Chapter 30: The Quarry

-Star City-

James was mulling about the city rather early the next day and just as the suns were coming up, he sauntered over to the south-east corner were the guild plaza was located. This area was a vast open square with a wide cylindrical job board in the centre.

Every few meters the background colour of the job board changed and was titled after a different guild or faction. Surrounding the plaza were an assortment of buildings all bought and paid for by guilds that wished to set up a hall in Star City.

There were nearly 40 different factions that had a Hall in the Guild Plaza and room for another 40 on top of that. To set up an office or Hall in Star City, factions had to pay out the ass end. James was absolutely rooting their wallets with a fat evil smile and the majority of the Guild’s income at the moment was from renting the offices constructed here.

Small and large crowds of people were spread out through the plaza assembling teams or groups to take on a mission. Since it was only the second day, there weren’t too many jobs up yet, but plenty of the guilds had information from the free map released by the Brotherhood and were looking for more people to scout the areas marked as ‘hazardous’, like the snake pit or abandoned mine.

The majority of the people that had come to Star City were in the True Spirt realm but don’t let that belittle the number of Palace Realm cultivators that came for a chance at riches and glory. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the ratio of Palace to True Spirit was actually higher than the Empire, with nearly 1 in 50 people being a Palace Realm cultivator.

Within a group of about 80 people near the Dark Brotherhood office were some familiar faces. The twins Hang and Danto from the Susso and Telly Clans were present with a handful of members while bickering and arguing with each other like siblings.

Emily had nearly 20 members of the Adventurer’s Guild with her and was accompanied by a large muscular man with short brown hair, a moustache as big as his face, and a pair of reading glasses on the edge of his nose. He carried a colossal broadsword as long as his body across his back and had the weathered, leathery skin of a seasoned adventurer.

Joining the group was 15 of Katsu Sect’s disciples led by the prissy Elder Xinshi, and finally, the two sect leaders of the Shield Maidens and Sword Masters, Kelsy the tidy little brunette and Tiny the midget whose sword was longer than his body.

Peppering this odd assortment or practitioners were some loose cultivators not affiliated with any faction and just there for the rewards posted on the free job board by the Brotherhood.

It should be noted that the Job board in the centre of the plaza was called the ‘free job board’ and was named such because anyone could take on a job from any faction as long as it was posted there. This encouraged free cultivators to come to Star City and attend bug hunts or assist guild missions.

As James walked up, he greeted Emily with a slap on the ass and then strolled past everyone else into the guild office. The moustache man gave Emily a questioning look and she just gave a hearty laugh in response.

After sorting out some affairs in the guild building, James walked back out and addressed everyone. “Alrighty then. Looks like we should have enough. First things first. You should all know why you’re gathered here. We’re about to undertake a mission that will most certainly lead to deaths, and you’ve all volunteered to come throw your lives away with me.”

As he said that he tapped his now ever-present earpiece and summoned Goliath. After a few seconds, the Goliath of Wrath descended from the fog on an Air Board and landed next to James in front of the crowd.

“Alright big guy. Run them through the operation. You’re now in charge.”

Goliath stepped forward and stood with a straight back and arms crossed as he surveyed the crowd. “I don’t know what you were told about this mission beforehand, but I must warn you all it’s going to be dangerous.”

When he said this, everyone shared a chuckle. James introduced the mission as joining him in death, so everyone had a pretty good idea this would be dangerous.

Seeing no one seemed worried Goliath continued on. “Fine, consider yourselves warned. This operation is being run under my direction, but because you’re all generally separate factions, you will be forgiven for some autonomy. That said, anyone who endangers the mission or endangers my team will be killed. There are no exceptions. I don’t care if you’re the son of the Heavens. You will not jeopardise my mission.

“In 1 hour I expect every last one of you to be equipped and ready to drop into a hot zone. That means in 1 hour and 15 minutes were going to be flying over the LS3 Quarry south of Star City and you’re going to be jumping out of a gunship into an area infested with spirit beasts in the hundreds.

“The Gunship will be providing long range bombardment, but there are ranged creatures in the quarry capable of dealing it damage. Our mission is to eliminate or mark as many of these creatures as possible and then to evacuate within 45 minutes.”

When he got to this point, James threw a duffle bag onto the ground and pulled out one of the Ultra Flares that had come through with them from Earth.

“This is a marking flare. From what we can tell, whatever this creature is, it can spit spines the size of an arm nearly two kilometres. That makes it too difficult to get in close enough and target. Everyone gets a flare. When you encounter one of these spitter’s you just pop the top and strike it against something, then throw it near the critter.”

Everyone was slightly confused. Dropping into a hot zone, marking flares? What sort of terminology is that? The first person to ask a question was the big man with a moustache.

“Guildmaster James, how do you expect us to fall free fall into this... ‘hot zone’? What’s stopping these creatures from just picking us out of the air or shooting down your... ‘Gunship’?”

James gave a grin then nodded to Goliath. The big guy then tapped his ear piece and quietly said something. After a few moments, the Velocity Gunship lifted off from nearby and then zoomed off into the distance. They then soon saw the huge Gunship fly past overhead followed by a sonic boom that shook the entire city.

While everyone was slightly shocked by that, the next thing they saw was a rapidly enlarging speck in the sky where the gunship had shot past overhead. It only took a few seconds before they saw a Brotherhood guild member falling from the sky like a rock. James then tapped his earpiece when he saw the guy coming into view.

“Rail 3, I want you to fire a couple shots off at the dot up there in the sky.”

Once he said that the rail gun on the battlements suddenly swung around and aimed up at the man in the sky. Another few muffled booms shook the city and everyone in the plaza watched as the jet stream from the Rail Gun shells seemed to curve around past the guild member and disappeared off into the distant skyline.

James with the smile of a devil turned back to his amazed and awed crowd then threw out a stack of paper strips with some writing on them. “Enough there so everyone can get one. We used something a little special to make these talismans so don’t expect to take one home and find out how it works. All you need to know is that...” ‘thunk.’

Before he finished, the thump of Harvy landing on the ground after that whole skydiving ordeal was heard. Everyone turned in time to see the last of his talisman burn away into ash. What surprised everyone was the mummified guy didn’t even seem slightly shaken.

James gave him a once over before asking; “Harvy, how was it? No issues on the jump?”

Harvy gave a polite bow to James then reported. “Evil Dark Over ... Ahem! I mean, Guildmaster James, there were no apparent issues. Just as you said, the moment I activated the talisman I became stationary for a moment with no backlash from the sudden stop. My speed then increased rapidly while falling. The talisman seemed to burn a little faster when it was deflecting the shots from the Rail Gun. Only the landing was still a bit heavier but shouldn’t be a problem for anyone in the True Spirit Realm.”

James gave him a wave to go mount up in the Gunship again then turned back to the crowd. “Well, there you go. This talisman was designed specifically for this kind of sonic speed drop. It does all the hard work for you. All you need to do is jump at the right time and be ready for a fight when you land.”

-Alecksa Souvenoff - POV -

He was definitely mad! Of all the crazy daredevils and mindless fools I’ve seen, he was the worst. ‘Just Jump when the light turns green’ he said. ‘Make sure you activate your talisman before you jump’ he reminded. ‘Don’t stand near anything with a flare on it’ he encouraged.

And then after the gunship gave a shudder, he pulled his lips back into that wicked smile he made whenever he was about to do something that would shock everyone and walked to the edge of the ramp. After hitting a button, the ramp of the gunship fell back as arrays lit up on the decking.

Nothing seemed to change in the compartment of the gunship. There was no whistling wind and to everyone’s great surprise there wasn’t even a gentle breeze entering into the ship.

I don’t know what those arrays were for, but according to the one with four eyes, when travelling this fast, the wind pressure would usually tear the gunship apart without the support of the arrays.

Not to mention that without those arrays, the wind would apparently have pulled us out the back of the ship and smeared us across the sky like a red cloud before the door had even cracked an inch ... apparently anyway.

I let out a long sigh as I watched Guildmaster James lecturing everyone again on what not to do. He and Goliath ran everyone through mission protocols in the case of anything going wrong.

My team and I were on this mission to gather intel on just how deep the infestation is. According to the strange flying artefacts, called drones, that the spirit of the machine, called Jasmine, sends everywhere around the forest, this infestation may be even worse than just some Spine Spitters and various other beasts on the surface around the quarry.

From what we saw through the ‘eye of the drone’ there was a series of caves that appear to have been dug out by the beasts in the LS3 stone. For what purpose? Well, that’s why my siblings and I are here.

Thanks to a little trickery with the elements of darkness, my brothers are capable of hiding us away in the shadows at a corner of the deck. When anyone notices us, Cassidy just fires off a little hair sized steel needle infused with her element, and they suddenly forget they’d seen us.

I won’t talk about what happened when James found out Cassidy had forgetfulness as an element. Mostly because I forgot exactly what happened. No doubt thanks to Cassidy. What I do remember of it wasn’t good, though. Cassidy was locked away in the lab for 3 straight days and refused to ever tell any of us what exactly happened.

While we waited in the shadows, a light over the ramp suddenly started flashing yellow. The Guildmaster reminded us all that our jump window was only going to be for a few seconds and then turned to stand at the end of the ramp. His talisman suddenly started burning and then the moment the light turned green he launched himself out of the gunship.

Following after him everyone else jumped out and soon 80 people were spread out across the sky over the valley. It seemed someone didn’t activate his talisman though because he jumped out and then collided with two other people creating a bloody mist spanning the jet stream of the gunship for a few hundred meters.

After everyone had dropped out from the ramp, the gunship slowly circled back and then did one last flyover. This was our drop point, and it was a little further away than the rest. The truth behind this mission wasn’t to target the Spitters but was to draw the attention of the beasts and give us a chance to enter the tunnels to investigate.

In all honesty, the Gunship was more than capable of just doing a fly over 4km up and raining down fire on the entire valley we referred to as The Quarry. Guildmaster James had said this mission would be as much about blinding people to the capabilities of the Gunship as it was about finding out just what was underneath the quarry all these beasts were so attracted to.

The moment the light turned yellow, our team of five lined up on the ramp and then activated our talismans. Without the least bit of hesitation, we jumped out the back when it turned green.

It was the strangest thing I’d ever experienced. Generally, nothing could stop me dead so fast without damaging me, but the moment I was past the arrays of the gunship decking I was frozen in mid-air for a few seconds while a particular part of the talisman glowed brightly and then burnt out.

Once it burnt away, the next part started to dimly glow, and my siblings and I fell through the air like rocks.

Down below us we could see the landscape for kilometres in every direction. Nearly 4km of Valley, depressed in between two hills with every stone and cliff face being the same glossy white of the lightning seeking spirit stones. An entire valley filled to the brim with LS3. It’s no wonder Guildmaster James was so interested in this place.

As we rocketed towards the ground, we could see groups of people fighting off spirit beasts and throwing flares into any cave dwelling that a Spitter was hiding in. Occasionally we even heard yelling and screaming pass by us on the wind.

For almost a minute we fell under the power of the talisman until we’d located our target. On the south end of the valley was an especially big cave entrance with 30 odd smaller tunnels scattered around it. All of them leading into the cliff face and underground.

We took what James had taught us and opened our arms and legs out to reduce falling speed. Then after a quick conversation over our coms we all became like arrows and dove towards this area.

While diving down, we saw hundreds of different spirit beasts crawling over rocks and through the hillside heading towards Guildmaster James. After another minute of falling the talisman burnt out its last little pattern and my team landed safely in a little grotto hidden in the trees.

We took a moment to ensure everyone was fine and then under the shadows of my three brothers, we snuck into one of the caves. As we moved deeper into the dark pit we could feel the hairs on our arms and legs starting to stand on end. It felt like whenever the Guildmaster was angry about something and the air all around him would feel charged with lightning energy.

The further we advanced through the caves the more intense the feeling grew and soon it was so intense I could feel my skin actually tingling. We could soon make out the sounds of roars and felt the ground shaking now and then as we pressed onwards.

After coming to a cross roads we went to the right and after walking a few hundred meters into tunnel the head of a snake taking up nearly the entire cave came forwards out of the darkness.

The moment it came into sight we froze stiff. The three boys spread out in a defensive posture around me and Cassidy then we all pulled out weapons. Tommy had a long thin sword on his back, Cash dual wielded a dagger and short sword and Junior had a black quarterstaff.

Cassidy only had her needles and a small strange looking weapon called an ‘Arc Pistol’. I had what the Guildmaster referred to as ‘the bow and arrow’. The weapon I held looked nothing like any bow and arrow I’d ever seen. Instead it looked similar to the Arc Cannon only painted black and a little smaller.

Guildmaster James had set me up on a little hill out in the Endless Forest and made me practise firing this thing for days. I still couldn’t hit anything more than a kilometre away, but the Guildmaster assured me I had the perfect skill set for something he called ‘sniping’.

The Bow, although it looked like an Arc Cannon and fired like an Arc Cannon was actually almost as silent as the darkness itself. It didn’t make the ‘boom’ the Arc Cannon made and seemed to be quite a bit less powerful, but the Guildmaster told me that surprise was half the power of long range sniping.

Apparently, sniping would be just as easy with the Arc Cannon because the projectile was so fast you wouldn’t hear it till it hit you. The problem remained that it was so fast the slug would deform and veer off target after about 500 meters. It wasn’t good for long range accuracy and worse still, what’s the point of being a ghost if everyone could spot you the moment you kill someone.

As my team of ghosts readied up, the snake continued to approach along the incredibly dim tunnel. Once it was almost upon us, it opened its maw and it huge fangs, the size of my leg, protruded out while it gave a vile hiss. The moment it revealed the soft inner bits of its mouth Cassidy and I fired off consecutive shots into its mouth trying to aim for the roof where it would strike the brain.

After only three shots from the Bow, the snake started hissing and thrashing about in the cave in a frenzy. “Back! Everyone back out to the crossways before it collapses the tunnel.”

I reached out and grabbed onto Cassidy then started back peddling towards the crossroad. As rocks and dirt fell down around me I heard a pained scream from behind. I turned to see Junior being dragged back into the darkness with an arm pierced through by one of those huge venomous fangs.

I flung Cassidy out of the tunnel and then gave both Tommy and Cash a look as I passed them running back into the tunnel after Junior. As I sprinted into the darkness, the cavern shook violently and behind me the roof started to collapse in. Without a second thought, I charged towards the thrashing retreating snake and deployed spirit energy into my body.

I loved and hated my spirit energy. It gives me only one bonus. When it’s active a single minute spans out into an entire hour and time essentially stops for me. The only problem is that unlike the Guildmaster whose energy allows his body to speed up to the same speed as his perception of time, my body remains very normal.

Although I get some of the basic perks of any spirit energy like increased speed and strength, when a minute becomes an hour it’s so far out of sync with each other it’s unnoticeable.

As the world slowed down to a near stop and my body joined it, I started to calculate my best approach and reaction. I spent 2 hours constantly fighting negligence. Every time I moved or took a step I had to maintain the thought in my head or my leg would stop mid motion. In real time it looked like I was dodging falling rocks and jumping across them like some kind of ghost in the darkness, but for me it felt like 2 hours of pushing my mind to its limit trying to maintain motion just to cross the 40 odd meters into the tunnel and towards the giant snake.

As the snake smashed its aching head against the cave walls while retreating, Junior was being thrown about like a ragdoll and his arm looked like it was moments away from tearing off his body.

As soon as I got to the snake, I employed my Famine energy and touched it. Although the scales seemed to significantly lessen the amount of energy I could force into it, the snake still slowly lost its strength. After only a few minutes of jumping back from a strike and then moving forwards to touch it, the snake finally collapsed.

I pulled the now unconscious Junior from its bloody fang and started to apply the first aid Guildmaster had taught us. After wrapping his arm and checking his pulse I could see he was on his last few breaths.

Tears streamed down my face and even without my spirit power employed it felt like an eternity as I held him in my arms and cried my sorrows out in the dark, silent collapsed tunnel.

It took me nearly half an hour to wipe my tears from my eyes. ‘No matter what, these creatures would pay. I’ll kill everything in this cave, no matter how powerful it is.’

With this thought in mind, I pulled Junior onto my back and then started to cut away at the snake. My only way out of this tunnel now was through the body of the snake.

-The Quarry-

James was covered in blood and sweat. He was exhausted and his blue robes were torn and singed. They must have killed hundreds of the creatures in the last hour. They already only had half their expeditionary force left.

James slung his Arc Cannon around and fired off a shot blowing the head off a 10ft long earth lizard. He then ran forwards and used its collapsing body as a stepping stone while whipping out a silver sword and giving a wild roar as he fell onto the neck of a stone golem. He circled his plasma energy and slashed at the little head rock of the golem.

Imbued with his plasma energy the sword cut through the rock of the golem’s body like a hot knife through butter. He jumped and rolled along the ground taking ragged breaths and holding a wound on his side that was dribbling blood.

‘Where the fuck are they? Don’t tell me the underground system here is that big they couldn’t give it a cursory check out in this amount of time?’

As James had that thought, a loud roar sounded out overhead and he watched as the moustached man launched himself from a high rock and decapitated a fire lion that had been spewing out flames at everything.

Surrounding James was 54 remaining members of the expeditionary force. As he glanced about, he saw Hang Susso holding Danto Telly in his arms as he cried and cursed at the sky.

Tiny and Kelsy were surprisingly still alive and standing side by side double teaming a creature the size of an elephant with huge yellow tusks and glowing red eyes. Every time it lashed out with its trunk Kelsy stepped forward and deflected it with her shield. Tiny would then take the opening and shoot past her like a bullet and release a wave of wind energy from his sword that cut into the joints of the creature’s legs.

Emily didn’t seem even slightly phased as she ran through the battlefield with a bright smile and shield bashing or hacking away at anything that came near her.

The Elder Xenshi had her sect disciples in a strange formation that circled around her. Every time a disciple was attacked, someone else managed to step in and save them. If they faced anything too dangerous, they all released a strange technique that merged into a single fist of rock that broke through the ground and launched their enemies into the sky.