. They had the same goals, and they were people he knew, so he didn’t hum and haw too much over it. Exsue, on the other hand, said she “don’t give a rats ass about the stupid guild.” She made her position clear that the only thing she cared about was James.

That led to a discussion on exactly who she was. Most of which Skay had already somewhat guessed. Jessy just pinched her forehead as if she felt a headache coming on and Harvy remained partially dead as always and looked like none of this mattered to him.

Now that Exsue was awake James took the opportunity to ask about how the monolith worked and what the consequences of releasing her would be. Now that she was out, Exsue didn’t hold to much back. There were certain things she wouldn’t tell them about, but she explained with two words the general situation now that she’d escaped. “City’s Fucked.”

Apparently, the monolith was normally the limiting factor on its protective range. In this case, things would be different, though. Typically, the monolith took advantage of the spirit beast trapped inside it to help power and control it properly. That meant that the stronger the creature’s spirit was, the more it could accomplish and protect.

Now that the spirit was swapped out with a little True Spirit Realm spirit ... well, I’m sure your imaginations can tell what the result is. Not only does Little Blue now have to learn how to control and operate the monolith correctly, it also has to try and power it. This meant the range of the monolith had dropped to a radius of 4 km. Which was barely enough to cover a quarter of the city, let alone the thousands of square kilometres of grain it protected with Exsue in control.

Having realised just how fucked they would be if the city were attacked, the Brotherhood sent Skay to get Hao, Anvil and Song down here. They needed to start some brainstorming on what exactly to do. James was averse to the idea of evacuating the city. Even if they travelled with the Gau Clan they may not necessarily arrive at their destination.

To further reinforce his decision, was all the work they’d put into erecting a guild here. Now they may not be attacked by a horde. But even if they just had an increase in beast activity, it could be detrimental to the test subjects in the city ... err, the residents rather.

For another full night, the Brotherhood and Gau Elders discussed the potential damage to the monolith and countermeasures. They wisely chose not to mention any involvement in the events of the monolith and instead spoke entirely theoretically.

-Brotherhood Guildhall-

The next day, the number of people lining up had reduced significantly. A good deal of the population who could afford it straight away had already been processed by the guild. In their coffers was a silver coin from nearly 40 thousand people. Now the people queuing up were mostly people who had to save up some coppers to afford the hypno.

This meant that half the population of the city was cultivators. If Exsue were still in the monolith, she’d have noticed a huge jump in how far her control range had extended. Skay had seen a huge change in the cities average spirit energy as well. He concluded that spirit energy must be drawn towards areas that it’s being ... taken, from.

That meant the more spirit energy that was absorbed from the world, the more the world would try and fill the area with spirit energy. Amusingly, that suggested that the stronger the population in an area was, the more spirit energy would gather there. Indeed, the strong become stronger, and the weak become weaker.

Needless to say, Skay had no aversion to raising the average spirit energy of the city. The only problem was when Exsue mentioned how the spirit beasts would be drawn more quickly towards areas with high primal spirit energy. They were essentially lighting a beacon for a beast horde to attack.

James, of course, ignored this warning, he would never turn down the people’s money. He already had nearly 400 gold. That would be enough to keep the Guild running for a couple of years straight. It also meant they didn’t have to rush into selling any technology to the clans or guilds just yet.

As the commoners were being processed, James went to the main hall that had remained mostly unused until now. Recently, some loose cultivators not tied to any organisation had expressed interest in joining the guild. Although the rules of the guild sounded rather strict, they were actually fairly lenient in comparison to others.

They weren’t restricted in how they operate and only needed to keep the guild in mind. That mostly meant they could do whatever the hell they liked as long as they didn’t create trouble for the guild or give away information on the guild. In exchange, they got the chance to take any job they wanted and earn rewards. If this guild had the ability to hand out such a powerful meditation technique to commoners, then they surely had other far more powerful methods that could assist them in cultivation.

James stepped up onto the little stage in the main hall and looked over the 15 odd people sitting and talking to each other. One of them happened to be someone that James had met. “Haungshu, no need for you to join in this ceremony, go to the foyer and tell Harvy to take you down to the lab.”

After saying that. he glanced at the remaining 14 then read them the guild’s rules. Before they swore any oaths, he allowed them to ask a few questions. The first one came from an older looking lady wearing leather adventurer garbs.

“What sort of things can this guild offer us once we join?”

James just smiled and gave her another look over. “Oh? Offer? You make it sound like were going to just give you something for joining up. Like some kind of gift? You’ve already got the wrong idea about this place if you think that’s the case. You’ll get nothing but an opportunity. If you finish any of the jobs, then you can earn something.”

James then indicated to the two job boards on the walls. One of them already had about 10 different jobs on it. Each one had the outline of a star stamped on the bottom of it. This meant they had a Barrier Realm level of difficulty.

Next to the star was a number. All of these job cards had a 1 to 4 written next to it. This was the number of merits they could receive from the guild on successful job completion. At the end of the job board was a piece of paper with a list of things they sold only to guild members and a list of stuff they sold to anyone.

On the member-only list, starting at 5 merits was something labelled 616.3. The list went on and filled out to nearly 50 items or techniques from instruction on essential element control to the star point breathing technique that James had been working on recently. At the end of the list for 10,000 points was written two words. Arc Cannon.

There was only one more thing currently posted to the job board. It had 100 merit points as the reward and had no star. The only thing written on the Job notice was ‘Lab Assistant, 1 day’. James was somewhat apprehensive about having such a large reward for this job, but Jessy believed even 1000 points was too little. This meant they eventually decided on an in between of only 100 points.

In Jessy’s opinion, anyone that can survive a single day in the Laboratory either had to be as mad as the pair that inhabits it or already be dead, much like the first lab assistant, Harvy.

Once James had done speaking, 3 people got up and left. They said nothing and just walked out. Clearly, they were either scouting for other guilds or simply couldn’t see any reason to join if the guild wasn’t going to spoon feed them.

The remaining 11 people became the first recruitment intake of the Dark Brotherhood, and they all swore an oath of loyalty to the Guild on the spot. One of them was even brave enough to immediately head to reception and register for the Lab Assistant job. James just gave a wry smile and went down to the lab.

-The Lab-

The moment he walked into the lab Exsue was glued to him. “JayJay, you never come and play with me. All night you were talking about annoying things. Come and teach me how to cultivate again. I heard your bedroom is perfect for...” she paused in mid-speech and leant in close to his ear and whispered “Dual Cultivating” as she nipped his earlobe.

James was conflicted on exactly how to deal with this headache. He did want to try ‘dual cultivation’ with Exsue, but he was certain that would be like feeding a stray animal. It would just keep coming back and digging through his trash if he gave it anything.

“I thought you were some Ancient Lightning Dragon or something. Don’t you have your own cultivation techniques?” James asked in an attempt to assuage his curiosity, just as much as he was trying to distract Exsue from any thoughts of them doing anything.

Exsue made a cute pouty face at James’ suave evasion. “But that was when I was still a spirit beast. I’m a human now and need to cultivate with human methods.”

James was stunned. ‘Human now? Does that mean this isn’t just some kind of morphing into a human body dealy?’

He stopped at a bench and leant back onto it crossing his arms in thought. When he’d organised his thoughts, he whipped out his black-pad. A few button presses later Skay’s voice came through.

“Ah! Boy, perfect timing. I need a hand, the test subject from yesterday is acting up. He is refusing medicine. Come give him a little shock, so he doesn’t fight back so much.”

James felt a little bit dirty helping Skay subdue an abductee in his secret basement just so he could feed him something suspicious. Skay had made an attempt to make it look less suggestible by scribbling ‘medicine’ over the top of ‘Harbinger 3.0’. But the bubbling liquid in the test tube and the stinging in the eyes when it was exposed to air left James with no doubt of its questionable nature.

He chose to pretend that he never noticed this discrepancy. After all, one day Skay might invent something with these herbs like another 616. Of course, he’d never volunteer to test something Skay made without a thorough vetting process. At least ten subjects tested over the period of a week as the minimum standard of testing anything Skay had managed to squeeze into a test tube.

After their captive was once again resting in his room, they returned to the work benches. Now I say ‘resting’, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a catatonic death state coma. If he could even still breath through the black foam dribbling out his nose and mouth, James would be surprised.

“Old Madman, I gave you a call because I think Exsue may be able to spread some more light on beast cultivation for us. I suspect you’ve got a couple questions too?”

Skay immediately flipped his pad out and eyed Exsue. James just smiled at the uncomfortable look on her face with the old madman eyeing her.

Skay started poking his pad and scrolling through some lists. Then after preparing some easy starter questions and organising his lists, his trademark rapid-fire questioning began. Following this development the three of them spent an entire hour discussing beast and animal cultivation.

From what they learnt, beast cultivation was vastly different than human cultivation. Although their spirit realms were referred to in a similar manner, they didn’t actually have meditation or breathing techniques. Initially, they can intuitively draw in spirit energy.

Every beast had an innate ability to cultivate some form of spirit energy and usually that energy would be specific to their environment. The little forest hopper, for example, was moved into an environment where it received endless shocks and lightning arcs. With a little assistance from one of Skay’s potions, which James now assumed was 616.0, this helped it learn how to refine spirit energy properly, which a large number of spirit animals lacked.

This meant that until it could learn to refine energy it would still be considered a spirit animal, even if it generated enough primal spirit energy to be considered equal to true spirit or palace realm. If it just remained an animal forever, it would just endlessly absorb primal energy and become an unstoppable force of pure instincts. Hunt, consume, mate.

Eventually, once it had experienced a particular element enough, it would learn how to refine spirit energy, at which point it would develop a beast core. The beast core was a precious stone that a creature generated in their body with refined spirit energy and would essentially be their spirit realm, where all their energy was stockpiled.

When Exsue mentioned this Skay almost jumped up and down with excitement. “You mean to say that spirit energy can manifest as physical matter?”

Exsue gave him a look like he was stupid. “Well duh.”

Skay didn’t even bother responding to that. Instead, his questioning intensified twofold. Exsue quickly learnt not to make fun of Skay for not knowing something. His fanaticism for knowledge frightened even her.

In fact, as the monolith spirit, she never tried to read the old man’s mind. Not after the first time. She felt like, if she had a real head, it would have exploded at the endlessly changing quality and quantity of thoughts the old man could process.

His thought patterns were so fucking strange it mainly just came across as static when she tried to read his mind. Even James was difficult for her to read. Which was why she could only send short visions to him instead of creating a direct link and talking.

When she had to implant the language into their minds after they arrived, the monolith actually had to draw extra power from her because it was having such a difficult time trying to force a change in their heads. It could only be considered their luck they were unconscious when they came through. Otherwise, the monolith might have had some trouble giving them the common language.

Continuing on from that regression, spirit beasts were the first actual step of a creature onto the path of cultivation. It was them deciding to no longer follow the general script of the world and defying the heavens by reaching for the power of gods.

After that first step, they would rapidly develop conscious thought similar to humans. When they were at the ‘true spirit’ realm, that was them creating a spirit realm instead of a reflection of their subconscious mind like humans did. They discussed into detail a number of realms higher than that when Exsue decided to withhold anymore.

“For now you’re still only barrier realm cultivators. Even if I described higher realms of beast cultivation, it wouldn’t help you at all. Instead, it may distract you from the things that are more important. Like your own cultivations.”

With that, the discussion of beast cultivation ended. But not before James asked one final question which was the whole reason he even started the topic. “You said before that you’re a human now. That implies you’re not a spirit beast. Can you explain that to us?”

Exsue just gave a happy smile because James was acknowledging her existence and forcefully crawled into his embrace and encouraged him to wrap his arms around her. James didn’t want to upset her right now because she would undoubtedly be spiteful with her explanation. She was apparently using this as an opportunity to take some advantages of James.

Once she was nice and snug, she began to explain. “Well, it’s really simple actually. All beasts have one true goal in their cultivation. That is to achieve true sentience. By going against the heavens they are considered demons, and so the only way to truly escape their natural instincts is to become humans, who have two minds. One that controls your actions, and one that controls your instincts. I think you called it ... subconscious mind?”

James and Skay shared a look between each other. Their thoughts were written on their faces. ‘Intriguing’. Exsue then continued on.

“Well eventually once they reach that stage they will have two choices. They separate instinct from action and become human. This will allow them to reach godhood and climb into the heavens. Or they fall to their instinct and lose all the rationality that they have spent those millions of years trying to get. They descend into madness and become a true demonic cultivator.”