Chapter 40: Off to the Capital

With all responsibility to the guild well and truly shirked, James now had the free time to ... well if being honest, not much changed for the first few weeks. For starters, James had long since shirked his responsibility to the city. He had given all of those duties to other people, namely Jessy and Jasmine.

It also didn’t help that he was still affected by Skay’s death. The first few weeks were spent flipping between brainstorming for his future flying Headquarters and meditating alone. By meditating alone, it would be more accurate to say he was shutting himself away and moping.

This quickly changed when every time he locked himself in meditation, Jasmine would try and introduce him to a new aspect of her connection to technology. At first, she shared memories with him. Which more or less was just a huge dump of data.

The worst part of it all was that he was too curious to not try it. It started out as her sharing the system that her mind used to process all the information from the energy particles trapped in their spirit realm. Although Jasmine claimed it was only a small amount of information, James felt his head swelling when he consciously accepted the memory sharing.

He very quickly discovered, that although he could understand it all, he couldn’t execute it to even a thousandth of the degree that Jasmine could. He was severely limited by his fleshy human brain. Which Jasmine clearly didn’t have.

James, being the stubborn fool he was, refused to let that stop him. This then resulted in him getting endless nosebleeds and going into states of confusion. He didn’t give up, but he started moping again. This led to Jasmine giving him another huge data dump of everything she had recorded about array patterns.

It turned out, that was even worse. Sharing memories was similar to receiving an implant. He could get all the data and stuff it into his head. The problem lied in properly understanding and memorising it all. Otherwise, it would just be forgotten again, and like mist in the wind, disappear.

From there, Jasmine would always entice James with something else when he fell back into moping, and every time he would fall for it. After about 6 weeks, he was already simultaneously attempting to control drones through the network, memorise all the array formulas they he had in his head and trying to remember all the different types of herbs and plants Skay had stored away in Jasmine’s databanks.

Finally, he got the message. The last time James had ever opened himself up to feeling anything for another person, let alone comradery and friendship, he lost everything. This created a strange reaction to his fear of being alone.

He didn’t hate being alone, but rather, hated the idea of being alone forever. However, he could never open up enough to create anything more than a superficial relationship with anyone.

This wasn’t the case with Skay. Whether he accepted it or not, he’d come to rely a great deal on Skay over the past few months. He opened up quite a bit while he was here, and very quickly, that ended in disaster. Perhaps Jasmine, who spent her entire life closed off to everyone and only discovered what an emotion really felt like when Skay sacrificed his soul to give her life, understood somewhat James’ mental condition.

Although their two situations were vastly different in many ways, it could be rationalised that they were similar in some. James, who was closing himself off again, had failed to realise just how much Jasmine must be hurting, especially having the first emotion she ever felt be grief and sadness.

He only realised it at the end of these few weeks, when even Jasmine had stopped her efforts as much to distract him, and grown somewhat despondent herself. Not only Jasmine, but James’ poor mood had been affecting everyone. Exsue most of all, was upset at James being upset, and had many times stomped her foot while cursing that she hadn’t dropped a lightning bolt on Skay back when they first came through the Gate Way.

Seeing this rapidly declining mindset of his core members, James called an emergency council.

-James Office-

Seated at their round table, seven people and a spirit body, sat drinking tea. Now that Skay was gone, the core of the guild had lost a member. Harvy, who had basically always been considered a part of the core membership, filled the seventh spot again, as a placeholder until they found a new greed.

Jasmine floated in place, apparently drinking spirit tea, because her teacup was as ghostly and ethereal as her body.

Eventually, James broke the silence. “We’re going on a road trip.”

Everyone shared strange expressions, and James spoke again before the chance to question him came. “I don’t care what you’re all doing. Or what you’ve been doing the past few weeks. Apart from the lab, none of you should have any duties to fulfil now. That said, it’s time for us to leave the city and start gathering experience.”

Goliath nodded his head sternly. Of everyone here, he was probably the least affected by Skay’s death. He’d rarely interacted with him except for testing weapons and equipment. So he didn’t really develop any kind of bond with the man and simply thought him some kind of Mad Old Wizard.

He was also the one who wanted to go out into the world and test himself the most. There was also another reason which he never mentioned to anyone, but James was fairly certain there was someone he wanted to search for.

Exsue, who spent millions of years trapped in the monolith, also wanted to get out and see the world again. She also believed that it would help James’ mood if they got out of Tech City for a while.

The least enthusiastic was Kelly, who hated the idea of leaving the lab where she didn’t actually have to worry about anything and could sleep as much as she wanted and play with whatever she wanted. With the thought of having to go and actually do something, she decided to voice her objection.

“I can’t go! I have too much to do! You’re ... um ... ship thingy! I’ve still got loads of work to do on that, and it would waste my time if I had to...”

“Denied.” James flatly refused.

Amusingly, the next least enthusiastic was Fatty, who had many theories on what would happen if they left the city for an extended period of time. So far, apart from the endless forest, they’d never left Tech City for more than a day at most.

“I can’t go! I know that the overlords are out there watching, just waiting for a chance to pounce and take us away. If I have to go outside the city for more than a day, they’ll surely...”

“Denied.” James once again flatly refused.

Seeing no further objections, James smiled like the devil. “Don’t worry Fatty. With us around they’ll probably be less likely to succeed, but if you stay here ... well, let’s just say that a lot of spies from other nations have been slipping into the city lately. I’ve told everyone that you’re our new lead scientist and without the rest of us here, you’ll most likely have disappeared before we even get to our destination. By the time we get back, you may be buried in a dark torture dungeon on the other side of the continent.

“And you Kelly. Well, you don’t even have to do anything on this trip. You can just idle about and do whatever you like. If you stay here though, I’ll give you very specific instructions for what I expect you to have finished by my return. If even one thing isn’t complete, then I’ll remind you of that time when we were studying for our apprenticeships, and I discovered what a Mega was.”

Hearing this declaration, both Kelly and Fatty gave a shiver like they’d just stepped in a cold puddle, then gulped in unison and nodded obediently. James’ customary sinister smile spread from ear to ear.

Finally, the ever curious about what James was up to Exsue, asked the question on everyone’s minds. “So, where are we going JayJay?”

“To the capital for starters. I have something to collect from the Dragon Vault. While in the city, you guys can just go about and sightsee or whatever. I don’t really care. Then, we’ll go and do some visiting. I want to explore the capital for a day or two before we leave.

“Our next adventure will be a return to the Black Lands. We’re going to be harvesting some more space stones. After that, we’re going to Nahtiro. Emily told me there’s an alchemist there that can artificially create Spirit Jade. Unfortunately, he only takes on two apprentices every four years, that timeline will be 3 weeks from now, and most likely, it’s going to be a bloodbath ... in a metaphorical sense.

“From what Emily’s told me, this person spends a month testing the alchemy potential of his would be apprentices. The best two candidates will be apprenticed to him. This will be the only chance we have to get the formula. Well, unless we just storm the place.

“Which I doubt will be easy, seeing as he most likely keeps something so valuable with him and we have no way to take down a Tower Realm cultivator without excessive force, and most likely destroying the formula. Meanwhile, you lot, along with the Ghost team, will be infiltrating the three great nations. Your job will be to start a war.

“That’s my plans. By the time we’ve done all this, we’ll only have a short while until the War of the Worlds, and all of us will be participating. We can’t let these fellows have it easy. We all will be entering the competition as members of the Yori Empire. Any questions?”

For once, the first reasonable question was voiced by Fatty. “If we’re pushing the three nations to go to war with each other, won’t they all hold out until the tournament is over? If Yori wins, then won’t they all decide to focus those war preparations on Yori?”

James devilish smile returned, and he hunched over as a low rumbling chuckle echoed from his chest, and he pawed his hands together in a very maniacal and evil manner. “Why does any country go to war Fatty? Heh heh heh haha haHAHAHA! You’ll know when the time comes. HAHAHA!”

As everyone, except Exsue who seemed to be having a blushing moment like she’d just fallen in love, made disgusted faces like they’d met some creepy pervert, James laughed most heartily and most evilly. He was still occasionally chuckling and rubbing his hands together in that creepy manner as he marched into his room leaving everyone to just sit in the office sharing worried glances.

Even Jasmine, who could be said to be an occupant of James’ own mind, wasn’t sure what to make of this behaviour. When she returned to his spirit realm and asked Goldy, he smugly patted his chest while gallantly staring off into the distance. “No need to worry Jasmine, sometimes, a man just needs to vent his frustrations on the world.”

A Few days later, a new, slightly larger, modified version of the Velocity took off from Tech City. This Velocity Gunship was outfitted with rooms for the core members to live on the ship. All the space that it normally had in the back had been segregated and reinforced with 9 newly installed refurbished rooms.

Now that Jasmine was a spirit, and mostly because she was trapped in James’ spirit realm where he could keep an eye on her, he’d given her the go-ahead to begin automating the weapons on the gunship. Much to the displeasure of the gun crew that normally operated the guns that rotated around the outsides of the ship.

Luckily for them, they were given paid leave in Tech City to live it up like kings until the core members returned. At which point, they would be hired to man much bigger and far more frightening guns on the Mobile Base.

Jasmine herself admitted that even though quantum entangled spirit particles, hereby referred to solely as Q-energy, transferred information instantly, it seemed to be subject to the surrounding primal/free energy saturation and her own cultivation.

This meant that if they ever passed through an area very rich in primal energy, she’d get fuzzy broken coms, which would affect the operation of the ship. That was why she insisted that the ship be properly crewed. Which from James’ understanding, was the equivalent of nearly 100 members.

Unless Jasmine/James were personally on board the ship, preventing interference, then the ship would be captained by Harvy, and crewed by members of the Guild.

That, however, was far off in the future. This temporary moving base allowed for all the basic amenities. Meditation chambers with adjustable energy and pressure saturation. Well-furnished bedrooms. War-Room, which coincidentally had the round table dragged in here by Harvy. And a few other basic living commodities they’d grown accustomed to.

As the ship flew out of the city, James stood in the cockpit as Jasmine tried to teach him how to control the guns. Every now and then as they flew along, some poor bastard’s barn would be blown to smithereens or some poor, defenceless, usually harmless creature, grazing in the fields and plains, would suddenly disappear into a flaming crater.

It wasn’t uncommon for a flock of birds to get a sudden fright when the green blur that was the Velocity shot past at supersonic speed and sucked half their flock through the Jet Turbines. It seemed to add at least 10 minutes to their short journey as Exsue purposely veered off course every now and then.

James couldn’t get mad at her, after all, he’d just been ‘accidentally’ obliterating people’s farm animals. Besides, this trip was to let everyone unwind for a bit and relax. If Exsue was relaxed by the sudden murderous suction of the Velocity Engines decimating a flock of cute little birds, who was he to tell her otherwise.

Besides, he got a few chuckles out of it himself.

-Yansho City-

As they flew into the air space near Yansho City, they dropped their speed down to a mellow cruise. Three things stuck out as James surveyed the city ahead of them. The first thing was the flying creatures. There were hundreds of them everywhere, and all of them had someone on their back who was holding a set of reigns.

This wasn’t that surprising, because a great many visitors to Tech City fly in on birds. They then very quickly discover that Tech City has a clear air zone policy. In other words, only Brotherhood members and the security forces are allowed to fly within the city limits.

The second thing James noticed was the number of buildings that had been built and were still being built that looked identical to those in Tech City. He remembered a while back that Jasmine had been selling design plans for the high rises. They even went one step further and agreed to sell the array patterns that stabilised the buildings.

Amusingly, even with the array patterns, not many people knew how to decipher them. They only knew where the pattern had to go on the building. To make it worse, there was hardly anyone on the continent who had the same level of catalyst research as the Brotherhood, so these arrays made by others were weaker.

They also didn’t have the reactor cubes to power everything, so they instead had to set up a system where people would offload energy into the building. Surprisingly, the use of properly refined spirit energy boosted the efficiency of the arrays, but unfortunately, having so many different types of energy poured into it all day caused the array to weaken and decay faster.

The third thing that caught James’ eye was the sheer volume this city took up. From a glance at the edge of the city, it spanned onwards to the horizon. Which is saying a god damn lot, seeing as the horizon was a significantly longer distance away than earth’s horizon would be.

At the low altitude they were flying, he could just see the other side of the city. Which meant the city had to be more than 30 kilometres in radius. After a few more internal calculations, he guessed that the city had to have at least a million residents to be safely protected by the monolith.

As they slowly flew into the city, a trio of men flying on the backs of Huge Black Hawk beasts flew up alongside the Velocity while yelling something. Exsue made a motion with her fingers, and the voice of the oldest man with white hair and bushy grey eyebrows rang across the bridge.

“Halt! Halt! You are flying an unregistered artefact! Land now and prepare to be inspected, by order of the Emperor’s Dragon Guard!”

Exsue started making a motion to slightly shift the Velocity over so the man was directly lined up with the Jet Turbine. Seeing Exsue preparing to test the structural integrity of the engines with a bird the size of a small car, James clapped her on the back of the head.

“Take us down Exsue. No need to start our first day in the capital by making enemies with the local enforcers. I’m sure Artimus has told them to expect us at some point.”

Exsue made a cute pout and then shook her arms a bit. In a matter of minutes, the Velocity curved around in the sky and landed on top of some slum houses on the outskirts of the city, crushing them into debris. James didn’t hear any screaming as he walked down the lowered ramp, so thanked his lucky stars Exsue hadn’t just killed someone.

He couldn’t help but let out a long sigh.

Just as he reached the bottom of the ramp, the three Black Hawks landed in the centre of the dirty slum streets. The riders dismounted and approached warily. The lead guard just had the unpleasant experience of almost being sucked into the jet engine, and his displeasure was painted across his aged face.

Following beside him were two younger guardsmen. One looked stern and disciplined, the other young and fresh faced. James could tell the new recruit was the arrogant type and crossed his fingers hoping the first action he took in the Emperor’s city wasn’t killing a City Guard.

As the three approached, the other core members joined James at the base of the ramp. Seeing 7 people standing at the base of an unknown flying artefact giving off waves of True Spirit Realm power, the surrounding residents of this slum decided to back far away and observe from a distance.

The Guard leader stepped up to only a few metres away from James and looked over his crew one by one. He then looked back to James and grunted. “Passports!”

James shared a look with his compatriots. He then glanced suspiciously at the Guard and then at the surroundings. Finally, with a frown, he focused back on the lead Guard. “Passports? Who the fuck has a passport in this day and age? Do you walk around these slums asking residents of the dodgy wooden houses for their passports?”

The Guard was taken aback momentarily. He then frowned slightly and released his Palace Realm pressure. To his great surprise, there was no reaction at all from the 7 people standing on the ramp. Kelly even went so far as to yawn, then with complete disregard turned around and walked back into the ship.

Exsue then grabbed James’ arm and bit his shoulder. “Don’t take too long Jay Jay! I want to visit the Nexus!”

She then disappeared along the corridor of the ship this ramp extended from. Goliath, in the hope of getting to battle, stuck around and just grunted like a savage. Harvy, being captain of this ship, also chose to stick around.

Fatty, seeing that there was already enough people for an even battle, chose to withdraw to his room and finish eating ... whatever it was that he could eat.

Seeing the complete disregard shown for him, and most especially because it was shown right after he’d used his spirit pressure, the guard leader’s face fell into a scowl. Before he even had the chance to make a move, a 3D hologram was projected off the ship between the two parties.

After a moment, the hologram changed from a fuzzy static into the shape and form of Rex. Seeing Rex suddenly appear out of no-where, the trio of Guards stepped back a moment. However, they didn’t drop into a kneeling bow, because they didn’t trust some strange magic created by the flying artefact.

Once the hologram solidified somewhat, Rex turned to James with a big grin. “Haha! James you scoundrel! I haven’t spoken to you since I gave you the location of that tower realm lightning beast. Did you have any luck in your attempts to capture it?”

James smiled wryly. “I’m afraid not Rex. The beast we found wasn’t even close to tower realm.”

Rex frowned slightly and scratched the blonde goatee that was now growing on his chin. “Is that so? I’m sorry James. I’ll try and find another one. I had it on good authority that beast was above the palace realm. Tell you what. I’ll start asking around and see if we can find another one.”

James smiled at this reply. Rex was clearly either a very good liar, or he truly didn’t know. Either way, James wasn’t too worried about it. If Rex had been planning to kill him, he’d most likely have made more than one move.

“It’s fine Rex. I don’t know what realm that beast was in, but it was well beyond tower realm and served my purposes perfectly. That’s not why I called you up though. I’ve got a few Guard’s here that are seeking passports? Are passports even a thing?”

The hologram of Rex turned around and eyed the three Guards. Seeing the leader, Rex smiled. “Oh? Hang Sou? You trying to rough up the rich looking visitors again? I’ll vouch for these fellows. Give them a flight pass and let them into the city.”

Seeing the hologram speaking to them directly, Hang Sou, the leader of the guards, frowned slightly. He then smiled viscously. “I’m afraid that I can’t confirm your identity sir. If you are the young Prince, please forgive me, but simply seeing some apparition created by a strangers artefact isn’t evidence enough.”

He then reached to his hip and drew his sword while speaking to the other two Guards. “Captcha these scum. They dare impersonate the Crown Prince! If they resist, kill them!”

With that said, he launched through the projection of Rex while swinging his sword, fuelled with water spirit energy, directly towards James.

Rex and James both gave an audible sigh at the same moment. James suddenly blurred and reappeared behind the charging Hang Sou. Rex’s image turned back to see this and sighed again. “I’m sorry James. I still haven’t been able to clean house of those from my brother’s camp. Unfortunately, you may have to kill these fellows. I’ll take responsibility.”

Hearing that directly from Rex, James’ face warped into a twisted smile. Hang Sou spun around and darted back towards James while flipping the top off his canteen. Meanwhile, Goliath had already engaged the arrogant looking fellow and Harvy had led the disciplined bloke away a little.

As James blurred again and danced around Hang Sou, he spoke with Rex. “It’s fine Rex. We’ll be visiting for a few day’s while I stop in at the dragon vault. We should catch up sometime when I’m done.”

With that, Jasmine closed the connection and the projection of Rex faded away. James then turned his full focus onto Hang Sou. He’d never actually personally fought another Palace Realm cultivator. Normally, he just allowed them to walk into a slug from an arc cannon. He’d killed palace realm spirit beasts, but those creatures were dull and stupid.

Before now, James was reticent to directly battle a Palace Realm cultivator. But after the strange deviation when he merged spirit realms with Jasmine, he felt he had the qualifications to keep this man at bay if not directly defeat him.

With that thought in mind, he jumped back a few paces and readied himself by reaching to his back and extracting the now ever present scimitar that had been wielded by Latsoe. The moment it left the sheath it had sat in, a strange vibration spread in the surrounding spirit energy.

Even other cultivators could feel the sudden strange change in pressure. James swung the scimitar around a few times experimentally, then dropped into a combat stance and beckoned for Hang Sou to attack.

Seeing a True Spirit Realm pup goading him into battle, Hang Sou could hardly contain his humiliation and rage. He flicked his long thin sword around a few times, and then suddenly launched towards James. James sped up the rotation of his hands of time breathing technique and released wind lightning and fire energies into his body simultaneously.

With the constant practice in his breathing technique, and the strange deviation created by Jasmine’s introduction to his spirit realm, James had reached the stage that he could maintain 3 elements permanently and up to 5 energies for about half an hour. 4 energies was about 1 hour.

In this situation though, he planned to test himself. As such, he limited his release of energy. The lightning empowered his mind and sped up his perception and thought processes. The wind reduced his weight and quickened reaction speeds. The fire energy gave him explosive power and heat resistance.

In addition, Wind and Fire energy was the basis of the Scimitar he now held. The moment Hang Sou launched forwards to strike with his sword, James filled the scimitar with fire and wind. As Hang Sou swung his sword down towards James’ neck, James flicked the scimitar around and created a whirlwind of fire reaching a dozen metres into the air and blocking off any view of him within.

The moment Hang Sou’s blade touched the edge of the flame whirlwind, James scimitar flicked out from within and deflected it. In the same moment his blade was deflected, Hang Sou had launched a series of water bullets from his canteen.

A sudden puff of steam spread out from the flaming tornado and covered everything. Visibility dropped to almost nothing and the flame tornado was interrupted and dissipated. When Hang Sou swung his blade again at the location James had been, it passed through nothing but air.

Then Hang Sou saw James standing a few feet back, surrounded by the mist and steam, smiling like the devil. The whole reason Hang Sou had used this technique was because he could use his spirit energy to detect the interaction between the water particles in the air and any objects moving through it.

To his great displeasure, James remained invisible within the mist. If anything, the mist seemed to be circling around and hiding him away from sight. The only way something like this was possible was if James also had water element.

Before he had a chance to wrap his mind around that notion, he felt the strong sense of death and a powerful killing intent descend from behind him. He spun with his sword in a defensive posture, just in time to deflect the lightning fast strike of James’ scimitar.

With that brief moment of contact, a wave of flames poured out from the scimitar. Hang Sou was forced to use more water from his canteen. As he poured another rain of water bullets into the flame wave, he forced as much water spirit energy through his meridians and into the canteen as he possibly could.

Slowly, more water seemed to materialise out of nothing and fill the canteen again. Although this seemed useful, the materialisation of spirit energy was incredibly exhaustive on people that didn’t have an artefact that assisted the process and even more so if they didn’t understand how to use their Spirit Pressure to enforce their will on the universe around them.

In this case, Hang Sou’s canteen was just normal. Although he could sense the sudden fluctuation of killing intent that came from James when he was about to strike, that came from years of subconscious training and being alert. It wasn’t a result of actually understanding anything about Spirit Pressure or Intent.

James on the other hand, had both an artefact that assisted his materialisation of fire from his energy, and also had a rudimentary understanding of Spirit Pressure. Unfortunately, this was the first time he’d done battle with anyone that had such a honed sense for killing intent, and was at a loss as to what exactly was going on.

Nonetheless, with the sudden increase of steam and mist in the air, James once again disappeared in a swirling cloud. Using his levitating steps, which was basically making himself light as a feather to eliminate noise, James circled around again.

Using his Scrying, he saw everything Hang Sou did within the mists. At the same time, he released a steady, controlled spirit pressure into his immediate surroundings that froze Hang Sou’s energy particles and prevented him from using them to detect James’ movements.

After circling around for a while, James once again attacked. Once more, a split second before the strike had even left the dense mists into Hang Sou’s line of sight, Hang Sou was reacting. James began to realise there was something drastically wrong with this scenario, but no matter how much he Scryed Hang Sou, he couldn’t find any clues as to how he was detecting him.

James then ramped up his speed to maximum, and like a ghost in the night flittered through the fog. His attacks then began to increase. They rose rapidly from one or two every few seconds to one or two every second and then got even faster at a continuous onslaught from every direction.

If nothing else, he was rapidly wearing out Hang Sou’s spirit energy by making him constantly refill his canteen.

James’ attacks then lulled slightly and went through ups and downs, sometimes attacking a hundred times in a minute or other times attacking only once or twice. Finally, James discovered something odd when he, like an idiot, tripped on a rock in the middle of his attack.