Chapter 37: Forging 101

With the discovery of soul Pressure and soul sense, James now had a whole new element to consider in regards to his cultivation training. With that in mind, he once again secluded himself away in the HQ building and spent the next month focused on understanding it more, finding a way to train and focus it and discovering how it tied into spirit energy.

After meticulous experiments and training, he concluded that he could only touch the tip of the iceberg in regards to spirit aura. He went back to the beginning and started trying to understand what he could of it.

First of all, he knew that it must be how the mind accurately controls refined spirit energy inside and outside of the body. It didn’t seem to have any problems controlling it inside the body, presumably because the soul, or whatever, had some attachment to the body that James couldn’t fully understand.

The problem came from controlling refined energy outside the body. After doing a few tests, James discovered that once refined energy left the body, it became slightly volatile and eventually seemed to break down and return to primal spirit energy after a while.

The time it took to decompose was dependent on the amount of energy, and also it’s purity. He hadn’t really gotten much into the purity of spirit energy because he’d not heard much about it. From what he understood though, spirit energy had three vectors.

The first was quantity, which varied mostly based on which realm you were in. The mind, or perhaps the soul as James was now calling it, was limited in how much it could safely maintain control over in the spirit realm.

The second was element or affinity. Again, this was determined by intent, which for a commoner or barrier realm unlocking an element is basically the same as Soul Pressure. Elements also had a number of other conditions like the number, the understanding and modifiers like abstract elements which often screwed up all the previous rules.

The third was quality. He touched on the topic of spirit energy quality as a barrier realm cultivator. In that case, it was because of the breathing technique they’d developed back then. At the time, purifying spirit energy mostly only increased the chances of them breaking their barrier.

When they broke through to True Spirit, their average spirit energy quality was higher than everyone else’s. James never considered this until he began utilising the soul sense and could feel the difference between his energy and other practitioners.

After more testing, he determined that the increase in quality gave them a huge edge over competition. Not only did it increase the time that his energy could remain under his control once it left his body, but also increased it’s effect on matter and energy when it came in contact with it. As well as his ability to control it.

As an example, if he had 100 particles of standard refined fire spirit energy, it could warm up a potato. If he had 100 particles of purified spirit energy, it could roast the potato. If it were purified even more, then 100 fire particles would be enough to turn the potato into dust.

Once he knew that, he set out to consciously purify his spirit energy to the highest possible quality he could. The only problem was that it was a slow and tedious process, and while he was focused on it, his rise in energy quantity stagnated.

It was a trade-off between reaching higher levels faster and having a shit load more spirit energy or progressing much more slowly and having less spirit energy that was more powerful. After considering his options, he naturally chose long term investment. After all, he was probably going to live for thousands of years. Especially if he had any say in the matter.

Once James realised that it was the unconscious use of Soul Pressure that controlled spirit energy, he began to try and consciously use it when he practised martial techniques. He found that when he was consciously trying to affect his refined spirit energy with Soul Pressure, it was remarkably easier to control.

This proved to James that refined spirit energy was already filled with Soul Pressure. He just wished he could maintain that kind of control over his Soul Pressure when it was trying to influence his surroundings and not spirit energy that had already been refined by it.

The second thing he touched on was his limitations with Soul Pressure and Soul Sense at its present level. His soul sense reached dozens of meters out from his body but the further from him it reached, the blurrier it seemed and the less he could understand from it.

Right next to his body he could sense quality, quantity and element in an uncanny manner like some kind of psychic, which he guessed he probably was in a way.

At the limit of his sense, which was about 50 or so metres from his body, he could only generalise the sense. He could tell if spirit energy was refined but not its nature, he could tell the general quantity of spirit energy in the area, but could only pinpoint a person’s realm and not how much energy they actually had, and he couldn’t tell the quality at all.

Regardless, it still acted perfectly fine as a third eye at that distance, and he could clearly see things that far away in his mind as if he was only standing a meter away.

Again, he felt like he should be able to focus his sense onto a single point but whenever he tried it only slightly increased his visibility at that location. It felt like his Sense and Pressure were rigid, stiff and weak. Like a muscle that sat trapped inside a cast for a year.

The limitation on his soul Pressure when just trying to affect free energy was even greater. It only had a range of about 10 metres from his body. Luckily, although it had much shorter range, it’s strength didn’t reduce with distance and instead remained uniform across the entire area.

After measuring it, they determined it was like applying gravity to everything in the area. Once they’d worked it out, they figured he was applying about 5m/s² to his surroundings. Not only that, but he could apply it in in whatever direction he wanted. If he tried to focus it on one small area, then it became about 7m/s² in that area and reduced slowly moving out from that point but remained the same total overall.

The more something fought against this Pressure, the more energy it consumed. After some more calculations, they worked out that his Pressure could apply about 30,000 newtons in total before a similar thing to spirit energy depletion kicked in. That meant that he could stop 6 tonnes moving at 1m/s, or alternatively, he could freeze a mortal in his tracks and slow down a barrier realm to a crawl.

They determined that if they could focus that energy into a single point the size of a needle tip, then it would be the equivalent of about 1,500m/s². That would be enough to instantly stop 30 tonnes. Not only that but it could stop a projectile fired from an Arc Cannon and then send it back at three times the speed.

Two issues remained with soul Pressure. Even if he could focus it down to a speck with 1,500m/s^2, it would instantly use the 30,000 newtons of Pressure available to him the moment it touched something more than 20kg. The second problem was that even just releasing soul Pressure freely in that manner required an immense amount of effort and James was flat out maintaining it for more than a few minutes.

The third issue was that trying to focus it and control it increased the level of difficulty by a square function. In other words, if the level of effort used to just maintain his Pressure at full power was quantifiably 6, then controlling it into a single area at the same time was 36.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to train the power and control of his soul Pressure yet, but he was hoping that it would be like lifting weights.

Finally, he ran some tests to determine if a person’s spirit energy or cultivation realm affected the level of soul Pressure. After bringing in an endless stream of guinea pigs, he came to realise that almost no one in this backwards empire actually understood their spirit aura and outside of a few select groups it was mostly overlooked.

He also came to realise that soul Pressure was an entirely separate form of cultivation which helped influence spirit cultivation and not the other way around.

After believing he had a slightly better understanding of the mysteries of the spirit aura, or soul as he’d begun calling it, James started devising new cultivation methods for both his spirit and soul cultivation. He couldn’t do much about the meditation technique. That was now basically ingrained, and there was hardly anything he could or wanted to do to change that.

His breathing technique only had the minor alteration of adding in the constant use of soul Pressure. Although he wasn’t sure what to expect when he started trying to consciously increase the soul Pressure exerted on refined spirit energy inside his body, he quickly discovered it did wonders.

The only problem was that it didn’t work unless he was consciously doing it. He then suddenly discovered something he fully didn’t expect when Gold James woke up from his endless meditation and decided to try and play with Soul Pressure too.

They quickly discovered that Gold James had his own Soul Pressure which was identical in every way to James’. James then also quickly discovered that he had absolutely no control over Gold James’ use of his Soul Pressure. They could both operate their soul Pressure together and double their output, but it didn’t combine into one and rather just stacked.

Interestingly enough, although they had their own separate soul Pressure, they shared their soul sense.

After the brief intermission created by this tomfoolery by Gold James, James got back to work on his cultivation methods. Having discovered Gold James had Soul Pressure as well, meant that Gold James, who was always meditating and focused on the breathing technique anyway, got to consciously apply Pressure to it while he meditated.

The next thing was martial techniques. This was the easiest part because it was just a matter of consciously controlling the spirit energy he released with Pressure instead of just sort of thinking about what he wanted it to do and willing it.

Seeing as Soul Pressure was essentially his willpower anyway, the only real difference between the two was the realisation that how much effort he put into willing the spirit energy into doing something greatly affected his control over it.

At first, this was slightly difficult, but he very quickly began improving after he mentally made the decision to try it. He believed that training like this could also help to improve his control of his Soul Pressure outside of his body.

Finally, he got to his Soul Pressure’s strength. To train its strength, he found the densest and heaviest material he could and created a weight training room. He then made sure to take an hour or two and visited this room every day to try and lift some of the weights using only his soul Pressure.

Very slowly, he managed to see some small amount of progress. Mostly in that he gained another 20 newtons of force to his total spirit Pressure after a month of training.

In order to train soul control, he would actively maintain his soul sense for as long and as often as he possibly could. He also began trying to focus his Soul Sense on specific things within its scope of vision. This one progressed only slightly faster than the Soul Pressure.

At first, his soul sense could be maintained for barely a few minutes before he started getting backlash effects and was forced to stop. While he was actively using it and trying to focus it on things a good distance away then the time he could maintain it halved.

After a month of solid training, minutes became hours and not only that but the distance his sense covered increased by a full 20 meters.

-The Arena-

It had now been two months since the Auction, and The Mysterious Stranger once again appeared in the arena and challenged James. James felt that even though the stranger had been giving them a run for their money up until now, that he could take her on.

Mostly because of the training he’d been doing with Soul Pressure. But also because for a few months, the only people he couldn’t best in sparring was Skay and Exsue.

James and the Challenger met in the arena at high noon. The three suns sat high above them like grand curators of the world and spread their light across everything. The sky was clear and blue, and the crowds marched in and gathered in the arena.

With the new renovations to the arena, it was likely that even if Tower Realms went all out in the True Spirit Arena, then the protective arrays for the audience would remain intact. James was pretty sure he could probably set off a gravity bomb in here, and the audience could all just sit there and watch.

Standing up on James’ usual perch was the 4 Sins that took an ass whooping the last time the challenger showed up. Exsue was the only one that probably could have still come out victorious, but that would have come at a significant price. She was well aware that obliterating half the population of the city that had been sitting in the crowd that day would most assuredly have put her on James’ bad side.

Standing at one end of the arena was the Challenger in her customary black robes with her face shielded by a hood and a sword at her hip. Standing opposite to her was James, in his light blue robes with the Guild Seal on his chest and a long silver sword at his hip.

He also wore a ring on his hand. The ring was his aura splitting artefact, or rather now more appropriately named a Soul Pressure diverter. After some testing, James understood that this array pattern created a null area around him that freed spirit energy from the effects of other people’s Soul Pressure.

When testing, he discovered that deploying his own soul Pressure with the intention of eliminating someone else’s would create an area where the two overlapped and James’ Soul Pressure would counteract the opponents for whatever amount of Pressure it could apply per square meter.

If the person had 200 newtons more Pressure than James did, then it meant that the spirit particles in the area their soul Pressure’s overlapped would have 200 newtons of Pressure applied to them by the other person.

This ring seemed to create a very small concentrated field for about a meter around James’ body that did that to the exact amount necessary to eliminate any Pressure influence not his own. Unfortunately, in James’ opinion, it didn’t manage to mask him from the view of Soul Sense and instead made it even easier to see him.

As the two competitors stared at each other, James couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen those eyes somewhere before. Those clear blue eyes. He was certain he’d seen them.

Suddenly, James got a strange sensation. His Soul Sense reacted, and he realised he could feel the challenger trying to scan him with their Soul Sense. From what he could tell, they didn’t seem to be able to tell that he’d been busily scanning them since they’d walked into the arena.

He thought back to the experiments he’d been doing over the past week and realised he’d missed something crucial. He never realised it because he’d been too busy considering how to implement Soul Pressure into his training and combat.

Soul Pressure, when it was creating zero pressure on the surroundings, acted like some kind of ESP third eye. What he didn’t fully realise was that he’d never once been able to scan Skay. That old freak probably had Soul Pressure as powerful as Ruff’s. He didn’t realise he couldn’t scan Skay, not because he hadn’t tried but because every time he did, it just looked like he was scanning a mortal.

James had assumed this was because Skay didn’t really use spirit energy at all and the only reason he could confirm Skay was a True Spirit practitioner was that strange feeling like he ‘just knew’ when he looked at him.

He then suddenly understood something. ‘If soul Pressure is meant to be a reflection of your will, then I can influence other people’s soul sense with my own’. That said, he began to try and focus his soul sense to shield himself from being scanned.

At first, he still felt like the challenger was able to scan him, albeit they couldn’t see much because the two were separated by a good 50 metres between them, but he felt it nonetheless. Gold James then decided to chip in, and suddenly the pervasive sense of being looked at under a microscope was replaced with the feeling that someone was trying to scan him but only saw a blur.

Moments later he saw the challenger’s eyes suddenly widen in shock. James only smiled like a demon and gave a nod to the bell boy. The ‘ding’ of the arena bell sounded out, and the crowd roared and cheered.

James and the challenger then made the exact same motion. They dropped into a combat stance with their hand on their sheathed sword. Seeing her every move suddenly being copied, the challenger once more got another shock.

James started pumping lightning energy into his mind to increase his perception time and reflexes. He figured that he would try and play with this person for a bit. He suddenly realised something else strange with his Soul Pressure.

When he was consciously pouring it into his mind along with lightning energy, he felt a drastic increase in his perception time and his processing speed. The world around him slowed even further, and he watched on as actions of the crowd, like clapping, which should only take a fraction of a second, dragged out into nearly 5 seconds.

The world became slow motion around him. James now understood how Palace Realm Practitioners could be so fast and process the ridiculous speeds they could move at and perceive. It was Soul Pressure.

James then returned his focus onto the challenger, just in time to see her making the first movements of launching one of her wind blade attacks by drawing her sword.

James’ devilish smile grew more sinister and with the assistance of his lightning energy, he managed to launch a simultaneous wind blade. The two blades clashed in the middle of the arena and surprisingly James’ won out and continued on after slicing through the challenger’s.

Seeing that moment of shock and surprise in her eyes made James’ day. He then quickly saw those eyes ignite with what James could only describe as ire.

She shot to the left while launching consecutive wind blades only to be perfectly mirrored by James. She then tried closing the distance in an attempt to reduce his reaction speeds. Instead, she only managed to increase his reaction speed because she was far enough into his Soul Sense field that he could mirror her every action with his eyes closed.

It did manage to score her a short moment though when she was close enough that James’ Soul Sense could scan her properly and he finally saw her face ... and everything else obviously, but it was her face that gave him a shock.

After recovering from his shock, he grew slightly more interested in playing mirror. He wanted to enrage this person to their limits. He also wanted them to know that he knew and began to ask questions.

“How did you get here cellulite girl?”

Hearing this provocative question, the challenger froze for a moment, and the flames of rage in her eyes only grew more intense. James sensed her body filling to the brim with wind and lightning energy as she tried to speed up faster and catch him out in their game of mirror.

She dodged left and right while launching lightning bolts and wind blades everywhere, only to have them all meet an exact and slightly stronger duplicate sent from James.

She then tried to change tact and chose instead to simply go into close quarters and cut him to pieces. She rapidly launched forwards, and James finally had no choice but to retaliate. He didn’t care that he’d lost the game of mirror. He was busy trying to figure out how this person was here at all.

Seeing James finally raising his guard and taking the fight more seriously, the Challenger raised her sword, and in the same motions she first used with Goliath, she made a sudden huge increase in lightning energy and her body vanished and reappeared to James’ right like a ghost.

To everyone’s shock and surprise, James simply stopped dead on the spot and then swung his sword directly forwards. A loud clang rang out in the arena, and the figure of the challenger phased into existence in front of James while holding their sword defensively and trying to push back James’ sword. She then released another strange spirit energy, and her sword started forcing James’ back.

James leant forwards slightly while all 6 of his spirit energies suddenly flooded his body and created more pressure on his sword causing it to slowly sink towards the challenger’s head. He stared directly into her eyes and spoke again. “How did you get here Kelly?”

Realising the jig was up. Kelly, the challenger, diverted her sword to the side and then jumped backwards from James. She then launched a wind blade off, and the crisp ‘ding’ of the arena bell sounded out.

The crowds were decidedly upset with this battle. It was very much not to their expectations. In order to quell the crowds, James ordered Goliath and Jessy to put on a show for them and then beckoned Kelly to follow him.

-Guild HQ-

Sitting at the round table in the HQ office was a girl with long wavy black hair and smooth defined features. Her skin was ghastly pale as if she’d lived her whole life in a dark room. She had thin red lips and defined cheekbones making her all the more ghost like.

She was garbed in her black travelling leathers which she wore under her robe, and her long straight hair fell around her face and neck down past her shoulders, parted only slightly in front of her face in a very antisocial emo manner. On her hip was her sword and scabbard and in a makeshift holster on her thigh was what looked like a poor attempt at a pistol. Her arm had the tattoo of a triangle equally cut apart into 3 sections. Each one housing a different symbol in it.

She was a thin looking girl with a chest as flat as a board and a firm perky bum.

As she sipped her tea, the core members of the Brotherhood sat surrounding the table while looking at James. The first to speak was Exsue who seemed rather upset that James seemed to actually know this woman. She was now regretting that she hadn’t vaporised the woman and the people watching in the stadiums be damned.

It was bad enough he came to this place with Jessy ‘the hussy’. She stared fixedly at the girl then at James and then back and forth a few more times before pointedly asking. “Who’s this bitch?!”

James smiled as he imagined the fallout of these two women meeting each other. Exsue was systematically insane and seemed to be excitably jealous of anyone who had a relationship with James. Especially if they’d had any history in the ‘sack’.

The girl named Kelly was the definition of lazy. She did the absolute minimum required to achieve her goals. Which was a huge waste, because James was convinced she could pick up just about anything she put her mind to.

He was rather surprised she’d actually achieved as much as she did in this world. Perhaps the only reason he could think of was her desire to not be hassled ... ever. Which was why James suspected if Exsue started getting in her face, Kelly was probably going to try and strangle her to death.

It’ll be like a lazy cat meeting an excitable dog ... and the cat got petted by the owner, but the dog didn’t. What could go wrong, right?

Seeing Exsue already making assumptions and getting bushy tailed, James finally chose to disclose his relationship with the stranger. “Everyone meet Kelly, she’s ... uhh, let’s call her a past acquaintance. She and I both started our electrical apprenticeships together in Australia on Earth. I haven’t seen her since I left that dump though. She’s probably the laziest person and...”

After glancing at Skay momentarily, he continued on. “ ... the second most brilliant mind I’ve ever met. She actually had such a strong handle on electromagnetism I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s her main element after sloth.”

Hearing the proclamation that this sickly looking woman had the sloth element, everyone except Skay was suddenly surprised. James and Skay could, of course, both sense it with their Soul Sense. Because they’d still been exploring it, they hadn’t mentioned it to the others yet.

This led to a lengthy explanation on what they understood about it and how it worked. Apparently, either Exsue was putting on an act of astonishment and knew about it all along, or she truly didn’t know. James was inclined to believe she had been keeping a lot of things from him but chose to ignore that for now. He was certain that he could trust her enough that she wouldn’t keep it from him without a good reason.

With this short introduction, James felt the sudden surge of Jessy and Fatty’s soul sense expanding out to cover the room and beyond. Goliath and Harvy both agreed they couldn’t do it, and although Exsue said she couldn’t do it, James had a sneaking suspicion that she was just too powerful for him to detect.

Skay finally got fed up and slapped a hand onto the table. “Who cares if they can see her elements boy? We know, and that’s enough. More importantly than that, I predicted that it was possible but never did I imagine we’d track someone down so quickly.”

Skay’s eye then became fanatical as he flipped open his black-pad and looked straight at her. “You must be from one of the other labs right?”

Jessy finally couldn’t wait patiently anymore either and shot to her feet. “Who cares about that shit! If you’re from earth, how did you even get here?!”

Skay just brushed his hand through the air as if it was a matter of course. “Do you not comprehend quantum entanglement? Whatever one particle does is matched by an equal reaction in its pair.”

Hearing this nonchalant reply, Jessy slammed a hand onto the table. “What does that even mean you old fuck?”

The new girl Kelly finally chimed in and added to the discussion. “It means, that the gateway was opened from a reaction between the anomaly and the entangled electrons. In other words, gateway opens in the sea lab, gateway opens in the other 412 places on earth connected by electron pairs. For a simple 2 bit whore, it would probably be easier if I just told you what you’re really asking. Yes, there are other portals to earth, but they’ve all closed. Probably the only one that can go back is the one you came through.”

Skay visibly jerked hearing someone else voicing his own thoughts. He gave Kelly a strange look and then continued on questioning her. “Girl, what lab are you from?”

Kelly didn’t even register the old man and instead looked at James. “Beach Boy. Looks like you somehow managed to drag your ass through to this side. God really does have a cruel sense of humour to make me suffer two lifetimes with you in the both of them.”

James smiled like the devil as he leant back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. “Good to see you too Kelly. I see that even spirit energy can’t fix that fat ass of yours. By the way, if you’re planning to go back, then you’re going to want to pack a radiation suit, you know ... with the nuclear holocaust and all.”

Kelly seemed to take a wide-eyed moment to register the mention of a holocaust then just as quickly it looked like she’d already processed and moved on. “I see, well that will no doubt disappoint some people. So, would you care to fill me in on everything you’ve created here?”

James jumped up from his chair with a bright smile. “Sure, why don’t we take a walk around the city first. I’ll show you what we’ve done with the place.”

Allowing Kelly to broach no argument, he simply stood up and walked out of the office. No one else was sure what they should be doing about the new girl and decided to leave it up to James. The only exception being Exsue who ran out and clung to James’ side while biting his arm and demanding a detailed history of his relationship with the new girl.

James did as he always did and completely ignored her. After a short trip along the monorail system, which by the way Kelly showed no enthusiasm for, or even slightly acknowledged, they arrived at Monolith plaza. James hadn’t even bothered to point at anything and explain how it got there or how they built it. Instead, he spent the short trip over here making jokes at Kelly’s expense.

Kelly watched on in a very bored and uninterested manner as James strolled up and placed a hand on the monolith. Moments later Heavenly Law descended onto Kelly and then just as quickly disappeared. It wasn’t uncommon to see Heavenly Law popping up in the city, so hardly anyone paid much attention to it.

James then turned back from the monolith with a solemn frown and marched back up to Kelly. “So who sent you?”

Kelly was still in a moment of shock after realising she’d somehow managed to escape the binding oath she’d been under. She then let out a long breath and looked back at James with an equally solemn look. Seeing the way these two were acting, Exsue for once didn’t leap in to try and steal James’ attention. Besides, she was rather curious just what was going on as well.