Chapter 29: Operation: Endless Forest

Exsue started patting down his body while paying specific attention to sensitive areas and grabbed his face looking at his eyes then moving his arms around and tapping on joints all while asking questions.

“Have you got any aches or pains? Headaches? Nausea? The uncontrollable urge to kill? A desire to eat human flesh? General hatred or disgust at the world or people?”

As she fired off questions and poked and prodded him, Skay started to join in. “How long did your trial feel? Did you have a different experience to the rest of us? Did you fail on your first attempt?”

James’ confused face suddenly froze, and he waved his hands around like shooing flies then jumped back a step. Immediately Exsue was glued to him again preventing him from escaping her in any fashion.

“I’m fine! Why are you all giving me the Q&A and not each other? My experience was a little strange, but I’m alright.”

Exsue eyed him suspiciously for a moment, and after a few silent seconds she let out a long breath. Then as if she’d been greatly wronged she stamped her foot and pouted as she began to lecture James.

“You’ve been in there for three days! Even in all my time in the monolith I’ve never seen someone spend 3 whole days breaking through! Also, just what the hell did you do, huh?! The talking head said you broke through before you even sat down! Was this some kind of trick you were playing on me?!”

James’ eyes widened, and then he chuckled. “Interesting, so I really am a little bit unusual.”

~Oh here we go! Let’s all get on the James is a special little boy train. Come on everyone. Give him some back patting and a few words of praise. His massive ego really needs the help right now! Oh, and why don’t we all...

Before James had finished his quiet muttering to himself, Gold James jumped in with sardonic rhetoric and teasing. James’ brow started to twitch as Gold James continued to rattle on in his head. After a short moment of concentration, Gold James was dissolved in a bubble of acid and plasma rain.

James then gave an evil smile as he watched this in his spirit realm, which quickly froze when he saw everyone’s faces in the real world. “What? My experience was a little different. Apparently, my pride energy did all the hard work for me. I think that created a problem though...”

James then explained to everyone about the deviation limiting system. He then went on to explain that his pride energy apparently completed his breakthrough the moment he decided he was ready to break through.

He also went into some detail about the wizard and about Gold James. He didn’t really care what they thought of him as he described the new personality in his head, after all, they’d be crazy not to already consider him slightly insane.

Skay was scratching his head and had his spider eyes on flipping through different lenses. “Well, do you think you actually deviated, or do you believe that this is a side effect of the limiter malfunctioning while you were breaking through?”

James cupped his chin. “Honestly, I’m not sure what to think. I want to believe this is a side effect of the limiter breaking but I can’t be sure. I think I broke the limiter just by my energy completing my breakthrough for me. It’s probably not designed for that situation and to only make it worse I figured out there was something odd going on.”

Fatty started spewing out a million theories and was promptly ignored by everyone. Jessy had no theories and just considered James to be a little bit more broken now than he had been three days ago.

Skay was busy thinking about the concept of a limiter to prevent cultivation deviation and Exsue was lewdly rubbing herself against James saying only that she was relieved ... and would soon be ‘relieved’ again in just another few humps.

Goliath was looking at the ceiling thoughtfully as he voiced his thoughts. “Does it matter? This ‘Gold James’, is he going to be an issue if you can just un-summon him? The limiter as well, we don’t have to worry about it now that we’ve moved into the True Spirit realm. Is any of this need for concern?”

James thought about it for a while then grinned. “You’re right big guy. Probably not an issue for now. Let’s leave it forfuture James to worry about. Now, Jasmine, have you started the mining operations in the Endless Forest yet?”

Jasmine’s head mysteriously appeared on a nearby wall and looked at James as it spoke. “Guildmaster James, welcome back. There have been some issues with the mining operations. Unfortunately, electromagnetic waves can’t travel through the Gateway, and this means controlled mining operations are limited. It also appears that our drone activity in the area has increased the number of beast sightings. You may also be interested to know that we’ve found ‘it’.”

James made a broad smile and started walking off. Everyone else remained somewhat baffled and then followed as James moved towards the lab.

-The Lab-

James and the 5 other core members lined up around wall projection in the lab. On the projection was a rough map of the Endless Forest up to 60km in every direction from the Gateway.

It seemed the scout drones had been rather busy in the Endless Forest, mapping out every nook and cranny they could get into. Apparently, Jasmine had been cataloguing data brought back by the drones and marking anything of interest.

The closest point of curiosity to the Gateway was about 10 km away and was labelled by Jasmine as the Snake Pit. According to drone recordings, it was a 40 m deep hole that went straight down into a vast underground cave network which was apparently filled to the brim with snakes.

Since she’d already lost any drone that she programmed to explore past the entrance, she quantified the cave structure underground as an unknown danger zone.

The next closest point of interest was a small area of huge exotic trees. After getting a sample from the Drones, Jasmine had discovered they were Steel Wood Trees. Apparently, these things had wood harder than tempered steel and were a rare commodity in the Yori Empire.

Amusingly the Steel Wood Trees were considered a weed by the Endless Forest. At least that’s what Jasmine believed based on video footage from drone footage of the Endless Forest trying to strangle or rip the trees from the ground only for the Steel Wood Trees to suddenly shake or whip out a branch and cut down any part of the Endless Forest they came into contact with.

Because the trees could probably even give a Palace Realm a run for their money, Jasmine had marked the Steel Wood Forest as a beast habitat even though they were only a slightly sentient spirit tree.

On the map displayed, were six other points of interest she’d marked out. One was entirely unidentified, and the only reason she had it marked was due to any drone that moved within 2 km of the area would suddenly fall out of the sky.

Two were confirmed as having valuable resources. The first was the Black-Iron deposit that was apparently a lot further from the Gateway than James had first thought it was. It was almost 2 km beyond the 15 km demarcation for major spirit beast activity. How they’d even gotten to it and then made it back the first time around was a mystery.

From testing that Jasmine had the Drones doing, she was fairly certain the ore vein was bigger than any recorded ore vein of any mineral to ever appear in the Empire. To add onto that, she had detected at least 30 m³ of Black-Iron spirit essence.

The only problem was that she’d barely even begun digging into the cliff face when spirit beasts started showing up to check out the noise.

The second known material they’d found was an excellent site for an LS3 quarry. At present Jasmine was unable to tell just how big it was, but she guessed it was close to 80 km³ of standard quality LS3. She guessed there may also be some sort of Essence developed for such a large stone deposit but couldn’t confirm it.

The last 3 map markers only increased James’ curiosity in the Endless Forest. One was the cave Jasmine believed to be the ‘Founder’s Cave’ and at present she’d been unable to explore it. Every time a drone went in, it would disappear.

The second was a large field of hundreds of different varieties of herbs and plants. The spirit energy in the area was almost 600 times that of Yori Empire standard. There were herbs and plants even Jasmine had never heard of or seen before.

The only problem with this haven of flora was the resident fauna. According to Jasmine, the entire field of herbs was filled with some kind of bee insect the size of a man’s hand. To make it worse, they were so bloody quick they just looked like blurs to the eye of anyone below Palace Realm.

The final point of interest was an old abandoned mine. Jasmine had witnessed a significant amount of beast activity in the area, but strangely none of them entered the mine. This was another drone death site and any drones that even approached the tunnel entrance would fall out of the sky like a rock.

James was stunned at the amount of leg work Jasmine had managed to get done from all the footage the drones had been bringing back.

James and his team then started a discussion on how to go about starting a mining and exploratory operation in the forest. After some discussion, Jasmine made the suggestion that she build a quantum entangled antennae and put in in the Endless Forest. This way it didn’t matter where the Endless Forest world was, she should still, theoretically, be able to send and receive information from it instantly.

James agreed this would be helpful to maintain contact with the drones and grant Jasmine the ability to control them, but that wouldn’t change the fact that their main issue in the forest is spirit beasts.

After some more discussion, Goliath chimed in with an idea that made James slightly hesitant. “Why not just create some of those Rail Guns you developed for the city walls. Then drop them in at whatever location you want in the forest and blow away anything that approaches you. Anything that you dig out can just be transported back with a Big Berta. Hell, I’ll bet the floating face can control the ship and the cannon for you as well.”

James thought about it for a while and agreed that was the best method. Then he chose not to do it. Although it was the most efficient to just let the super smart A.I do all the tough labour, James was averse to giving her control of any weapons or anything that could hasten the road to ‘Sky-net’ apocalypse.

Instead, he decided that because the drones had already taken half the jobs in the city and half their population was currently unemployed and looking for a way to increase their cultivation, he’d just open the forest to anyone. This had drawbacks and meandered from his typical path of being overly possessive, but in his view, it had more upsides.

Firstly, he could let everyone in and then those morons would race out and kill half the spirit beasts in the forest for him.

Secondly, he owned the Gateway. If anyone wanted to bring something back through, they would be paying tax on it.

Thirdly if he demarcated specific zones, he could prevent entry to restricted areas he wanted to explore himself. For example, the Founder’s cave.

Lastly, he could post jobs for exploration of those other dangerous sounding areas and pay a handsome reward for anyone that found large deposits of minerals.

Hell, he could even sell the mining rights in exchange for a percentage of the resources or profits. With those reasons stated and Jasmine pouting on the screen, James enacted the Endless Forest Plan.

This was actually something he’d been considering since Exsue gave him the idea 4 weeks ago when they took control of the city but he chose to wait till they had the city under control first.

Over the next few days, James addressed the city and started spreading the news around the Empire. He was implementing two new significant changes. The first was that he would be renaming the City to Tech City. The second and more explosive news, was that he would be opening the Endless Forest to anyone brave and adventuress enough to enter it.

However, if they were a little less daring, they could sign up for the mines and get paid for time spent mining. James, of course, was well aware of man’s greedy nature and started putting methods in place to prevent theft before he even announced this to the city.

As this news hit the populace, an uproar began. The Explorer’s Guild, Sword Maidens and Sword Master Sects started gathering new recruits like dried leaves, in an effort to assemble some parties to send into the forest.

Adventurers and Explorers from the Felsine City began to move into Tech City in the hopes of striking it rich in the Endless Forest instead of the Jetsu Mountains.

Emily from the Adventure’s guild even showed up on James’ doorstep, asking to be allowed to start a Guild branch in the Endless Forest. She wasn’t particularly interested before because there wasn’t much adventure around the city. But now that the Endless Forest had been opened to the public, Emily had jumped at the chance to send some people in for hunting, training and hopefully discovering some rare resources.

It should be noted that the Gateway to the Endless Forest in James’ city wasn’t the only one in the Empire. There were at least 5 others like it. You might be wondering why such an extravagant resource would be able to remain in the hands of someone as weak as the Gau Clan for so long. What you’ve not been told yet, is that if you were to just burn down all the trees in the little area the Gateway is in, then the Gateway will disappear.

This is the same disincentive that every other owner of an Endless Forest Gateway use to prevent people from taking their little piece of the pie.

The reason the hype for this chance to enter the forest was building so high was because the other owners rarely let anyone else enter their forest. Apart from a few who had to make deals with strong factions to protect them, most of the rest of the owners were the strong factions and didn’t need to bow to anyone.

This meant that people rarely made a fuss about the Endless Forest and the Gateways to it were mostly forgotten by the commoners. Now that someone was suddenly allowing access to their Gateway everyone was getting excited.

While James let the hype build up to entering the forest, he had Jasmine and Goliath setting up her quantum aerial and leading a few teams to set up a base of operations and a checkpoint on the other side of the gateway.

By the time he was done, the entire portal on the Endless Forest side was surrounded by 30 m walls in the shape of a star, with a Rail Gun mounted on each star point. The entire base was like a small walled city spanning nearly 3 km in diameter. The Rail Guns were a huge turret following a similar design to the Arc Cannon. Except a lot bigger.

The rail was nearly 5 meters long and the turret could pivot and point in damn near ever direction. Each turret was manned by a crew of 3 people and could fire 3 slugs a second at a velocity of Mach 1.6. That is equivalent to a projectile moving nearly 1960 km/h or 544 m/s.

With each shell being made of the hardest stuff Skay could cook up in the lab and measuring nearly a foot in length and 50 mm in diameter, it was enough firepower to blow a 10 m thick concrete block into dust.

Interestingly the ‘slug’ was designed with a black-iron core that melted into hot liquid metal under the extreme magnetism of the Rail Gun. This just made it even more volatile on contact because the rapidly expanding liquid metal basically turned the ceramic shell into a pressure bomb of 2,000 degree heat.

The Cannon was powered by a similar unit to the ‘cube’, except 5 times smaller. The only issue these gigantic guns of war had, was that they were limited in firing speed and projectile size. This was the only way they could prevent the Cannons from deforming too quickly.

At the moment, they calculated a Rail Gun should survive at least half an hour of continuous fire. But that was only a calculation. They’d never bothered to test it yet and honestly they only had the ammo to shoot each of the five cannons half that long.

Apart from these eye-drawing Rail Guns, giant gates nearly 15 meters wide sat in each of the five inner corners of the star and the area inside the compound was divided into five sections in each leg of the star. These five areas were taverns and inns, markets, brotherhood storage, a security office and a guild plaza that people could post and receive jobs from the guilds.

The forest seemed rather upset at the amount of land they’d cleared and tried to start re-growing over the top of everything. When James found out the forest was trying to demolish his hard work, he walked out into the trees and started talking to plants and flowers like some mad man.

After half a day of talking to one particular tree, James walked back into the compound and planted a seed right in the middle where the gateway was. In less than a few hours a massive tree reaching nearly 200 meters into the sky and so round you’d need 30 men holding hands to hug it, grew in the centre of the compound. The tree then began to emit a thick white fog at the base of the trunk climbing half way up to the leaves.

The Guards that were currently sitting on the walls watching this freaked out and spun the Rail Guns to fire on the tree. Before they could fire, they heard James screaming into their communicators. He then gave them new orders. Their number one priority was to protect this tree, no matter what.

He then told them; “If that tree ever falls. You will be spending the rest of your lives in this forest. That fog is now our Gateway.” After that, the forest stopped growing about 500 metres from the wall and James walked into the fog and disappeared.

While that was happening in the Endless Forest, the Gateway forest on the Empire side was filled with a mysterious fog and an identical giant tree grew out from the middle of it. Then an hour or two passed and James came strolling out. When he was questioned on what had just happened, he only muttered something about ‘tree huggin dryads and fuckin forest fairies’.

After that incident, James had a slightly smaller identical compound set up on the Empire side of the gateway. Once everything was ready, both compounds were manned by the Guild instead of City Security. This was to reduce the potential for corruption and infiltrators although the city security had a similar oath to the guild, members were less strictly vetted than with the guild.

Finally, another week had passed and James stood on the Gatehouse to the Tech City forest compound. Standing on the ground waiting to get in were thousands of adventurous souls or poor commoners looking for a chance to earn some money or train in the forest.

James’ eyes flashed with greed seeing this and his face lit up with a bright smile. He then gave a greeting and laid down the ground rules.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of Yori Empire. Welcome to the Brotherhood’s opening of the Endless Forest. As you can see behind me, our forest Gateway is a little bit different. After a short encounter with a dryad, we have been granted permission to create a permanent Gateway settlement in the Endless Forest. There are some conditions, but they shouldn’t affect any of our travellers.

“Before you enter the forest you should be made aware of some rules. Firstly, entering a restricted zone is a death penalty. Don’t think we won’t know if you do. Our eyes and ears are everywhere in the forest.

“Secondly the mines demarcated on the map are the property of the Dark Brotherhood. Anyone trying to run mining operations in these areas will be severely punished.

“All materials passing back through from the Endless Forest will be taxed at 30%. Either in the resource itself or in gold based on Tech City Market Prices. The Brotherhood is willing to pay for any useful information on the forest and will be maintaining an open job board in the Forest Compound along with a regularly updated map.

“Hmmm, I’m sure there were some other rules, but I can’t think of them. Well, I guess that’s it. Good luck and good hunting!”

After his little speech was done, he waved his hands and the gate opened to reveal a large plaza covered in thick white fog. This was followed by a loud cheer as adventurers, explorers and citizens marched into the gateway.

James just grinned evilly watching all the labour walk into the fog and disappear from sight. Hopefully, they would start to make some returns for him because the price of building the ‘cube’ and rail guns for the two new compounds was high even for him.

The only reason he managed to get them done was because he sent Jessy to ‘encourage’ Lucas to foot the bill with damn near zero interest rate. Lucas, not being an idiot, knew a good thing and milked them for a back order of 6 Big Bertas and a date with Jessy instead of interest.

James readily agreed and sold Jessy off like an incredibly expensive hooker.

-Henry Justin McCord - Point of View-

McCord, Henry McCord. I was put on this planet with a single mission. One exacting purpose that overshadowed all else. I was put on this planet to steal, rob and cheat every man, women and child that ever lived.

Today was the day I would start my journey into the history books as the greatest smuggler that ever lived. I was going to smuggle out of the Endless Forest right under the nose of those fat rich Guild scumbags.

They were the fastest growing guild the Empire had ever seen. They started only three months ago and had already claimed, demolished and rebuilt an entire city. They were also the smallest guild with the most power. Everyday entry requirements only grew stricter.

At first, they’d take anyone that could swear an oath. But now you had to be a True Spirit realm practitioner just to get looked at. Even if you could enter the guild, they gave you something called the ‘chip’ now.

No one knows what the chip is but according to witness accounts the moment a person breaks their oath to the guild their head would explode. No one knew how they did it, and regardless of how small the infraction was, death was the only end.

I was lucky enough to enter the guild when they first started taking members. The oath is a frightening thing but not all powerful. For example, I could write down my experiences in a journal and then ‘accidently’ leave it somewhere or be ‘robbed’ by some mysterious strangers. If someone should pick it up and read it ... well, I can’t be held accountable for that now can I?

This trick is the oldest in the book and apparently one that the upper echelons of the guild weren’t aware of.

At first, I only made a hundred odd gold selling information on the guild. The oath never triggered because I could always defend my actions as accidental or unintentional and the money was always anonymously turning up on my doorstep. Although I could guess where it was from based on how much it was and when it arrived, I couldn’t be ‘sure’. That was the loophole and was also how I made my living.

Some things I chose not to sell, or simply couldn’t. I wanted to sell the breathing technique but before I could have it passed onto me first hand they began ‘teaching’ it in the school. Now that I have it, I realise just how powerful it is and every time I breathe with it I get shivers thinking about how much gold I’ve lost out on.

By the time they opened the gates to the Forest, I had thousands of gold stashed away from the notes I’d taken on the two times I had taken on the ‘lab’ job. I almost regret earning that gold. The price I paid for 48 hours in that hell on earth almost wasn’t worth it.

After my second time, I promised I’d never go down to that den of madness again. Even though I had the opportunity to learn some interesting things ... well, let’s just say that I plan to have children one day and it’s commonly agreed upon by members of the guild that three days equalled infertility, four days maiming, five days impairment and six days is living death.

That was the rumour of how Harvy that grotesques abomination became the way he is. The only guild member to ever survive longer than that and not become undead was Gary that sick fuck. Heavens only know how he managed it.

Regardless of all that, today is the day. I managed to score myself a job on the construction work courtesy of my earth element. Over the past few days, I’ve dug myself a nice little burrow in a special place, and it leads straight through under the tree Gateway to the Empire.

I can walk directly in one end and out the other and never even set foot in the compound. The Guildmaster, that little shit, was so stupid as to allow Guild members the privilege to bring anything they gather in the forest through without tax.

Of course, if I try and bring a carriage of resources I ‘just happened to find in the forest’ then people will start asking questions. But the point is, if I ‘find’ some resources all packed up and ready to transport out in the forest along with a sack of gold ... well, I can just wander down through my little tunnel. It’s not breaking my oath after all. I ‘found’ those goods myself.

Gotta love how fucking stupid the oath of the heavens is sometimes.

After the riff-raff was allowed to enter the forest, I took on a guard duty job from the guilds job board and paced around the compound looking for any stupid adventurers I could fleece some money off. After half a day an odd post appeared on one of the message boards asking if anyone had seen ‘Little Timmy’.

That was my cue! The moment I saw the post I clocked off duty and went searching around in the forest. When I got to the marked space, about a kilometre from the compound, I couldn’t stop the smile from forming on my face.

Sitting there was a full carriage loaded with what I could only assume was Steel Wood.

It must be said that whoever managed to cut this much Steel Wood in half a day was an absolute menace with an axe. That stuff was the hardest material on the market and to get even a single cut onto a tree without getting whipped to death by an iron hard branch was impressive. Let alone cutting the entire thing down and filling a carriage.

I was more concerned with the bag sitting on the wagon. As I opened it with shaking hands, I found 300 gold. For the amount of wood here they could probably get 6,000 on the market, so it was exactly the 5% I’d asked for in exchange for smuggling something out of the forest.

I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as I jumped on and whipped the horses to advance to the northern end of the compound. About 600 meters into the tree line on the north end, was a large stone surrounded by overgrowth and brush.

When I approached, I double checked I wasn’t followed and then slowly led the carriage around behind the brush. After 15 minutes of travelling through my passageway, I suddenly found myself moving towards a light.

There were two things wrong with this scenario. I shouldn’t be able to see any light because the other end of my tunnel was another half an hour away and hidden inside a barn near Tech City. And more importantly ... the light was accompanied by a voice.

“Ho! I was curious what you’d been doing down here for the last three days. Didn’t strike me that I’d have to worry about my own guildsmen. How curious.”

The moment I heard that voice, my heart tightened in my chest. I couldn’t deny the accusation fast enough. “G-G-Guildmaster James?! I-I’m not sure what this cave is. I found it while delivering my load to the Star City customs and decided to investigate. I-I-I couldn’t leave the cart behind because it would surely be pilfered!”

As I pulled the horses to a stop, the shadow that had been standing in the light ahead of me stepped a few times forwards and then moved into the light of my carriage lamp. Revealed from the darkness was the Guildmaster.

How he found me here, I couldn’t guess at. I was always careful and never slipped up, I was certain. How then? Does he have some way to track me? Or to see where I’ve been? But why would he? I’ve been an exemplary guild member and always kept my head down.