Chapter 38: Pinocchio becomes a real boy.

-Tech City-

Having spent the last two months sequestered away from the world doing forging, James returned to surface only to find that the city seemed to have once again started slowly expanding. With the restoration of the monolith, the city limits had been restored to tens of kilometres as opposed to its previous few kilometres.

Thanks to that, the outskirts of the city now had people buying up land and building homes and businesses. Golden grain was once again filling fields off into the distance for as far as the eye could see and the small townships scattered kilometres away, to oversee the grain fields, had been rebuilt.

It seemed that since the last auction, the release of a public meditation technique and breathing technique that left others in the dust, and the more than impressive living arrangements, hundreds of thousands of commoners had started flocking to the city from all over. Even from places as far as Pomit in the far south-east and Sargie in the far north-west.

The total population of the city now numbered just short of 800,000 and not a single one of those residents was a mortal ... at least not any longer. Every last one, from children to old men, was at least in the barrier realm thanks to the meditation technique being sold in the university.

Because of that huge influx, the city as it had been, became called the inner city. Thanks to the increasing population and the return of the safety zone provided by the monolith, Jessy made some changes to the city. She demolished everything in the farmer’s district and had it split in half with one part becoming the new university spanning kilometres across and the other part becoming industrial estate.

James could find no fault with this and honestly admitted, that at this point he didn’t really care what happened to the city. He’d said that in a moment of distracted concentration when he’d been conditioning something and Jessy and Jasmine had taken it as him giving them absolute freedom to do whatever the hell they wanted with it.

Thanks to that, the commercial district now had an underground which was entirely policed and operated by the Brotherhood. It became the premiere black market in the empire and even started stealing black market trade from outside of the empire.

The university was now huge in comparison to its previous self. The most interesting thing about the university was that people who came here and lectured or studied did so entirely freely and without paying a cent. This was because they paid for the knowledge by getting the implant and all the classrooms and lecture halls were entirely run by like-minded individuals who loved knowledge.

The most popular place in the university was the biggest lecture stage that was open air. It had thousands of stone seats surrounding it, and everyday people would go there and debate on different topics. It was quite common to see budding apprentice forge masters and alchemists sharing experiences.

The Gau clan made quite a name for themselves when Song came to the university and started preaching on artefact creation. Their fame as forge masters became well known in the city after that and they often went to the University and gave speeches to help recruit talented forge master apprentices.

Similarly, a new sect that came from the Sanhong City, based in the same named region, which called themselves the Potion Daoist’s, started giving lectures at the University which created an onslaught of talented and experienced masters in their trades coming to the University to lecture and recruit talents.

It became such a ‘thing’ that the stage had to be booked in advance, and another stage was created with the same setup. To limit the amount of pestering students got from factions trying to suck them in, recruiting on the campus became forbidden with the exception of one week every three months.

That became recruitment week and was actually an idea Gary had come up with in order to give students more freedom and to prevent people using the debating stage just to talk about how amazing their guild is and that sort of shit.

Still, once they’d started, they quite enjoyed it, and it then became professional courtesy not to try and sell your guild while at the university and to focus only on knowledge, which being the aged professionals they were, was very much up the alleys of the old monsters that visited to give lectures.

There were also a number teams that were running projects that the Brotherhood invested money into. Not only that, many guilds started research teams and began to back research teams that managed to finish some of the basics courses and had begun a project for the science fair.

The payout for the science fair was quite sizable, and if the backing guild were lucky, they would have sowed good fortune with a promising researcher and possibly drawn that person into their guild. It didn’t always work, but many young researchers and scholars agreed to concede the payout to a faction if they backed them financially during their research.

As much interest as the university was generating, the arenas created more. They now had 40 odd arenas of all different sizes in the Spirit District. The largest was the old arena retrofitted to fit nearly 300,000 spectators, and with a combat area sized at 200 metres in length and 150 in width.

This arena was designed for the tower realm cultivators and team matches. The rest were all smaller, and the majority of them were only a few dozen metres in diameter and were underground arenas. This was because of the huge influx of barrier realm cultivators that wanted to try their luck in an arena. If they did well enough, they could make a name for themselves and win a shit load of money while doing it.

Not only was there more arenas in the Spirit District but it seemed the idea from the University had found its way here. Powerful cultivators would often speak on the Martial Dao and martial techniques, and it became a place where people freely traded information regarding what they’d achieved or discovered.

This sort of trait definitely wasn’t common in the cultivation world because people generally kept such things to themselves lest someone get the upper hand over them, but most of these people were only common mortals a few months ago, and they all felt some kind of sickening comradery.

At least it was sickening to James. He often had people grovelling and thanking him like he’d saved their life because he was selling a meditation technique for a pittance to the mortals, but in reality, it wasn’t for them. It was entirely for him.

As could be seen by his guild now having nearly 1000 members. That made it only slightly smaller than the Gau Clan had been when he first came to this world. Hell, even the two sects the Shield Maidens and the Sword Masters didn’t have that many disciples.

Well, they didn’t before. Now, with the huge influx of cultivators, all the guilds and clans had recently been getting huge numbers of fresh-faced barrier realms rocking up on their doorstep looking to join a powerful faction in order to learn their techniques and have an opportunity to use their resources.

By the same token, a great many people had chosen to remain as a free cultivator and find their own way. The problem with this was that you would often miss things that an experienced cultivator could teach you, as was demonstrated by James’ total lack of understanding towards his Spirit Pressure.

As James surveyed the city, he noticed that outside each of the city gates to each district small towns had started forming. He imagined what this place would be like with this level of growth in another 50 years. It was already nearly half the population of the capital city Yansho.

Thanks to the array powered construction of Tech City, it actually took up only a sixth of the total area Yansho city did. From what he’d heard though, Yansho city had been buying designs from them for housing skyscrapers and was trying to even that margin.

Finished his brief moment of inspecting the city, James returned to the HQ building. Apparently, there was someone of slight importance who was very eager to meet with him.

-James’ Office-

As James entered his office, he saw a man dressed in a very regal and posh looking military uniform. Something he’d expect to see Napoleon wearing in a history book or something. On his hip sat an old warn scimitar.

When James scanned the man, he detected a powerful fire energy. It had obviously been purified quite a bit. Not to mention he sensed the man’s Spirit Pressure was at least twice as powerful as his own. He could intuitively tell by the man’s lack of ability to fully reign in his spirit pressure that his control was probably even worse than James’ had been when he first started testing it.

That created a strange perpetual pressure around the man. It wasn’t much to James as a cultivator, and especially not as a cultivator with fairly controlled and powerful spirit pressure of his own, but the man no doubt flattened roses and grass simply by walking past them.

That wasn’t the only thing James felt in his brief scan, he also discovered that the scimitar on the man’s hip was clearly made by a forge master proficient in creating spirit artefacts. It had also obviously existed for a long time, because he felt it reacting just from his brief scrying of it and it was a powerful spirit, at least by the standards James had to judge it by. Which would probably be considered low.

After a momentary scanning of his guest, James sat at the opposite side of the table and eyed him over. The man had a bushy waxed moustache and a thick head of waxed back orange hair. His eyes were clear and sharp, and he carried himself with a dignified upper-class air, with straight back and looking down his nose at the world.

The last thing James could tell, without even scanning the man, was that he had just recently stepped into the tower realm. He still had the fresh ‘new realm’ smell about him, just like a new car keeps it’s smell for a few weeks until you spill your coffee in it ... or something.

James already had some idea who this fellow was, but decided that he would play it by ear anyway. He’d somewhat gotten into the habit of running with things lately, and it was a rare moment when he felt something was beyond his control anymore.

He gave a polite smile and poured himself some tea. “I’m James, what can I do for you?”

In a no-nonsense tone, the man gave a grunt, made a show of looking James over and then stared him straight in the eye. “You have my son, and I demand his release!”

James tapped his fingers on the table and leant back in his chair while looking at the man. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You see, if your son is the man I think he is, then we’re expecting a ransom. Otherwise, he’ll be executed for colluding to bring harm to my guild.”

“Humph! What nonsense! My son would have no such intentions!”

James leant back further and gave a sigh. He then looked at the ceiling and spoke to Jasmine. “Jasmine, playback the evidence on Perlious Latsoe.”

“Certainly James.”

Jasmine then began playing back footage and voice recordings of everything incriminating that Perlious had ever done inside the Yori Empire. By the time it was finished, General Latsoe was shaking with fury and his already poorly controlled spirit pressure was threatening to surge forth like his rage.

James, who had been busy with something on his pad through this short routine, finally looked up and eyed the General then began reading from the pad.

“So it looks like we have your son on at least 3 counts of attempted subterfuge, 2 counts of murder, 4 counts of subverting justice, 2 counts of conspiracy to commit murder, 4 counts of conspiracy to abduct, 1 count of littering and at least a dozen counts of public urination. Not only that, but it would appear we could also charge you with subterfuge and conspiracy to murder and abduct. I probably shouldn’t even let you leave my city, let alone allow you to take your son.”

“Would you dare?! I’m the General in charge of the entire northern border of Hastoel. If you were to try anything against me, this empire would gladly hand you over to the Hastoel Government. Don’t think you’re protected just because you live in a different nation!”

James gave a flippant smile then stood up and looked down at this General Latsoe character. “I don’t particularly care what you think. If the empire is so willing to just hand me over, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation because you’d have had me expedited along with your son 2 months ago when he was captured.

“No, I think you’re here to try and threaten and bluster because you’ve already tried to pressure old Arty and he’s told you to blow it out your ass. Most likely, your ruling class probably passed on trying to march an army in here and taking my city.

“If I had to guess, they’re already well aware it would be considered a hostile action by the other two nations and then Hastoel would be like a paper boat resisting the ever continuous tides of the ocean. So if I’m not wrong, you’re either here to bluster and threaten me and hope I’ll roll over and capitulate, or you’re here to assassinate me in my own home.”

The moment he finished pondering on his conspiracy, Latsoe was standing and had a hand on the table to flip it. He very quickly discovered a slight problem however, when regardless of how much force he used, the table remained stationary and unbudging.

By this point, James was already reaching for his lightning shoes in preparation to escape. The ever present sniper fired his Arc Cannon, and the sound speed projectile blew the window open. For the first time, thanks to the huge boost he got from both his scrying and his spirit pressure, James actually witnessed the slug rapidly move through the air towards Latsoe’s head.

To his even greater shock, he witnessed something otherworldly, as Latsoe’s Scimitar glowed brightly and as if without even realising it himself, Latsoe had drawn it and sliced that sound speed projectile in half.

Just as James’ boots fired up to launch him out of the room, the Scimitar was slicing through the air, and a violent burst of flame followed behind it, beginning to fill the room. Making it worse was that the first slice cutting the slug in two had created its own sonic boom which was sucking the flame from the scimitar outwards and feeding it.

Even for James, all of this seemed to be happening too fast. James also came to realise why the General’s spirit pressure seemed unsteady and barely restrained. James had thought it was from a lack of control, but he now understood that it was because the General was constantly using it to increase his speed and perception.

This entire scenario happened in the time span of a second, which was fast even by James’ standards. Seeing the imminent sound wave and the closely following flame wave, James maximised his spirit pressure and lightning energy internally and focused it on his speed and perception.

Normally, when controlling his spirit pressure or spirit energy inside of his own body, he felt little to no resistance and had superior control. He now realised that was because he’d never really pushed it to its limit, as he was in this split second life or death moment.

As it ramped up, the world slowed even further and the visible sonic air pulse was already less than a metre away from James. He felt his control over his internal energies slipping from the sheer level of power he had to use to achieve these speeds and before the chance slipped by, he ran!

His lightning and wind energies poured into his lightning shoes, and for the first time, he watched as lightning spirit energy got sucked up by the free energies of the materials and arrays his shoes were made from. Then a massive wave of lightning energy was returned to his legs, spurring them on to even faster speeds.

With the assistance of his spirit pressure willing his spirit energies to move through his meridians faster and willing his body to react quicker, James reached the sound barrier for the first time. Less than a step behind him was the sound wave created from Latsoe’s scimitar, and a step behind that was the wave of fire being pulled along and fuelled by the sonic pulse.

James reached the door, and for a brief moment, he felt himself pushing against something like a sheet or plastic wrap. The harder he willed his body to move the thicker and thicker the sheet became, until finally the barrier snapped like a twig and his body looked like it had disappeared.

Following the disappearance of James through his office door was the flame wave, barrelling out and lighting anything in the room and corridor outside that was flammable on fire. An alarm rang out in the building, and the General let out a dissatisfied grunt. He then started running after James in pursuit.

James felt the skin of his body burning from the air friction, and his eyes felt like they were about to be pushed back into his brain. Probably the only thing keeping him alive was the inordinate amount of spirit energy and pressure he was using.

He now realised he’d grown far too cocky and had vastly underestimated the power a tower realm practitioner had at their fingertips. He knew that if he timed it right, and caught them by surprise, he could just set off a bomb and run, letting them be engulfed in the aftermath.

The problem was that he had no spirit bombs when he walked into his office and he never suspected General Latsoe would actually dare lash out at him on his own territory. In his mind, it was completely irrational, but then, people do irrational things for the ones they love.

By the time James was a hundred metres away, Latsoe was just rushing out of the office in the wake of the fire. Seeing James just reaching the end of the corridor, he swung his scimitar, and a godly firestorm exploded from the edge.

James glanced back to see it rushing towards him, and without a second thought, he launched himself at the nearby window. His soft squishy body, already starting to show tears and burns on his skin, then had the pleasure of being filled with shards of glass. What little remaining energy and pressure he had, was then used to break his fall moments before he hit the ground and lapsed into unconsciousness.

This whole scene covered the span of perhaps less than 3 or 4 seconds. In order to survive just those few seconds, James had used everything he had in his tank and then some. His audacity at thinking he could talk down to a Tower Realm standing only a few metres away had almost cost him his life.

Luckily for him, Jasmine’s intuition was on point, and drones had been circling the building the moment James walked into that office. Before he even broke through the window on the second story, drones were rushing to catch him.

The moment he hit the ground, he was lifted into the air again as Jasmine persevered to get him as far from this psycho as she could, as fast as she could. When General Latsoe reached the broken window seconds after James’ escape, he found him already another 200 metres from the building being evacuated by a horde of drones.

Seeing his chance to kill the captor of his son slipping away, Latsoe only grew more enraged and leapt from the window. Fire energy swirled around him like a tempest, and he rocketed through the air at amazing speeds.

Combat drones then arrived on the scene only to be blown out of the air before they could fire, or have their Arc Cannon slugs impact a solid wall of fire turning them into a hot spray of instant molten iron. Without the speed of sound pushing them forwards the molten iron simply hit the Generals skin and then slid off like water droplets not even leaving a red mark.

The further they moved from the HQ building, the closer the general got. The two hundred metre gap became 100, which then became 50. By that point, Latsoe was throwing fireballs like confetti, and the horde of drones surrounding and protecting James dropped like flies.

Almost 2 minutes had passed until finally Latsoe had closed the distance to 25 metres and sent out a wall of flame hoping to turn the drone horde and James into ashes in one go. Before the wall of flames could contact James, the newer model combat drones blew past at supersonic speeds creating a jet stream that sucked the fire along with it.

Intercepted by the Mark IV drone, Latsoe was forced to back off for a brief moment giving Jasmine enough time to get some more distance with James’ unconscious body. In the same moment, she was already moving her most powerful arsenal into position. The newer combat drones were more than just fast.

In less than a second, they’d surrounded Latsoe and did some strange transformer thing, revealing a laminated cube in their core. Each cube then lit up like a torch in the night and strange array patterns projected out from their surface creating odd patterns in the air.

Each of these projected arrays then seemed to solidify slightly, and an opaque force field flickered to life. The drones quickly shot around Latsoe, who seemed to be far more focused on catching up to James, and then began to move in towards him.

Before he realised what was happening, Latsoe suddenly collided with a remarkably soft, rubbery, transparent surface. After glancing around, he finally noticed the 20 drones all positioned around him in formation. Unfortunately for him, he never got the chance to try and break out from the force field they’d created because in a split second their cores became blindingly bright and an oppressive force suddenly filled the insides of the barrier.

Each of these drones had just set their little mini-reactors to self-destruct and created a contained mass implosion within the barrier. More or less, they just suicide bombed the shit out of the General like Muslim extremists.

-The Lab-

Once more, James awoke in the lab as fit as a fiddle and without the slightest break, scratch or bruise. And once more, he simply dumped Exsue onto the floor as he got up. Walking out from the room, with Exsue once again piggybacking off him and biting his shoulder.

As if Déjà vu, he then fought to push Exsue off of himself and arrived in the main area of the lab to see Skay having an argument with a group of people on the Screen.

James let out a long sigh and then decided to just turn around and leave. As he stepped into the elevator and hit a series of buttons, he tapped his ear piece.

“Jasmine, replay the events after I passed out.”

Without a word, a screen appeared on the wall of the elevator showing the full 4 minutes from the moment he launched out the window to the sudden disappearance of General Latsoe and the 20 drones that had surrounded him.

James then let out another sigh. “Jasmine. You can build your army.”

“James, are you certain you’re okay? You’ve been non-responsive for nearly 10 days and appear to now be acting out of character.”

“I’m fine Jasmine. Gear up the factory for full-scale war production, you can begin building your droid army, full outfit of our defensive and offensive technology. I want you to double your efforts on all array and spirit material research, even if it means you need to build yourself another computer. We have 7 months until the War of the Worlds.”

‘ding’

James stepped out onto the top floor and then entered his meditation chamber. As he sat down, he gave one last instruction to Jasmine. “Jasmine, I’m going into a closed-door session. No one is to disturb me.”

James then removed his earpiece for the first time since he got it, and sat down in the centre of the spartan room. James’ meditation chamber was an entirely empty room no more than 5 metres in length and width. It had a single plain red rug made of soft fur and apart from that was completely white.

As James sat into his meditation posture, he reviewed his short contribution to the battle with Latsoe. It had been a long time since James lost a fight, which was most assuredly exactly what happened with Latsoe. Being completely honest with himself, James accepted that he was never a contender to be part of that fight anyway.

Without Jasmine, he was certain he would now be dead. His spirit energy control and spirit pressure execution were both sloppy in the face of the sudden assault, and he readily recognised that his first instinct was to run from someone more powerful than himself.

Before, he was well and truly proud of his cultivation and everything he’d achieved here. Now, he was ashamed of himself for becoming so pig headed. Normally his pride was somewhat twisted from standard expectations.

Before he came here and started his guild, he prided himself on his character and his ability to adapt quickly while remaining level-headed. Before he became a cultivator, he didn’t care about winning or losing a single battle. Instead, his pride was focused on his ability to play the long game and survive any situation.

He prided himself on his endless persistence in the face of greater odds, and he prided himself on knowing when to fight, and when to survive. Now that he felt ashamed at being so easily trampled, James realised he’d been doing a number of things, that on Earth, would be out of character for him.

For one, the city. He’d never once cared about the woe and misfortune of others, and before coming here, he’d never have felt proud about wasting his own time helping people that couldn’t help themselves.

He defended his actions here as being for the future of the guild. But the truth was he was too busy basking in his own ego at everything he’d achieved with the city, to recognise he was slowly moving from someone who only needed his own approval, to someone that lived for the approval of others.

It certainly wasn’t as serious as becoming some grossly cheerful hippy that had an ego based entirely around seeking the attention of others, it wasn’t as bad as James felt it was, but it was nonetheless evident.

If James hadn’t been so full of himself, he would have long since put in countermeasures to deal with Latsoe. But he didn’t, because he felt he could survive anything. It was true that he survived, but it wasn’t under his own power, he instead was rescued from the brink of death ... by a talking machine no less.

James began to think about everything else he’d done since coming here. He soon began to realise, that thanks to the technological advantage they had over others, he’d become far too relaxed and lost sight of himself in the centre of a maelstrom of madness.

James spent weeks meditating on how much his personality had changed. Some things he liked, for example, he no longer froze as much as he did before, he thought this to be positive. Inversely, he no longer assessed situations as fully as he once would have. He missed things he normally wouldn’t miss and made mistakes he would never have made before.

By the end of the few weeks, James left his meditation chambers with a renewed vigour. He excepted that some things will always change, even himself, but the thing that wouldn’t change was his core values, the things about himself he had the most pride in.

Strangely, during this whole time in meditation, his greatest breakthroughs in his re-evaluation of himself all came from Gold James. Goldy, being the condensed conscious spirit embodiment of his pride, knew the things James had always prided himself on better than even James did. Which technically isn’t a correct sentence because after all, they’re both James.

When he emerged from meditation, he found a sleeping Exsue curled up on the floor outside his door sleeping like a cat. He gave a soft smile. Patted her head lightly then started walking out as he put his earpiece back in.

Before he’d even managed to reach the door, a body was glued to his back, making sniffing sounds and licking his neck. “You smell different today JayJay. Just like you did the first time I sensed you come through the portal.”

James, for the first time in ... well, forever, stopped in his tracks and then reached back a hand and patted Exsue’s blue hair. “It’s good to see you too Exsue.”

Exsue, for a brief moment, wasn’t sure what to do. James had never openly shown any form of affection towards her without her forcing it before. She started hyperventilating, and her pupils dilated like she’d just ingested some psychedelic drug.

As James reached the door to his room, Exsue fell onto the floor and started twisting around and moaning like some pervert. James could only chuckle wryly at this sight then turned and left as Exsue started bucking up and down while very inappropriately manhandling herself.

James tapped his earpiece as he closed the door to his bedroom and the writhing moaning Exsue on the floor. He then started preparing some tea as he spoke to Jasmine. “Jasmine, did you complete your new computer?”

“Hello James, welcome back. Yes, only a few days ago Skay and I successfully completed our first entirely spirit and array based computer. Although we say that ... I am weary of copying my core program onto it. This machine is beyond everything we envisioned or believed possible, and it runs in a manner not entirely conventional to standard computers.”