Chapter 35: Auction Day

-Tech City-

Apart from the excitement of Ruff at being in a high-speed vehicle and his constant attempts to stick his head out the window while they travelled back to Tech City and supersonic speed, the trip back was uneventful.

That is until they landed and the ground team on standby at the hanger realised there was a huge dismembered corpse in the back of the dropship along with the corpses of at least a hundred other dead spirit beasts.

James called up Skay to come and take care of storing and dissecting the creatures while he showed Ruff around the HQ building.

To say he was quite impressed that anyone still had the level of array mastery they showed in this day and age was an understatement. After showing the dog around for a while he led him upstairs to his office were a brand new hand carved, by Harvy, marble table sat waiting for someone to seat at it.

This one, as opposed to its predecessors, was covered in array markings and was connected to the reactor in the basement through the buildings LS3 power grid, making it virtually indestructible. Perhaps the only thing in the entire city that was harder to destroy than this table was the monolith and the chamber housing the reactor.

As James prepared some tea, Exsue finally found her way to him, as she always seems to do, and stopped dead in her tracks as she walked in. As she eyed the Mastiff sitting on a chair at the table, she couldn’t help but sneer. “What in the heavens is that foul little puppy doing here?”

James froze in his actions at the manner in which Exsue spoke to this being, that in his opinion, was powerful enough to destroy this entire empire single handed.

Ruff, who had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the ancient being that previously inhabited the monolith also froze like a statue. He then very slowly turned to see Exsue staring him straight in the eye and like a blink of lightning suddenly disappeared and reappeared, cowering behind James like a beaten dog.

Exsue gave a little huff and marched over to a seat then sat down. “So you’re the spirit beast they brought back to fill the monolith with. I’ll tell you right now Jay Jay. This ... creature, is hardly appropriate to place inside a monolith in this city, or any other for that matter.”

James glanced behind him at the cowering All-powerful Ruff and then back to Exsue. “Ahh ... Exsue, you’ve met Ruff before?”

Exsue gave an indignant scoff and then pulled a cup of tea across the table. “Ruff? I don’t remember anyone named Ruff. I only remember a feral little beast that had the bad habit of smelling places on people he shouldn’t.”

Ruff, seeming to be dissatisfied with being targeted like this, decided to try and defend the honour of his species. “That was one time! And it can hardly be fair to then label me as some kind of degenerate, it’s the honorary greeting of my species.”

Exsue, who’d just been lifting her teacup froze and then placed it back down gently. She then glared menacingly at Ruff as she spoke slowly.

“It may just be that your inferior species has some disgusting means of greeting one another, but to march up to me, your superior, and smell my bum like I’m some common hussy is the most Neanderthal greeting one could imagine. I should have slapped you to death that day and been done with you. You’re only lucky your old man was still around to protect you back then.”

James scratched his face and let out a long sigh. This was a first for him, seeing Exsue act so dignified that is. Normally, she acted like a spoilt obsessive teenager with a crush, so it was unusual to see her speaking in any other fashion. After a few moments of back and forth between the two, James finally interrupted.

“Well, since you two know each other, then this makes everything easier. Exsue, Ruff needs you to explain the ins and outs of the monolith process. I want to switch him out as soon as possible. We’ve only had a few light horde attacks over the past few months but if the increasing size of them is any indication, the local beasts are only growing more and more restless as the spirit saturation in the city grows higher.”

He then quickly excused himself and made to escape the firing line of these two ancient beast’s grudges. Before he could escape, Exsue clung to his arm and, back to her usual teenager demeanour, begged him with pleading eyes to stay. He then had the joy of sitting through an hour of the two arguing back and forth about the etiquette of sniffing bums with scattered moments of clarity regarding the monolith.

By the end of it Exsue finally just asked for a piece of spirit jade and imprinted the discussion she once had with the Ancient One regarding the experience, making it so Ruff could essentially experience the same discussion.

Much to James’ disgruntlement, he watched as the Spirit Jade suddenly crumbled into dust after Ruff had viewed it and he then gave Exsue a meaningful nod. James was now certain there was some conspiracy Exsue was hiding from him, but he knew he wasn’t going to get anything by asking.

Instead, he waited until a maidservant had lead Ruff off to a guest quarters and then used his wind energy to sweep all the dust from the Spirit Jade up into an empty teacup. He then raced down to the Lab and sealed it away in a test tube. After that, he ended up spending the rest of the day discussing theories for the spatial ring and spirit jade with Skay.

-The Lab-

The next day, James put out the word that they were looking for some space stone or spirit jade. Much to his surprise, the first person to get in contact with him was Emily, the blonde from the Adventures Guild. James sat in the lab looking at the projection of her tanned features.

Emily, on the other hand, seemed to be calling him from somewhere right on the edge of the Jetsu Mountain Range near Felsine City. In the background, he saw a group of adventurers roasting a boar-like spirit beast over a fire and setting up tents.

Although the connection seemed to be rather spotty, there didn’t seem to be too much loss apart from video quality.

Emily was busily banging her cross sword on her shield to dislodge what looked like something’s eyeball while giving James a bright smile. “You know James, I had hoped you’d be the one to call me first, but I heard on the grapevine that you’re looking for something rather special instead.”

James chuckled and leant back against the bench behind his stool. “Now Emily, we both know that you’re far more special than any materials or resources. That said, I will eventually get around to calling you. Until then however, I believe you’re calling about the Spirit Jade or the Space Stone? What can you tell me?”

Emily finished removing the skewered eyeball from her sword and then sat down in front of her coms cube and started wiping it off with a cloth. “Well, as you know, the Adventures Guild is a pretty loose organisation that pulls in free cultivators from all over the place, and a lot of our members here are from the three nations. What you probably don’t know, is that the adventurers guild spans the entire continent and our headquarters is actually all the way down south on the Island of Nahtiro.

“That being said, it also means we have an information network that spans almost the entire continent. I got word from some friends that have been trying to explore in the black lands recently that they discovered a Space Stone deposit only 40 or 50 kilometres in from the Hastoel border.

“That means you can probably find what you’re looking for over there. Now the other thing is even easier to get your hands on. There are about three known methods of getting Spirit Jade in Atsunari. The first is to buy it from the black markets in Lanthoe. The second is to trade with the Grolian Empire in the southern isles, and the third is to seek out the Master Alchemist Tantsu on Nahtiro.

“The last one is probably the hardest method and the least likely to be true. Rumour has it that the man discovered a method to artificially create Spirit Jade through the use of alchemy, but he’s such a secretive recluse that no one can verify it. He takes 2 students every 4 years to train as apprentices, and if they fail to achieve his expectations of an apprentice alchemist in the first year, then he kills them.

“By the same token, if you could find a way to get the recipe for creating Spirit Jade then you could probably become the richest man in the entire continent. So, huge risk, huge reward kind of scenario.”

When she finished talking, a scream came from off in the distance followed by a loud roar. Emily leant back as if trying to peer around behind something then her face suddenly split into a huge beaming grin.

“I gotta go James! You owe me something big for this information, don’t be a stranger okay?”

Then with a beep, the connection was cut, and James was left staring an empty wall cupping his chin and pondering. After a good ten minutes of thinking to himself, he stood up and began to pace around. “Jasmine, do we have a decent map of the continent yet?”

“Of course James, some of us actually do work around here.” A projection of the national borders of Atsunari then sprang to life on the wall.

James chose to ignore that jab by Jasmine and simply added another tick to his mental pro’s/cons list for destroying her. He then began to inspect the map that Jasmine had pieced together from the satellite pictures and various accountings by books gathered from all over the place.

After a quick look at the map, he started making some new plans for after the Auction finished. He then stopped himself and let out a long sigh before speaking to Jasmine again. “Jasmine, bring up my list.”

The projection of the map on the wall then disappeared to be replaced with a short list of things James still had to do in order of importance.

1. Restore the Monolith

2. Auction

3. Investigate the Gau Founder’s Cave

4. Recruitment Drive

5. Project Fire Starter

James let out another long sigh and then finally made an executive decision and chose to re-allocate priorities for things he’d been putting off. “Jasmine, call Skay up from whatever the hell monstrosity he’s working on at the moment and tell him where going to the Founder’s Cave. Get the gunship ready and have him and Goliath meet me there. Also send someone to tell the dog that he’s going into the monolith tonight.”

-Endless Forest - Founder’s Cave-

James had been putting this trip off for a while. Not because he was apprehensive about exploring the cave and not even because every time a drone entered it would suddenly disappear, but rather because he thought of it as work. The only thing he hated about the trappings of power was the responsibility.

He probably could have just put the responsibility for this exploration mission onto Fatty, whom they’d picked up from Star City on the way here, but he didn’t trust the chubby bastard to do it right.

He could have sent Skay, but every time he gave Skay a mission by himself, something terrible always happened. For example, the last time Skay was sent out on his own he managed to blow a hole the size of a city into the endless forest and James had to sit through 2 hours of badgering from the dryad.

After a short trip in the gunship, James and his team of Wrath, Greed, Gluttony, Envy and Death, marched into the open mouth of the cave and walked a whole two feet before darkness enveloped them and they found themselves separated.

When the darkness dissipated, James found himself in a cave with no entrances or exits. The rocky cave walls were lined with burning torches, and apart from that, James could see nothing else out of the ordinary for a normal rock cave.

That thought quickly ended when moments later a deep aged voice resonated within the room. “State your name.”

James briefly glanced around the cave and then replied. “James.”

“I’m sorry, it appears I misunderstood. State your name loudly and clearly.”

James eyebrow gave a twitch and then he once again gave a crisp, clear response of; “James”.

“Thank you “James” for seeking Lord Gau. What is the nature of your visit?”

James suddenly had a flashback to life on earth and couldn’t help but feel like he was talking to one of those horrid automated answering services. Shaking the thought from his head, he then pressed on under the assumption that he was talking to an array machine of some kind.

“I came to loot this cave of anything of value.”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t understand you. We’ll connect you to one of our operators now. Please hold.”

‘Please hold? What the fuck is going on? Some kind of sick joke?’ James wondered as he began to pace around the cave.

After 15 minutes of nauseating on hold music, a new voice resounded through the cave. “Hi, this is Jasmine from Dark Brotherhood Tech division. What is the nature of your call?”

James almost spat blood when he heard Jasmine’s voice echoing through the cave. “Jasmine? What the fuck is going on?”

“Uh-oh. Ahhmm... ‘beep, beep, beep’.”

“Did you just fucking hang up on me?! Jasmine you computer code piece of shit! You fucking answer me this god damn second!”

Meanwhile, in an exact replica of this room, Goliath was beating away on the wall while the deep male voice from before continued to berate him. “If you’d like to make a complaint, please press one. If you’d like to make a complaint, please press one. If you’d like...”

“ARGH! Mother fucker! Just Die!” Goliath screamed at the repetitive phone voice as he hammered away at the seemingly impervious cave wall.

In another cave, Skay was flipping through his spider eyes repeatedly while he made a recording on his black pad about “mind altering drugs perhaps?” and “some kind of illusion maybe. Feels so real, but I suppose they always do.”

Harvy was busy having an animated conversation regarding potting flowers with the voice and Exsue sat in the original cave watching everyone else mumbling with their eyes glazed over and staring off into nothingness while she shook her head.

The only other person to escape the trap at the beginning of the cave was Fatty, who’d apparently just eaten it by accident because he sneezed and took a deep breath in afterwards.

Back in James’ illusion, he now sat on the ground contemplating what was going on. After a while, he dove into his spirit realm and saw Gold James sitting on his orbiting rock while cultivating. “Yo Goldy. Any thoughts?”

Gold James perked up from his relaxed state of meditation and glanced at Spirit James.Thought’s on what?~

“Well, you’re supposed to be my ... other consciousness or my subconscious or something. What do you reckon is going on?”

~Going on? Nothing’s going on. You’re just standing around like a dope staring at a rock wall.~

James cupped his chin and switched back to his body. Everything remained in the sequestered cave with the torches and the beeping of a dead phone line.

After a moment James started to assess his situation. “Okay, so definitely an illusion of some kind. Not sure why it’s not affecting Gold James though ... Maybe some kind of field that induces self-delusion and hallucinations? So affecting a certain part of the brain. Let’s try and see if we can interrupt that field with one our own.”

Coming to this conclusion, James began to pour lightning energy into his skull in the hopes that it would shield him from the effects of whatever was going on. At first, the room only became slightly fuzzy and blurred. Then James began to adjust the frequency and pattern that lightning passed through his skull until eventually, he returned to reality and saw Fatty and Exsue staring at him. He then turned to see Skay Harvy and Goliath still trapped in their own little worlds.

Skay suddenly shuddered and then stepped forwards with a bright smile. “Boy, I’ve found it!”

James cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head in a questioning manner. Skay then shrugged both his bushy grey eyebrows twice, and James’ face lit up.

“Oh what an idiot. How could we not have thought of that before?!”

Skay nodded his head at James’ sudden declaration and then flipped out his black pad to start making notes.

Before James could get impatient waiting for the other two to escape their own hallucinations, a red glow appeared all over Goliaths body, and the smell of blood and a red mist began to pervade the area. Moments later a huge gust of wind blew out from Goliath and the circular array pattern painted on the roof suddenly glowed brightly and shattered like glass.

James and Skay both shared a look and made mental notes that brute force could still overcome these sorts of mind games.

While Skay began to take pictures of the array on the roof, James moved over to where Harvy was. Once again, his chance to test if he could shield another person’s mind was interrupted when the array pattern on the roof began to flutter and glow rapidly like a strobe light.

In a matter of seconds the strobing grew faster and faster until it looked like it was permanently glowing and from there it only grew brighter and brighter until it suddenly melted.

Once it was gone, Harvy returned to reality right in the middle of an explanation on how you could tell if your soil ratio is perfect based on the vibrancy of the flower petals. Even just catching the last sentence of Harvy’s discussion bored James into a momentary coma, so naturally, he and Skay both chalked this one up to the array pattern actually committing suicide.

After a brief discussion on their experiences and Exsue getting a slap on the wrist for never having mentioned the interruption technique, they continued on.

Now being significantly more careful, the group checked everywhere for any form of pattern as they moved along into the cave.

After only 40 metres and a curve in the tunnel, they came to a very out of place, solid brick wall. After a few probing smacks and Skay checking some instruments, they determined that the array pattern painted on the other side of this wall was clearly far beyond anything they’d managed to build. Not because it couldn’t be damaged, but because when they used enough force to damage it, the wall almost instantly repaired itself.

After a flip of a coin, Goliath got the honour of trying to break it down. At which point he took his war hammer in both hands, charged his earth spirit energy to the maximum and then smashed his hammer into the wall. It goes without saying that the wall was basically obliterated.

The disconcerting part was that it almost instantly rebuilt itself before anyone had the chance to get to the other side. For perhaps the first time in his life, Fatty volunteered his skills and stepped up to the wall.

As if second nature, he simply reached out a hand to touch the wall and sucked it dry of any spirit energy it might have had. Which according to Fatty was ‘fuck all’.

This time, after another hammering from Goliath the wall stayed broken. On the opposite side of the wall was a black box covered in patterns neither James or Skay had seen before. After a few obligatory pictures, they opened the box to find a small scaled replica of the brick wall.

After further investigation, they found patterns painted on the back of the bricks. Feeling like they’d had a big win, they continued on.

Lava pits, flame alleys, tracking arrows, moving golems. They passed through dozens of bizarre tests and after each one found a new and interesting array pattern. Luckily for them, they’d brought Harvy in, because at one point they came to a field of venomous carnivorous flowers.

Harvy was forced to march through ahead with his death aura flowing off him and had to suffer the tragedy of massacring an entire underground field of flowers.

From that experience, they managed to get themselves an array that sped up the growth of plants.

It actually became somewhat of a game for them, and they were soon competing to see who could come up with the best way to defeat one of the array puzzles they ran into.

Skay lead the charge for a while until the downfall of having so many different elements hit him and he went into spirit energy deprivation. Fatty was second because the greatest downfall of any array was the lack of spirit energy to operate properly.

Unfortunately for him, he’d long since discovered that consuming refined spirit energy gave him awful indigestion and he was left behind to find a place to vacate his bowels about halfway through their trip.

James and Exsue were both on par because they’d silently agreed to challenge every array puzzle with only their lightning element.

Harvy was even more dead and despondent after the flower incident, and Goliath met everything with force, so these two managed to sit in the last place.

By the time they reached the end of the tunnel, they’d travelled a good 20 kilometres and passed through nearly a hundred traps. In the end, the final array puzzle granted them access to a chamber filled with light stones and a horde of old books, catalyst recipes, rare catalyst ingredients and a variety of strange artefacts.

Everything was unceremoniously looted, and the group left with a rather excited and happy Skay and James.

Jasmine, on the other hand, seemed rather snappy when they poured everything out into the lab and had her start logging and recording everything they’d found in the cave.

After their productive day, James and Skay both retired to the Lab and began researching some of the artefacts. After a few attempts to replicate them, the duo discovered something that they’d never taken into account before.

Although everything they replicated with the factory came out looking the same and basically made from the exact same materials, it all only worked half as well.

A sword that bent the light around its user for example. The Founder’s was good enough to make a person look like only a vague, ethereal version of themselves. The one that they printed in the factory left them only slightly transparent like a reflection on glass.

After a few more tests they both came to the conclusion that they’d been doing something terribly wrong this whole time. They didn’t know what it was, but quite clearly it was something.

As they poured over the Founder’s notes, they started to notice things where he mentioned ‘forging with the spirit’ or ‘tempering with soul force’. With that in mind, James made a note to go make a visit to the Gau Clan, who’d been keeping rather quiet since they relinquished the City to James and ran off to lick their wounds after a thousand years of slowly depreciating.

-Tech City - Central District, Monolith Plaza-

Come midnight, James stood in the monolith plaza staring at the huge rock covered from head to toe in very dimly glowing array patterns. He then glanced over at Ruff, who was supposed to be having an internal moment of self-inspection, but to James looked like he was just sleeping with his head on his paws.

Feeling James’ gaze fall on him, Ruff slowly opened his eyes and let out a long yawn. “It’s time. I can already tell you that I definitely won’t be able to pass the tribulation to become human. We beasts of lesser bloodlines rarely, if ever, manage to make that final step. If that bitch queen dragon couldn’t do it, I am certain that I won’t. I can already feel a demonic divergence in my spirit world.”

James just scratched his face in an uninterested manner then turned back to face the monolith. “Whatever dude, just remember, once you’re the monolith spirit I need you to lift my oath to the Gau Clan.”

That said, James levitated up into the air and placed a hand on a certain part of the monolith. This being the second time he’d done this, and having practised levitation to quite some extent, James made it look easy this time around and made no face planting actions.

After injecting lightning energy into the specific part of the array, the monolith once more lit up and flashed vibrantly. Ruff took a deep breath and then strolled into the huge glassy rock. Like walking into a wall of water, the face of the rock simply rippled, and Ruff was gone.

As opposed to the glorious display Exsue had created on her exit, there was no grand lightning show for Little Blue. In fact, Little Blue didn’t even exit the monolith. Even after waiting a few minutes and watching the monolith dim back to the healthy glow it had back when Exsue inhabited it, nothing came out.

James walked up and placed his hand on the monolith and found that instead of taking the chance to escape, Little Blue was instead playing tag with Ruff. James couldn’t help but facepalm himself. He knew the creature was simple and dumb, but he didn’t realise it was that simple.

Noticing James had appeared in the Monolith spirit world, Ruff gave Little Blue a slap to end the game, and the blue ferret rocketed off into the distance until becoming a dot in the sky and rapidly disappearing from view.

“Ahem, well then. I suppose I should do the thing.” Ruff then waved his paw and the flashy light show of heavenly law descending passed over James. James inspected his seal and felt his end of the pact with the Gau Clan dissolve.

Before he left, James had one last thing he wanted to test. “Ruff, there’s one more thing I wanted to test. If you help me with this, I’ll set up an array pattern around the monolith so that it draws in enough spirit energy to help you slowly increase your refined energy. I know that you can’t cultivate to the next level, but I’m pretty sure you can still consolidate energy right?”

Ruff went into a dazed moment like he was staring off into the distance, and then finally nodded. “Ruff, sure. It might take me a while to get the hang of the monolith system, but it looks like I can still replenish and refine energy.”

James gave a nod then made his next request. “Supposedly, the monolith allows you to read minds. I want you to try and read my mind.”

Ruff then squinted his little dog eyes and started to shake like he was taking a constipated shit. “I, don’t know, James.” He grunted while still shaking. Then his eyes suddenly widened, and he started rolling about on the floor.

“Ahhh! Okay, yes. I can see your mind somewhat. But it’s difficult. Like looking into murky water and it gives me a headache.”

James then closed his eyes for a moment and changed some characteristics of his breathing pattern. “Okay, now try it again.”

Ruff, without needing the posture this time could immediately tell James his result. “Nothing. I can tell you’re within my influence, but your mind is like trying to peer through rain clouds to see the sun.”

“Excellent. Lastly, Exsue used to do this thing where she sent me images or visions or something. Try that.”

Ruff once again went into a dazed distracted state and then squinted his eyes and began to shake again. After a few minutes of that, Ruff released a tensed breath and shook his shaggy dog head. “If you didn’t get that, then it probably doesn’t work.”

James smiled like the devil. “Excellent. Well then, I’ll stop by again sometime to check-up. Don’t pick on Little Blue too much.”

That said, he disappeared from the monolith spirit realm.

~Wow, that was an odd wasn’t it?~

James step faltered as he was leaving the plaza. “Odd? You mean you were in the monolith as well?”

~Not really. More ... experienced it because you experienced it. It’s like when you change the focus of your attention between our spirit realm and the body. My focus is forced to change with it.~

James quirked an eyebrow and then chose to file it away under the mystery that is his spirit clone.

-Gau Clan Mansion-

James then left the plaza and travelled over to the building that was now considered to be the Gau Clan Mansion. This building was a huge skyscraper that housed all the clansmen of the Gau Clan and had two underground sections separated into the Sword Hall and the Hall of Forging.

Although James hadn’t originally planned to inform the Gau Clan that he’d broken off their pact by partitioning the monolith, they would be finding out soon enough, and he still needed them for something. If the dog hadn’t been willing to enter the monolith and break the pact tonight, then he’d have just threatened to set off a spirit bomb in the Gau Clan residence ... by accident of course.

Even though it was just after midnight, James wasn’t worried if they’d see him. As a True Spirit realm practitioner, he’d only slept once since he broke through nearly a month and a half ago and that was by choice, not because he actually needed to.

He presumed that Palace Realm cultivators like the 3 remaining elders of the Gau Clan probably only slept once a year, if at all.

When he arrived in the downstairs foyer, he was met by a pair of disciples that stared at him like some kind of star struck groupies. They were damn near tripping over themselves reporting his arrival to Hao.