Chapter 23: The Auction

James was rather upset that everything had devolved like that. For starters, why did he react like that? He’d never been so touchy about such things before. Normally he would have just let it slide for now and make a note to take his own back later.

Then a sudden thought hit him. “Oh no!” he mumbled. He then closed his eyes and entered his spirit realm. When he appeared in his realm, he started looking everywhere. He even separated his lightning nucleus and plasma whirlwind. After a while, he gave a sigh of relief.

That was when he finally noticed it. “Fuck, that’s got to be it.” After mumbling to his spirit self, his apparition of a spirit body floated over to a golden fog. At first, when he noticed it, it was only a tiny little cloud mixed in with his wind nebula. The moment he saw it though, it started to swell and grow. His other energies suddenly stalled, similar to when he was regenerating a refined energy he’d been using.

When he reached the rapidly enlarging golden cloud and waved an arm through it, he let out a forlorn sigh.

“Fuck, when did I even generate this fucking thing. Was it perhaps in the battle with Calso? That’s when I first remember feeling like my pride had been damaged. Fuck fuck fuck! I wasn’t ready yet. I still needed to do some more observation. Is this why my affinity control has always felt so stiff after I generated plasma? Because my energies were out of synchronism? FUCK! GOD DAMNIT! MOTHER FUCKER!”

James opened his eyes. Then he made for the lab at a brisk pace.

Skay was playing with something at a workbench as Lackey 1 painted array patterns, and Lackey 16 was carrying boxes of something out of the freight elevator they’d hooked up to level five’s storage to supply things to auto manufacturing.

Skay looked up when the elevator gave a ding and saw an anxious and determined James walking out of the elevator. “What’s wrong boy? You look like someone stole your favourite jocks.”

“I’ve got it.” James replied.

Skay made a face. “Got what? The clap? You pissing fire? I told you to find something to use as protection while your down that whore house boy.”

James just shook his head. His face remained stoic and severe. “No Skay. I’ve got ‘it’.”

Skay stopped joking and then stopped every other action. “Wait, what? You mean ... but how? What, did you unlock it on purpose boy?”

James just gave another shake of the head as he sat down heavily on the seat next to the workbench. He then waved over Lackey 1 and sent him to get some tea.

“I don’t know when I got it. I think I’ve always had it, but because I never looked for it, and because I never thought I could have it, it just sat there doing nothing. I suspect it’s like if a commoner accidentally unlocks a rare element but the misconception that they could only control the four elements prevents them from realising they have it. Perhaps if I’d never realised I was being influenced and looked for it, it would have stayed like that till I got to true spirit and then disappeared once I merged with my spirit.”

Skay blinked and then suddenly a shocked look came onto his face. He closed his eyes and about five minutes later his reaction was much the same as James’ had been. “Motherfucking, crack smoking, cock sucking, piece of fucking shit! God fucking damn it! Why’d I even fucking go in and check?”

James just gave a wry smile. “Well, you wouldn’t have been able to avoid checking your spirit realm now and then. Just knowing you could potentially already have it probably encouraged it’s growth anyway. If I’m not wrong, you developed greed?”

Skay just gave a nod. “The moment I touched it I felt my need for knowledge multiply by an entire magnitude. It was like everything in the world had to be understood by me. Like how I normally am. But worse.”

James rubbed his face in frustration. “I figured as much. At first I thought you’d be some messed up lust, but in the end, lust has the connotation of sexual interest. There was envy as well, but that one is different in that you long for things other people have and you don’t. Greed was the only logical conclusion because you get no sexual thrill from discovery and you don’t care if other people know things you don’t, you just care that you don’t already know it.”

Skay then gave a long sigh. “So how long do you think we’ve had these? Do you think they are really affecting us that much?”

James gave another nod. “Oh yeah. In a big way. I just had Harvy kill one of the Guildmasters of the big eight and blow the leg off another one. All because of some harmless little threats and because they broke my table.”

Skay’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. Hahaha! You fucking killed a palace realm with the cannon? How was it? Was his spirit energy enough to withstand the slug?”

James gave a wry smile and just gave Skay a look. After a moment Skay suddenly realised what James was thinking. “What, you believe that this is the influence of the element? Hah! Codswallop! I wouldn’t have cared if you demolished a church full of Nuns and then tested it out on a boy scout unit on the way home. Even on our world, some nobody’s death wouldn’t faze me in the face of real science.”

James took a moment to process this. “Well, perhaps you’re right old man. I didn’t really think about it before, but everyone’s a little different on this world. Jessy probably fucks whoever she wants because she’s messed up about the world ending. Fatty is eating everything under the sun possibly because of something he ate in the forest and not from his element.

“Now I think about. Exsue and Goliath haven’t really changed at all from when I first met them. Exsue’s just as crazy as before, not much more or less. Goliath actually seems even calmer than he did when I first met him. In all honesty, if I had the power to, I might have done what I did back on Earth as well. The only thing holding me back there was our social systems and a lack of ability to get away with it.”

The duo decided that they weren’t sure either way and made the decision to start doing some testing. Now that they both had emotional elements they decided to start recording their behaviour and seeing if it corresponded to how they suspected they’d have acted if this was the same situation on Earth.

Things once again returned to calm after this whole incident. The guilds all meekly showed up the next day and paid ten gold each for some their members to go to the school.

The Builder’s Guild was the happiest guild in the city, mostly because they’d managed to get back into the good books of the Dark Brotherhood.

To be entirely honest everyone in the city was now a little bit afraid of the Brotherhood. For starters, they turned a Guildmaster of one of the big eight into a messy rain of blood and flesh. Then to top it off they dismembered another one, all done while 5 other big powers of the city watched from not 10 feet away.

Even the three clans who’d been working in the background to try and start putting pressure on the Brotherhood began to go quiet. After everything had calmed down a little, the Elders of the Gau clan stopped by for a visit and to give James a slap on the wrist.

Naturally, they didn’t make a big scene out of it, and basically only told him to kill people in a less flashy manner in the future so as to avoid upsetting the commoners. The last thing they needed was people hiding away in their homes, afraid that the Dark Brotherhood would just start a massacre in town when someone stepped out of tune.

In a strange turn of events, the most excited Elder was actually Jeng. It was inexplicable why he was so well behaved and it made James incredibly suspicious.

Coming in at a close second for excited was Anvil. He’d long since been privy to a little bit of knowledge about the Arc Cannon. Mostly just it’s specs, like firing speed, projectile velocity, etc.

His excitement was due to the fact he’d heard that the new arc cannon fired twice in a row. James admitted that after some redesigning they’d managed to get the firing rate up to ten rounds before the stress deformed the weapon too much.

He even openly admitted they could all be shot in the same breath. All this was said in front of all the Elders and resulted in a unified ‘gulp’ coming from their throats.

About a week after this incident James sent out a message to every wealthy family, clan, guild, sect or whatever, that in another 5 days they would be holding an auction. Listed on the invitation was about 50 different products with a short description or no description at all.

All of these products had been vetted by the Gau Clan. The original list had nearly 70 things on it, but the Gau clan paid out the ass just to secure some good things off the market. Some of the things they couldn’t afford to buy at all, let alone buy non-circulation rights to prevent its sale. Mostly they bought some arrays and potion recipes.

When they’d offered them the patterns, they never suspected they would understand them to the point they could start selling completed arrays, and so never made that request in their bargaining. The only problem was that they’re computer system discovered things faster than the clansmen could learn or memorise them.

To make it worse, they couldn’t ask for a similar system because the Brotherhood refused to release that technology to anyone. When asked why, James just replied with; “The computer is the most powerful weapon our people have ever built. I’d call it a tool, but the fact remains that it can be used to create things even more frightening than the Arc Cannon. As long as I live and breathe, the Brotherhood will never sell a computer without my direct permission.”

Included with the auction list was a letter of invitation allowing people to invite anyone that believed they could afford something to come and try their luck. Anyone who could offer a rare or interesting resource could also use that to trade.

For the next five days, everyone was busily trying to scrounge up something that would tweak the Dark Brotherhood’s interests. On the eve of the auction, some new guests arrived in the city and were put up by the Gau Clan in some local manors. That afternoon while James was training in the arena with Goliath, Hao stopped by.

He just took a seat in the spectating seats at the edge and watched as James and Goliath traded blows. Over the past three weeks, James spirit energy had grown significantly, and he could now sustain a prolonged battle with Goliath for nearly half an hour.

It went without saying that Goliath always won because of his experience, but he’d started feeling a little pressure from James. He felt like the Guildmaster picked things up too quickly, and in battle, he had no shame. He took every opportunity and chance he could find to throw a sneaky punch or blast a lightning bolt at Goliath from behind.

After James once again ended up on his back, and the ever stoic Goliath was bending over with his hands on his knees breathing heavily, Hao finally made his presence known.

“Guildmaster James, I’d like to ask for a moment of your time.”

James climbed up from the ground and lead Hao to the office. When James wasn’t training or in the lab, he would spend most of his time up here. He and Skay had set up four arrays they were calling ultimate spirit collectors in the Guildhall. The first two were in rooms near the arena and one was for a special group while the other was a merit reward for members who could pay a hundred points an hour.

Keep in mind that a single hour in the room would be the equivalent of 300 hours in any random place in the city.

The other two were here in his office where he typically meditated and down in the lab.

Just as side note, Galtin was still in the lab in case you were wondering. Apparently, he developed some kind of... ‘something’, and the Gau Clan just left him with Skay to ‘find a cure’. He’s been in that little room for 3 weeks being force fed strange things.

As James sat down cross-legged to regain some spirit energy, Hao started filling him in on what was going on.

“It would seem that some people from Katsu and the nearby city of Felsine have been hearing some things about your guild. They’ve all arrived in the city to represent different factions and parties from both cities to try and negotiate some trade with you.”

James opened one of his eyes and glanced over at Hao. “Oh really? Interesting, I had expected that we would get at least a year of peace and quiet in Gau City before we had to start worrying about outsiders. It hasn’t even been a full two months yet. So, give me the run down, who are these people and what are the chances of them being friendly.”

Hao made wry smile. He’d come here to warn James to be a little more careful around these people because they all had significant backers. It seems there wasn’t a need to though. He already had an idea that things wouldn’t be so easy anymore.

He then began to explain. “In total, there are 6 factions to keep an eye on. The first one is the Katsu Sects people. They pretty much rule the region, and they’re powerful. From what I understand, they have people in the realm above palace realm in their upper echelons. They also don’t like people throwing any weight around in their territory.

“You then have the Katsu Merchant’s guild. The guild here is an offshoot of it, so they will already be well informed about you from the Guildmaster based in our city.

“The last two factions from Katsu are both powerful clans that have close ties with the Sect. Although they are essentially all the same faction, the Susso and Telly Clans are both at each other’s throats trying to gain power inside the Sect.

“The last two are factions from Felsine city and are the ones you have to be the most careful of. One of them is a representative of the Adventurer’s Guild, which is made up of a collaboration of people from the three great nations that train and hunt in the Jetsu Mountains.

“The other is a representative of the Yansho Merchant’s Guild. They too are primarily run by people from the three great nations and they usually deal with the trade of all the best materials that the Adventure’s Guild sell from the mountains. They also run the majority of trade between the three great nations. Apart from the Imperial Family, they are the most dominant faction in the entire Empire.

“Apart from that, I can’t tell you much more. It’s rare for anyone from these factions to come to Gau City. Apart from some common level artefacts and grain, our city doesn’t have much to attract these kinds of powers.

“I suspect the methods and artefacts you’ve been showing off recently have attracted a lot of attention and probably even people as powerful as the Imperial Family are now trying to keep an eye on you.”

James let out a long breath then opened his eyes from his meditation. “Well, it was only a matter of time I guess. I may have sped it up by being a little impatient, but it was an eventuality anyway.”

He then moved over to the round table and wrote a few letters. He handed them to Hao. “These are invitations to tomorrow’s auction. If they want to chat with us about trade, tell them to take a look at our wares first.”

With that, James showed Hao out then flipped open his black-pad. After a few button presses, his voice rang out across the entire Guild Hall.

“Skay, Jessy, Exsue, Goliath, Fatty, Harvy. All of you need to get your asses up to my office ASAP.”

He then pressed a few more buttons and sat down at the brand new marble round table.

Once everyone had assembled James filled them in on everything he’d just been told by Hao. Jessy pinched her brow as if a massive headache had just come over her. She then let out a long sigh.

“So, what exactly do you expect us to do? We can’t stand up to these factions like we could with the guilds in the city. These people have actual power and influence.”

James gave a nod as he cupped his chin. “You’re right, we are once again at the bottom. We went from big fish in a little pond to little fish in a big pond. We were always going to get to this stage eventually. I just didn’t expect it so soon. I called you all here to brainstorm some ideas on how we should act from now on and what direction the guild should be headed in.”

Jessy, being the only other person who paid attention to what exactly James had been doing with the guild, responded first.

“Well for starters, stop making waves. The guild is generating enough income now from the school, jobs, and sales of things like 616 and the meditation mats. I feel like you’ve gotten away from your original purpose in even starting the guild.”

James thought about that for a moment. It was true the guild had been escalating quickly since it started. Its original purpose was to slowly build a strength base and create connections with influential backers by selling some technology. Instead of that, they were empowering commoners with cultivation techniques and knowledge and had risen to be one of the top powers in the city.

The problem was, they started doing those things precisely for the revenue. They had hundreds of things they needed and wanted to implement or research in the lab. The problem was, the more interesting it was to research, the more expensive it was to get your hands on it.

In addition, he’d previously said he’d wait before bringing in members but already had nearly 100 of them.