Chapter 33: The Blink of an Eye

Seeing he’d managed to work up a response from James with that little play his subordinate just acted out, Artimus smiled and placed his tea on the ground next to his seat then crossed his legs and eyed James.

“It’s rather simple James. You’ve only been here for 3 or 4 months, and you’re already achieved so much. You’re already running a city in my empire, you and your 3 companions have already stepped into true spirit realm 10 times faster than even the quickest cultivators in the entire Empire, even others with rare or multiple elements like yourselves.

“Not only that, you have researched and developed uses for array patterns that have remained untouched for as long as my clan has recorded history, you have weapons capable of killing palace realms and even have means to make tower realms simply disappear.”

Seeing James about to deny involvement in the Hanso incident Artimus just waved his hand. “I don’t care if you were involved in Hanso’s disappearance or not. The fact remains you killed that tower realm beast in the endless forest and have already proved your ability.”

James leant back in his seat and cross his arms as he eyed Artimus suspiciously. “You still haven’t mentioned why you came here. In fact, I’m rather curious. Why would the most influential and powerful man for 600 kilometres in every direction, turn up on my doorstep instead of just summoning me like all your other subjects?

“It makes a guy wonder just what you want. If you wanted me to do something above board, you’d just call me like a dog. No, you want something else, something shady. Perhaps the three nations are already watching my guild, and you’re worried that they might be a little concerned if you suddenly start summoning me. They might suspect you want my technology ... or perhaps they might think you want me to start killing some people they don’t want dead?”

Artimus’ smile widened. “Well, I can see now how your guild managed to climb its way up to its position so quickly. You’re right, there’s someone you are going to want dead just as much as I do. I’ve let you build your guild and take control of a city because you have some potential. Normally I’d have people already infiltrating you, but the few people I’ve sent either can’t get deep enough and disappear trying or they can only bring out information that is useless to me.

“I have all the array patterns you have, but my best array masters can’t figure out what to do with them. I have people that use your strange meditation and breathing techniques, but they can’t teach them to anyone. I even had someone try and master all of your ‘basics’ at your ‘university’, but he suddenly died from some mysterious power.

“You have protected your secrets well, and it makes you hard to control. But it also makes you a powerful wild card. With you helping my empire, we can expand into the territory of the three nations and protect ourselves. For once, my Empire will rise from this cage of great nations and take its place among the continent’s greatest Empires!”

Noticing that he’d gotten somewhat side-tracked, Artimus gave a bashful cough. “Well, how you operate within my empire will be discussed another time. What we need at the moment is for you to make a man who could very well cause us both problems ... disappear. Just like Hanso did.”

James cupped his chin in thought for a moment then looked up at the Emperor. “So, in the long run, you hope to use my guild to trigger a war with the great nations. If I’m not wrong, having this person mysteriously disappear inside your empire is only the first move. You probably plan for us to complete other missions in the future to raise tensions and encourage the nations to go to all-out war.

“Then when they’re busy killing each other you swoop in and start taking some land. All the while you expect me to supply you with a means to empower your shitty armies with a way to fight for and then protect any land they can take. But that doesn’t sound right. You don’t have the means to force my hand on this issue, which means this first job is to create the means.

“You plan to ensure that you have dirt that can make me the target of their rage should I not conform and then you can force me into assisting your grand scheme. The only problem with all this is you need us to look like we did it on our own intuitive. So this man you need us to kill is probably someone that would somehow be disadvantageous for my guild. How am I doing so far?”

While speaking his thoughts, he watched the Emperor’s smile slowly drop into a frown. Clearly, he was somewhat close to the truth if not guessing on the nose. When Artimus made no comment, James’ face lit up into a bright smile.

“Excellent, well then, I have a few things on hand you might like to know. The first is that I’ve just received a contract to disappear your first two sons.”

Artimus just smiled and waved his hand like it didn’t matter. “You think that matters to me? I can just have more sons. I’ve lived for 1,600 years boy. In that time I’ve sired more children than I care to count. Unfortunately, none of them have ever lived up to my expectations. For the third prince to be making a move on his competition is more than I could ask for from a future clan head and Emperor.”

James gave a nod like he’d expected as much. “Good to know. The reason I mentioned it was because it ties to my second point, my guild will take on any job. If you want someone dead, then you just have to pay for it.”

Artimus wasn’t quite sure what to make of this young man now. Even after he’d made a point of showing that he could see through the Emperor of the Empire and that this assassination would be the bargaining chip he would use to force the guild into compliance, the man still agreed to it for a price.

He was rather conflicted now. He wanted to use this to entrap the Dark Brotherhood into the service of his clan and empire but instead felt like he was now walking into a trap. Nonetheless, he pushed on. He wanted to expand his Empires influence even at the cost of millions of souls.

“Fine, name a price, my clan has more gold than the hairs on nine oxen.”

James just chuckled at that comment. “Gold? What use is gold? It’s just used as a place keeper for real wealth. It’s like paper money, without the market it’s just paper. When the shit hits the fan, even a commoner who dreams their whole life of obtaining gold, wouldn’t sell a bag of grain for a single bloody copper. No, I want something else.”

Artimus scratched at his neat grey beard as he eyed James. He knew the boy was right. Gold is worthless to a truly powerful cultivator. Oh, it’s a good measure of wealth when the market is running, but it remains just that, a measure. When the market falls the only thing left is old school bartering, and because not everywhere uses gold to trade, it’s rather useless outside of civilised areas. Real cultivators treated useful resources as wealth.

“So then. What do you want? Resources?”

James smiled like the cat who ate the canary. “Well, it depends. Who do you want dead?”

Jessy cupped her face in her hands when she saw James smiling like the devil. He was planning something, but god only knows what. She was actually rather surprised. James had started picking up the law of business rather quickly. Don’t be fooled by this conversation about being dragged into some war and becoming the dogs of the royal family.

James only saw this whole thing as a means to make money and was probably already making plans for back door dealing with the three nations. Like any good businessman, James had claimed the high ground in this discussion and obtained the advantage.

Artimus remained silent for a moment then gritted his teeth. For the first time in years, Artimus felt out of his depth. The boy was just a little bit frightening, wasn’t he? He didn’t even blink while he offered to kill someone that may start a war.

“He’s a man from the southeastern nation of Hastoel named Perlious. He is here to investigate your guild and determine if you would be worth covertly kidnapping and enslaving.”

James tapped his ear with a smile on his face, but before he could start talking, Jasmine’s face appeared on a projected screen on the wall. “Certainly James, there are 3 men by the name of Perlious within our jurisdiction. The most likely is a man posing as a True Spirit Realm Cultivator currently in Star City. He has been in every open guild operation and has spent a full day in the mines. He presently has no recorded criminal activity and has remained as ordinary as everyone else in the city.”

James’ eyebrow started twitching. He disliked that Jasmine had already started tending to requests before he even ordered them. Having a machine with that sort of intuition wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

James chose to let it slide though. He was currently in a meeting with the god damn Emperor and didn’t want to start lecturing her in front of him. “What else can you dig up on him?”

“At present, he’s the most average man in almost everything. He spends the average amount of gold, eats the average amount of food and has used the average number of foul words. He even defecates at regular average intervals. He is the most average man to ever exist.

“5 days ago he was recorded in the Katsu markets spending double the average, eating twice the average and sleeping with ladies of the night at 4 times the average. He was also recorded having the following conversation on a long distance voice transmit talisman.”

“ ... ing to be there soon. From everything I’ve heard, they’re exactly what we want.”

“Have you seen any of these miracle artefacts the guild reported?”

“Yes father, I met with the guild leader of the katsu merchants yesterday, he managed to secure one of these, ‘Berta’s’. It would make a perfect troop transport. He has refused to sell it. There’s one other thing father, the two men that were sent to infiltrate the guild haven’t reported in. They’ve either defected, or been discovered.”

“That’s fine Perlious. Remember, don’t draw any attention. It can be certain that old fox Artimus is watching them closely. Don’t forget, if we’re going to take them, we need to know everything. They may have powerful defences, but I doubt they’re prepared to counter against a surprise attack from within. I’ll be sending a new team of 20 in a week’s time. Make sure you’re ready.”

Jasmine ended the recording with a ‘Beep‘ and then began talking again. “That is the only long distance transmission we have on file.”

James looked at the recording playing as a clean shaved, slightly chubby man with curly red hair walked around in the guild plaza of Star City.

“Jasmine, is he on your watch list?”

“Certainly James. The watch list presently has this man and another 12 people being monitored as potential threats and 138 people being monitored as targets of interest.”

James shot a look over to Artimus. It seemed like, for now, the man wasn’t lying about this person being bad news for the guild. That’s what it sounded like anyway.

“What else have you got. What guild is feeding outside powers information about us?”

“At present, we have accounts with 12 separate major guilds. 3 of them have made contact with Hastoel representatives within our observation. None have had a discussion directly pertaining to infiltration or to this man named Perlious.”

“Fine, send out a contract to these guilds requesting information on the man. If anyone even glances in the direction of the Hastoel nation, then I want to...”

“It appears the Katsu Merchants guild has just contacted a member of the Eastern nation by the name of General Latsoe.”

James’ eyebrow was working into a fritz at Jasmine’s growing intuition. She was getting just a bit scary. It can’t be too good yet, because if she knew how close it was pushing James into going downstairs and creating a malfunction in the reactor, she’d be intuitive enough to not do it.

While James was calculating just how much he’d lose from such a course of action, Jasmine had already started playing the conversation.

“General Latsoe, it’s Gustov. I just got a request for information on your son. I think someone’s tipped them off about him.”

“So? Tell them who he is. I’m the General of the entire fucking northwestern border. If they know what’s good for them, then they’ll be fucking scared out of their wits. That pissant little Empire can’t protect them from me!”

James turned to Artimus with a face wreathed in glowing smiles. He was like the devil selling wishes again.

“The General’s son? You don’t say. Well now. The price for killing someone that could create such a big backlash. What kind of price would you put on that head? Of course, it’s slightly worrying that killing him outright would be more disadvantageous for our guild. But that’s not your long term goal, is it?

“What you want is full-scale war. That costs extra. You’ve no doubt had methods to make it look like the other nations killed him. That’s the only way I could see you starting a war over this. If you want the three nations at war. We can do that too. Jasmine, what would be the best way to start an all-out war between the nations?”

“We could kill some influential types from all three nations and leak information that our guild was hired by one of the other nations. To be completely honest, you should just let me create a small army of droids and kill everyone. That way you could enslave all three nations and the empire.”

James looked at the screen on the wall displaying Jasmine’s talking face. “Bah! You take all the joy out of it. Where’s the intrigue? Where’s the backstabbing and plotting? Look, if you start building droids again, I’ll just set the reactor to self-destruct and leave you here to join it and the rest of the Empire. The best part of being a narcissistic megalomaniac is the plotting!”

“I’ll take that into consideration for future endeavours. Would you like me to start ‘Megalomaniac Plotting 1.0’ for all present tasks?”

“All tasks unrelated to me.”

“Of course James.”

While this had all been going on, Artimus’ face had been slowly distorting as he thought to himself. ‘Madness! Sheer madness! This man is clearly insane. He must have gone through some kind of deviation in his cultivation. I thought he had a sense of the bigger picture, but he’s obviously just crazy!’

James then had Jasmine contact Skay, who, when he came on screen, was busily stuffing a fresh-faced young Lackey into a strange looking pod shaped like an upside down cone that was penetrating into the ground.

“Old Madman. I need you to cook something up in your lab.” James said to the screen depicting a young man trying to claw his way out of a pod and the crazy old Skay stuffing him in with his foot like trying to compact garbage into a bin.

After a short period of wrestling and foot stuffing and slamming a door on the cone shut, Skay wiped the sweat off his brow and turned to face the camera. “Oh? Good timing boy. I’m about to test the drop pods. I’m gonna need to borrow the dragon girl and the ship.”

After that short scene, Artimus was now certain he’d somehow just been involved in a crime. James just waved his hand like it was a matter of course.

“Sure, whatever. I have a job I need you to do first though. We developed those needles for the Trickster so she can use her element from a range. Can we do something similar for other elements? Say for your elements, or perhaps Goliaths element?”

Skay adjusted his glasses in thought. “Probably wouldn’t be hard. Just need some power gel, some other spirit herbs could probably increase the feedback, and then pump some element into it I suppose. But what about my tests? Took me nearly an hour to fill these 5 prototypes.”

“It’s fine. You said yourself it shouldn’t be hard. You’ll probably be done before the subjects expire.”

Jessy, by now, had long since given up on these two. Trying to get them to conform to standard social etiquette was impossible. She’d actually wanted to avoid James meeting the Emperor in person, but he’d ended up asking for a meeting despite her efforts. Looking at the face the Emperor was now making, she was certain he’d long since realised his mistake.

After a brief discussion, James ended the transmission, and like the devil turned back to Artimus with a smile on his face. “So, Arty, what do you think would be an appropriate price to start a war? Of course, we can just go ahead and kill that Perlious fellow, but that probably won’t help you start a war if he disappears right after we started asking questions about him.”

Artimus couldn’t quite determine what he wanted to do now. It would be difficult to claw the Brotherhood in, especially now that they’d seen through his ploy so easily. But that didn’t mean it was impossible. “I want you to start the war, but if you do, I’m going to need your help equipping my Empire to expand and defend itself.”

James cupped his chin in thought for a while. “We can start your war, and if you have the resources for it, we can even equip your army for you. But I want something in exchange for this task. I want everything you have.”

Artimus suddenly shot to his feet. “What?! My Clan has owned and run this Empire since the...”

James waved his hand like shooing away a fly. “Bah! Empire?! How useless. I don’t want your fucking empire. You only have one thing I want. Knowledge. Information. I want every record of array patterns, potions, pills, artefacts, techniques, history. Anything you’ve got written down or stored away in that head, I want everything.”

Artimus could barely contain his anger. “You may as well be asking for my Empire! Our cultivation techniques and research date back to before the three nations had even grown from piddling little backwater countries. This research isn’t something for the likes of some tiny guild that will last for only a blip of time in my Empire’s history before it’s engulfed in a flood of greedy clans and sects seeking their methods! You won’t be able to protect that knowledge and instead of paying you for a job I’d be pouring my clans methods out to anyone that wants it!”

James never lost his calm smile and just gave a sly look at the end of Artimus’ enraged speech. “Well, that’s fine then. That’s the price of starting a war between the nations and then securing the Empire’s ability to take and maintain their hold on the three nations lands.”

Artimus had long since lost the calm knowing smile he’d carried in here. In all his 1600 years of life, he’d never met such a difficult person to deal with. He thought it would be simple to walk in and the grandeur of his personage would be enough to cow this guild to his whim.

To make things worse, not only had he vastly underestimated how crafty the Guildmaster was, he’d underestimated just how powerful their information network was. They had the power to record conversations between people anywhere in the Empire. That was like being a farseer or time scriber. You had the power to single handily topple countries.

Only making all this worse, was that they’d somehow managed to make Hanso disappear. If it was possible for them to make a tower realm expert just disappear like that ... well, he didn’t want to test it personally.

He’d rather send in the royal guards to test them first. So far, the first attempt of testing had his head spread across the floor from some long range weapon or technique that came through the window from some person who was far enough away that even Artimus couldn’t figure out where he was releasing this technique from.

Having these thoughts rolling around in his head, Artimus’ face returned to a serene calm. “This isn’t just our problem, you’re clearly being targeted by powerful people now. If you don’t side with the empire that leaves one of the nations. I would then be forced to evict your guild from my empire, and you will become someone’s dog and lose all autonomy you’ve had until now.”

James smiled like an old Chinese man with his eyes squinted together and his smile reaching the top of his face. “You don’t need to worry about that. Should it happen, you will be the one losing out. Besides, they will quickly learn what is and isn’t acceptable when doing any business with my guild. Well, it doesn’t matter. That is the price, if you aren’t willing to pay it, that’s not my problem, things will just continue as usual.”

Artimus retained his polite smile and after a few minutes of staring at each other, one looking like a pleasant old man and one looking like a used car salesman, Artimus bade his farewells and left. His parting comment quietly echoed in the Guildmasters office as his remaining guard bent down and picked up the corpse of his compatriot on the way out. “I’ll consider your offer.”

The moment he left, James’ smile fell to a placid, blank face. He then turned to Jessy. “Well?”

Jessy gave him a confused look. “Well what?”

“Well, you’re in charge of the business side of things. How’d I do?”

After that question, Gold James suddenly appeared in his spirit realm and went into a tirade.Oh here we go. You need some back patting now? Need someone else to boost your ego a bit more. One of these days you’re going to...

Just as quickly as he appeared, James willed him away. He wasn’t too sure what to make of the Gold James anymore. By now he could usually keep that shiny bastard de-summoned, but the moment he got a little egotistical about something he’d achieved the shiny little bastard would pop up again to lecture him. Which tended to be quite often.

Rubbing his face tiredly James diverted whatever Jessy had planned to say about his performance with the Emperor. “You know what, forget it, just tell me your thoughts from a business perspective. How likely are we to get a job from the Emperor?”

Jessy crossed her legs together and leant back in her chair. “If this was only business, it’s not unlikely that he’ll request the job for your stated price. However, it’s never just business, especially in this world. He’ll most likely wait and then jump in when he thinks we need it, like a rescuing saint. He wants us to be compliant and feel like we owe him something. That’s how he plans to initially tie us together.

“If we don’t receive significant pressure, he’ll create it. He wants us indebted to him. Then if that doesn’t work, he’ll start pressuring people connected to us and limit us business wise. His only problem will be the upcoming auction. If he can’t alienate us before then, it’s most likely he’ll have no choice but to accept the deal.”

-4 weeks-

While letting everything slowly ramp up to the next auction, James spent most of his time researching martial techniques. He’d had Jasmine studying any technique manual they could get their hands on.

One thing he’d learnt was that he’d misinterpreted how the martial techniques worked. He’d presumed that it was simply a matter of using more or combined spirit energies to increase the power of your techniques. It turned out that most martial techniques used certain meridian paths to increase the power of the technique.