Chapter 43: Master?

Having fulfilled his purpose, James retreated to his Forge in the Lab. He had so much he was trying to focus on recently and decided to distract his scattered thoughts for a short while to work on a project he’d been putting off for a while.

In the forging room, James stood at a bench looking at an assortment of dark stones. These were his space stones. After some careful investigation, he discovered that the pocket space inside a stone was not relative to the size of a stone, but rather to the density of free energy which permeated the stone.

While scrying he could discern this energy from other faint energy particles easily. He also determined that the energy in these stones was rather weak and not particularly well refined. Unlike in something like a piece black-iron essence which didn’t just have a lot of a specific type of energy, but the free energy was also incredibly dense and had obviously been refined any number of times.

Similar to when he refined his spirit energy, instead of quantity of energy particles he instead increased the quality of the energy and density of each particle. Looking at the space energy in the stones he could see endless numbers of impurities, tag along particles that had half fused or fully fused with a space particle, and excess earth particles and every space energy particle were quite a distance from each other and rarely were there particles that were near each other.

After this realisation, he concluded that he would need to heavily process these stones. After some further thought, he started forging something else instead. After three days he’d forged, instead of an item, a new room.

This room was an idea he’d thought of a long time ago, but only now started trying to design. After some thought and back and forth with Jasmine, he’d managed to create this little room only a few metres in length and width.

From all appearances, this room was incredibly dull and normal. However, anyone with the intuition or a strong soul would immediately sense the whole room had a soul of its own, very much similar to when an artefact was given a soul.

James sat down a few feet from the centre of the room then took out the bag with the Spatial Stones. He then also took out a few of the Greater Spirit Storage Gems they’d mined from below the LS3 Quarry.

He then made the strange motion of reaching out his hand to place a gem onto something invisible. With this action, the room hummed slightly, and a spirit array pattern suddenly emerged from the floor in a ring of lights.

As if like some magical inscription written on the air itself, the ring array rose up and suspended the gem in mid-air.

James smiled like the devil as he watched this. Shortly after, another inscription pattern rose up from the floor and started shining lights over the Gem. When it was finished, it disappeared back into the floor like some ethereal, ghostly hallucination.

Following which some more inscription patterns started shimmering to life around James looking like some holographic computer screens. James was ecstatic. This was actually technology Jasmine had developed long before now to use in the Mobile Base she’d been so diligently working on.

Not only this, she’d developed an absurd number of array patterns for a whole multitude of different mundane purposes. She even had array’s that could wipe your ass if you wanted. To which James politely declined when she’d asked.

Following the shimmering to life of these new arrays, strange figures, shapes and colours began to appear. To most everyone else, these simply represented gibberish, however to James, who had designed this system with Jasmine, it all meant something.

That little scanning array was actually one of the most complex parts of this entire artefact. It’s ability to scan something and the rooms ability to interpret and display these scans was actually a product of a great deal of research into using San’s Eye Crystal’s as a catalyst. The ability for the room to interpret and display this information was a result of the rooms immature young soul.

Although this seemed complex, the tasks this little soul had to accomplish were a great deal simpler for it because the array patterns basically did most the work for it. It was essential only there to act as a buffer between the array patterns and James and to allow James to interact with the room properly.

Once these little screens popped up, James reached out to one that amusingly looked like the recycling bin on a person’s desktop. Moments later a serious of arrays popped up on all the walls, and a huge suction force suddenly appeared for all the spirit energy in the room.

Within seconds the entire room was devoid of spirit energy, with the exception of James’ body, which naturally didn’t leak any spirit energy thanks to having long since stopped his hands of time breathing technique, and the storage gems and spatial stones.

With the room purged of all its spirit energy, James then touched another array, and another colourful array sprang to life. This time, the array came from the roof and descended onto the Gem. In his Scrying field, James carefully watched as the array pattern descended. In his Scrying field, he could see the array generating an abnormally huge amount of pressure.

As the pressure slowly increased on the Gem, James watched as all the free energy, refined energy and primal energy impurities were slowly washed out. When this was done, the only energy remaining in the gem was a strange crystal-like energy which James was fairly certain was the free energy this Gem naturally produced and was the energy that allowed this gem to store other energy so proficiently.

With this step finished, James then pressed another button, and the energy that had been forced out was once again purged from the room. He took the gem from the centre of the array and then repeated the process with one of the spatial stones.

Unlike the Storage Gem, he was far more careful with the spatial stone. The reason for this was twofold. Firstly it was because the Storage Gem’s free energy didn’t fuse with other energies unlike with the spatial energy.

The energy of the storage gem instead attracted refined energy to it like orbiting planets. The particles would fall into an orbit of a storage particle and then wait there until they found a method to release. At which point they would very quickly try to rush out from the storage gem into whatever it was that was trying to draw energy from it.

Secondly, it was precisely because the spatial energy in the stone was somewhat fused with other particles. If he just blasted it with pressure similar to before, it would instead drag those fused spatial particles out and greatly reduce the quantity of the stone’s energy.

Thanks to the soul he’d imbued this room with, it was capable at least of controlling the focus of spirit pressure from its arrays. Thanks to this, James invented the method of creating two opposite forces. The first was an array that sat on the floor under the Spatial Stone. It had a rather specific job, and its pressure was used to lock the spatial energy down, preventing it from moving.

Only then could James use the other array from earlier, which blasted away at any spirit particles which the soul of the room couldn’t identify as being native to the material in question. In this case, it got rid of any energy that wasn’t Spatial Energy.

Once again, James started this process. However this time, he remained incredibly focused with his scrying field and personally controlled the speed that the pressure array from above descended. At least this way, he could immediately stop or slow its fall if it was starting to force spatial particles out of the stone, which theoretically, it shouldn’t.

Regardless, much to his regret, no matter how hard he tried, the array continued to force fused, and half fused spatial particles out of the stone.

He could only assume that the soul of the room was still too young and inexperienced to tell the difference. As such, he changed his plan. He took out the Storage Gem he’d just purified and placed it on another array under the Spatial stone.

He then allowed the room to continue purging the Spatial stone until nothing was left except pure spatial energy. All the foreign free energy and fused spatial energy was instead pushed into the storage Gem, which readily accepted it.

Once this was done, he continued this process with all the stones. Once this was finished, he then placed a spatial stone into the array. This time, instead of trying to force any energy out, he pressed a different array, and a whole number of arrays fell from the ceiling.

They then aligned themselves like 6 faces of a cube around the stone. Moments later each flat array side suddenly focused a little beam of light onto the stone and started carefully, but very mechanically, cutting away at it.

Once this was finished, all that was left was a little stone ring, cut so smoothly it glistened in the light of the room and reflected everything around it like a polished mirror. James then scooped up the cut off excess and along with all the other spatial stones threw them back into the array.

Each stone or piece of stone then hung suspended around the ring within the array as if stuck in cobwebs. A few more pokes at the array screens, and suddenly the 6 cube sides shimmered, and the array patterns began to morph and change.

Once again an enormous pressure was exerted onto the spatial energy in the stones until it had all been forced out. With the ring as the dead centre of the arrays, all the energy was being forced inwards until all the pieces of spatial stone were empty of spatial energy and it had all been focused into the ring.

Once this was finished, James fiddled with some more arrays, collected up the empty stones, then pressed a few more arrays and left the room. The ring still sat floating in the dead centre of the room, surrounded by array patterns which seemed to be intermittently flaring to life now and then.

The last thing James had set for the room to do was an experiment he was curious about. With all the energy focused in the ring, he was curious what would happen if he left it under the focused pressure of the arrays for an extended period of time. What he was hoping to see was all the spatial energy fusing together to create fewer particles except with more density and quality.

James then went to an empty, clean room. These were the rooms set up to purge all spirit energy so that he could run experiments in them. When he entered, he drew some array patterns around the room and then connected them to the spirit power grid of the building.

Once these patterns had fired up, James carelessly threw the left over spatial stone into the arrays where they were all rapidly sucked into the centre of the arrays. This little experiment was something else he was curious about.

According to his understanding, free energies are created between the interaction of primal energy and a specific substance or material. If that was the case, what would happen if he left the space stone in a huge compression array that was feeding endless amount of primal spirit energy into its epicentre?

Two things, he was hoping. First, the massive pressure from the array would be like the pressure of the earth crushing coal into a diamond. He wanted those assorted stones to be compressed to the absolute limit until they became a single stone and eventually ... hopefully, something more powerful ... like an ore essence.

Secondly, he wanted the primal spirit energy being forced into the stone to properly interact with the material and create more spatial energy. He suspected that both of these processes would take an incredibly long time, but seeing as he was going to be so god damn busy for a while, he didn’t mind waiting to see the results.

As James tiredly marched out of the forge room and through the lab towards the elevator, Jasmine finally took the chance to distract him. “James, I haven’t bothered you because you were so focused, but it appears Sully has returned and is rather eager to find you. I’ve been delaying, but he seems to be on the verge of having a fit.”

James let out a long sigh. After some thought, he decided to ignore the old bastard. Instead, James went up to his room and climbed into bed. He wasn’t aware of it yet, but he’d been so intensely focused on his Storage Ring project that almost a week had passed by outside.

-Monolith Plaza-

The next day, before James could even rub his bleary eyes of his sleepiness, Sully barged into his room raving about terrible apprentice piety and how he, as a poor decrepit old master, was stranded alone by his disciple to fend against the world by himself.

James felt nothing, not even twinge of guilt at having ignored his master. Instead, he chose to silently crawl out of his bed and begin preparing some tea while he munched on some nearby fruits.

Seeing his one and only disciple completely ignoring his existence, Sully was enraged. “Damnit boy! You could at least show some concern for your master. And let me tell you now, if this is all some cruel trick you’ve played on me, I don’t care if the heaven’s oath strikes me dead, I’ll kill you right now!”

James just waved his hand nonchalantly and poured himself some tea. After a few moments of continuing to ignore Sully, and enjoying the morning sun coming in through the window, James finally stood up and got ready.

As if a whole different person, he walked out of the bathroom with a totally different attitude. Once again he had reverted from the cold, unconcerned and not in the least bit caring man who’d been woken up earlier, to the happy to help and concerned for his master’s well-being, young, innocent disciple!

“Master! I’m glad you’re finally back! I hope your trip wasn’t too dangerous. Let’s go down to the monolith right now, and I’ll try and call in that one last favour he owes me.”

Sully almost spat blood from the sudden shock of James’ lightspeed turn around in character. He couldn’t tell if he should be laughing or crying. Nonetheless, his dream of annulling this oath which he’d so impulsively, and regrettably, uttered as a youth was on the verge of being fulfilled.

Even James’ strange behaviour couldn’t drown out his excitement. This exuberant excitement also helped to cloud his mind enough to not pay too much attention to James’ behaviour and to simply brush it off as James not being much of a morning person. If he’d taken the time to consider further, he might have realised how odd James was acting, and it could possibly have prevented him from losing so much blood in the short future.

As they left the guild hall, and after James had gone to the lab to retrieve something, James noticed Sully not bringing anything with them. “Master, aren’t you going to bring your tributes for the monolith spirit?”

Sully arrogantly lifted his nose looking rather proud of himself for some reason. “Naturally I have everything I need with me. Being as powerful a cultivator as I am, I have my own means.”

James eyed him suspiciously and then looked him up and down to see if there were any bulges in his purple robes. Seeing nothing, James suddenly had a thought and then looked over at Sully with sparkling innocent eyes.

“Master, it couldn’t be that you have ... a Storage Ring?”

Sully almost missed a step and fell on his face at James’ sudden query. “Little brat. How do you know about storage rings?”

James then made a show of doing the same thing that Sully just did, raising his head up and looking down at the world arrogantly and pridefully while saying; “Being as powerful a cultivator as I am, I naturally have my means.”

Sully almost spit blood at the audacity of his disciple. ‘This little bastard! Just you wait, your training is going to be like hell on Ascension.’

James was rather shocked that Sully had completely forgotten about him stealing and entire room’s worth of precious herbs previously. Either Sully’s acting was terribly good, or he’d actually completely forgotten about such an important matter.

It wasn’t long before they found themselves standing in front of the ever glowing monolith. The moment James came near, the monolith started to surge and flash with excitement. Seeing this, James could only smile wryly. Once he stood next to it, he reached out a hand and made contact.

As is usual, James was sucked into the spirit realm of the monolith, within which sat the lazy looking shaggy dog that was Ruff. Before James even managed to get his bearings, he was blown off his feet by an unstoppable force. Looking down at his chest as he laid on the ground, James discovered Little Blue rolling around on him and jumping up and down playfully.

Seeing that there would most likely be no way to avoid it, James then began their age old game of cat and mouse. Unlike prior times, James had a huge advantage. Not only had he been regularly cultivating and long since surpassed Little Blue in cultivation, but he’d also significantly increasing his skill in Fleet Feet.

In a matter of minutes, balls of arcing lightning were flying all over the place, and Little Blue was tired. With the most important thing done, James then turned to Ruff. “How’s it goin’ Ruff?”

Ruff raised up his head from his tired sleeping then slowly stood up and transformed into is human form. “Little Junior James. It’s not too bad. Ruff! I can see why many spirit beasts chose to go into a monolith way back then. It’s very much a perfect method of cultivating an understanding of humanity. Ruff! So, what seems to be today’s oath you need to break?”

James sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. He almost, only almost, felt guilty for not having visited at all since he stuffed Ruff into the monolith. “I’m trying to fleece this old man outside. He needs an oath dispelled so he can take more than one disciple. I agreed to help him out on the condition he gives me everything he’s got. Of course ... as far as he’s concerned, he’s making an offering to the spirit of the monolith. What do you say? Can you help a brother out?”

Ruff seemed to daze out for a moment as he inspected Sully standing anxiously out in the plaza. After only a few second of inspection, he nodded. “Sure, he’s got lots of good stuff in that space ring. Ruff! But what do I get out of it?”

James considered for a short moment then came up blank. What could he possibly give to the spirit of the monolith in exchange for this favour? Coming up with a loss, James just shrugged and looked at Ruff. “What do you want?”

Ruff, without hesitation, pointed at the little blue ferret. “Take your pet with you this time. Ruff! As nice as it is to have someone here, it’s incredibly distracting while I’m taking care of the monoliths duties and trying to cultivate.”

James felt a headache coming on, but after a short moment of thinking about some things he decided it shouldn’t be too hard. He nodded his head in agreement. “Sure, just make sure to push him out to me when I activate the monoliths arrays.”

With that, he left the monolith spirit realm and returned to the plaza. Then, without saying anything to Sully, he levitated up into the air and started to activate the little array to transfer from the monolith.

Unlike the glorious scene of Exsue’s escape from the monolith, Little Blue was just shot out of the monolith in a little arc of lightning, like a very unwanted furry little blue ball.

After rolling along the ground a few times, he got up, shook himself then scurried over and climbed up onto James’ shoulders to take a nap.

While this was going on, Sully’s face went through a whole number of expressions. Mostly, though, he was shocked. Did all monoliths spit out little spirit beast pets? Before he could get too distracted, James drew his attention back to the task at hand.

“Master, The spirit of the monolith is willing. It wants to know what you’re willing to offer it though.”

Sully shook for a moment then very quickly waved his hand in front of him. Moments later a mountain of rare herbs, plants, materials, ores and even artefacts appeared in a huge pile reaching almost 4 metres off the ground.

“All my worldly possessions!” Sully said without reservation.

James almost couldn’t stand from the sudden shock of it. How badly did Sully want to take more apprentices? He, without even a thought or hesitation, offered up everything he owned to annul this oath.

James imperceptibly nodded his head, and all of a sudden heavenly law descended onto Sully from the sky. At the same time, with a flick of his hand, and while Sully was distracted in his moment of euphoria, James sucked up everything into his own space ring.

Even though Sully had been distracted by heavenly law, he didn’t miss the little nod and the shake of James’ hand. He only now realised he’d been fleeced. It was rather comical to watch as he spat a spear of blood from his rage moments after the heavenly law descended.

James quickly realised he’d been noticed, but without even a change of expression, he rushed forward like the good little apprentice he was and helped his now pale gaunt looking master to stand. “Master! Are you okay? I know, I know. This has been a very trying and powerful experience for you. I’ll take you back to the guild to rest for a time. Don’t push yourself to hard master!”

Sully, hearing James acting so sincere and the epitome of a caring, good disciple, spat another mouth full of blood. James was now certain the man had to be on the verge of anaemia. While he was helping Sully to his feet, and while Sully’s guard was lowered, James flicked his hand, within which appeared a little thin needle glowing with a strange murky grey spirit energy.

A small prick later and Sully suddenly forgot everything that had just happened in the last 30 seconds. Right up to the point where heavenly law descended onto him. Feeling slightly confused and as if he’d missed something important, Sully climbed to his feet with James’ assistance.

“Don’t worry Master, I’ll take you back to rest. I’ve never seen anyone have such a reaction to annulling an oath before. Your oath must have been very powerful for you to have suddenly spat blood and passed out for a few seconds.”

James quickly supplied an explanation for Sully and then without further ado, began to drag him back towards the HQ building.

In the monolith, Ruff was shaking his head with a solemn look on his face. “That poor man. He’s got no idea what kind of monster he’s taken on as an apprentice. I just hope he survives through this trying experience. Ruff.”

After putting Sully in one of the rooms on the upper floor, James returned to the lab to begin cataloguing his haul. He made a mistake, however, in that he forgot just how powerful Sully’s Scrying field was.

Unsuspectingly, he once again made Sully spit blood in a rage when he, by habit, scanned his surroundings only to witness James pouring everything he’d just sacrificed to the monolith out into the lab a few hundred metres underground.

Quite a few of these things, James had never seen or even heard of. Even Jasmine with her encyclopaedic knowledge hadn’t seen any records for some of these things. That only made them more valuable in James’ eyes, and very quickly everything had been stashed back away into his ring.

Now that he had a moment, he inspected his ring with scrying. He noticed that the spatial particles, through an entire night of constant pressure, had slightly begun to fuse and be refined. With this notion, James then investigated the size of its space within.

“Holy crap!” he muttered. Within the ring, the space was almost a 70 metres in length width and height. That was enough to store an entire small hill, or a small lake. Hell, he could secret away an entire building in here.

In comparison to the space created from the refining of the stones into this ring, this space was huge. Altogether, the space in the ring had only been about 2/3rds of the space it had now. James suspected this had something to do with the proximity, quantity and quality of the spatial energy that he’d managed to fuse into this single stone ring.

If he’d been able to keep all that space energy that had been fused or half-fused, he might have been able to create a space larger than the total spaces of the stones before they were processed.

After playing with it a few more times, James then went about and started to pack all sorts of things he considered essentials into it. The first on the list was his personalised Arc Cannon and Arc Pistol. Both of these had been designed and forged by him personally and were almost works of art both in their design and operation.

Through the use of different free energies, he’d managed to reinforce the black-iron essence based alloy which he used to create it with. In addition, the battery packs he’d created for it were all crafted with purified Greater Storage Gems as the base of the storage gel and the entire thing was covered in inscription arrays to stabilise and increase the output.

The Arc Pistol was very much the same, and they both were beyond any other similar weapon ever crafted in the guild. Thanks to his effort in their construction, as opposed to the short life span of the original models, which general only had a few dozen shots in them at most, James’ cannon and pistol were limitless in their fire lifetime.

Not only that, they were so structurally sound that he could use them as melee weapons in combat to bludgeons people to death. Even the war hammer that he’d recently forged for Goliath, which was entirely focused on destructive melee damage, couldn’t hope to destroy James’ Arc Cannon when its arrays were powered up.

After some thought, James stopped by the room with the spatial stones inside and discovered that there were already a very small number of spatial particles starting to form. He also noticed that the pressure had crushed the stones into dust and compressed it into a single larger perfectly spherical stone. He was aware that this was only the very beginning of this experiment and wandered off again, putting it to the back of his mind.

-Alchemy Lab-

The next day, bright and early in the morning, Sully assembled his new apprentice hopefuls in the alchemy lab. James, Norman and Kelly all sat around in the lab looking at Sully. Seeing how relaxed and disrespectful these brats were, Sully wanted to give them all a good thrashing.

Seeing as they were the first disciples he’d ever taken on to share his knowledge with, he’d thought they should at the very least show some more respect for their master. Naturally, James respected few to none and believed everyone should earn his respect before he gives it to them. Even the elderly, who many people view as older and wiser.

James just considered old people old, and nothing more. They were still just people, with maybe a few more stories and life experiences. That is hardly deserving of respect in his opinion. After all, a frog can live its whole life trapped at the bottom of a well, but the only thing it can teach you about the world is the colour of the sky.

Kelly, being of the character she is, was aloof and uncaring. If this were just going to be like some boring lecture, she’d rather not. She was mostly self-taught anyway and only came along for the novelty. Norman took his cues from his Guild Master and although his desire to learn all the secrets of alchemy trapped in this scruffy bum’s head was almost tangible, he was aware that the guild master had grander plans in the long run and would undoubtedly meet other experts with even more knowledge eventually.

Seeing them just blankly staring at him and leaning this way or that in their chairs, Sully’s eyebrow started a strange twitch, not too dissimilar to James’ when he was suppressing his desire to just detonate the spirit reactor under the Spire and watch the whole continent burn in chaos.

Finally, after an extended silence, Sully started with the basics. ‘Seeing as you little shits want to act so aloof and arrogant, I’ll have to take you down a peg or two.’

“The first, and the most important thing that any alchemist must learn is how to differentiate materials and herbs as well as their properties and common uses.” Saying such, Sully flipped his hand over and summoned a stack of books almost as tall as himself from his space ring.

He held onto these, and a few other things he felt the monolith spirit wouldn’t want. Basically, the only thing left filling his spatial ring were stacks and stacks of old books and research notes. Sully then put the books onto the nearby work bench and continued on as he paced back and forth with his hand behind his back.

“I expect each of you to memorise everything in these books by the end of the month. In Alchemy, we generally qualify other alchemists with a set standard. To become a first tier alchemist, the ability to recite these books by heart is the most important thing. The next is the ability to create a potion or pill at the first tier. Usually, simple herbal mixtures and recipes are the limit.

“To reach the second tier a person must be able to refine a second tier pill or potion with an alchemical furnace or cauldron. This is when an alchemist first starts to learn how to control a flame with their spirit energy and how to properly mix and extract the properties and parts of ingredients to achieve a desired outcome...”