Chapter 44: War of the Worlds

The next two months, until the War of the Worlds, passed rather quickly for James. He spent most of his time training his combat and practising forging and alchemy. The incident with the mercenary army spread far and wide, and the tickets that had been bought up for the war of the world started to find their way onto the black market or disappeared from the hands of the smaller factions that had managed to nab one at auction.

The two nations of Soel and Hastoel were starting to flare up even more violently. Hastoel’s political infighting devolved to a vicious state. Noble husbands had been found sleeping with the wives of friends and allies. Wrathful wives and husbands started viciously attacking each other either politically or in the shadows.

The leaks of the upper classes dirty secrets only grew more numerous, and many factions and the majority of the populace began to resent those aristocratic families that were in power. The entire nation was in turmoil as resentment and enmity between each other started to escalate to the brink of civil war.

Soel had actually banded together, and faith in the Order of Sun’s only grew more intense as the populace sought out some order of comfort in their now famine stricken lives. The Red Barron and the Ghost of Famine were now on the most wanted lists with bounties reaching into the millions of gold coins.

To date, the few people that had managed to corner or attempt to catch these walking calamities had all died miserable deaths.

Regardless of the increased faith of the populace as they raced to churches in hopes of seeking redemption from the gods, the nation’s famine only continued to worsen. By now all the major crop production towns and cities and been swallowed by plague and drought.

Few to no places across the nation still had any substantial amount of crops growing. Unfortunately, these places weren’t enough to sustain the nation. With this calamity looming over their heads, the Order of Sun’s began looking for new ways to feed their people.

They tried numerous times to use their contacts with the Northern Commerce nation of Baquerro to import food, only to discover they acted as if any discussions had never happened the very next day. Worse still, anyone they sent to investigate the Capitol would suddenly disappear.

The southern nation of Hastoel was even harder to seek support from because no one there trusted each other and the nation was in a state of civil war and constant turmoil.

The three nations to the south and west had long since allied each other in order to hold back Soel. They were revelling in Soel’s misfortunes and just waiting for a chance to start pushing for war to try and take land in their weakened state.

Apart from the Northern Nation, seemingly ignoring everyone else and pretending they never spoke to any of the other nations, everything seemed eerily normal in the northern nation.

Yori Empire, trapped in the middle of these three nations was surprisingly quiet. One would think that being the centre of the three great nations, it would be targeted quite extensively by the two nations that were now on the brink of calamity or collapse.

On the contrary, the two great nations that were currently in an uproar never even thought to look to Yori Empire for help or concern. After all, it had been, and always will be, a piddling little neutral zone that no one really cared about.

Every now and then James would get in contact with his trouble making companions and laugh his ass off at their status reports.

The Profit Sect, having already taken a huge blow twice now, had started trying to get in contact with the Brotherhood to discuss. Even though they started trying to create some political channels with Tech City and the Brotherhood, they continued to send assassins and infiltrators.

Almost all of these people would disappear the moment they stepped into the city. The AI’s pervasive big brother like security was almost omnipotent. The one or two infiltrators or assassins that actually got into the city and guild or close to James, often ended up being recruited or killed. Those were their only choices.

Thanks to the Profit Sects Efforts, Green Ninja had assembled quite a powerful arsenal of skilled shadow practitioners.

After the second month, Harvy returned and reported that his progress in the underground was fast and he was already considered by the undead populace as the Underlord of the 2nd level of the Crypt.

When he appeared to report to James, James had been in the middle of talking to Sully. Seeing Harvy, who had only decayed further than before and appeared to only be skin, bone and bandages, Sully almost lashed out to instantly kill him.

More surprising for Sully was that Harvy had somehow materialised out of the Shadows. James also was curious how exactly how he did that and learnt something interesting. Apparently, moving into the True Spirit Realm didn’t lock your elements. It just made it incredibly difficult to master a new element.

Thanks to his living in the pitch black underground crypt and slaughtering undead, Harvy had somehow unlocked this darkness element. James wasn’t so sure that it was just a matter of spending time attuning to an element and was probably something more to do with Harvy specifically. After all, Harvy was a deviator, and his cultivation path was definitely not the same as others.

Having already over succeeded in his primary mission, James sent Harvy to the university to join a batch of rookie guild members who wanted to learn how to fly the velocity. The class was small, and the AI did most of the teaching with implants and the simulator. Thanks to his prior experience with captaining a velocity, Harvy was the second best out of the whole class.

The best in the class was a skinny young man with golden blonde hair and blue eyes by the name of Charles. Turned out, he was from earth. Originally, he was abducted into a faction from Char. Said faction had been hired to come here and attack Tech City only to then be obliterated.

The man holding the Clan Seal that he had an oath to was unlucky enough to be sucked into the blast radius of a compression bomb from the Devastator. Luckily for Charles, he and his compatriots were then freed from their oath because the Clan Seal had been crushed into dust.

Thus, they made their way here.

They weren’t the only ones who started turning up at tech city. By the time the War of the Worlds came about, nearly a hundred Earthlings were living in the city or part of the guild. Quite a few had skills that made them quite useful to the guild.

Originally, when James discovered there were more earthlings here from Kelly, he had a brief notion of going to rescue them all. Very quickly he changed his mind though. He didn’t really care that much about them. As long as they didn’t get in his way or oppose him, he could care less.

Despite that, he made a little effort and put up a Job on the guilds job boards for an Earthling Rescue Mission. By this point, the AI had drones and other recording devices across half the continent. Thanks to this, the AI had a list of hundreds of earthlings that were still trapped in a guild or clan somewhere.

Some of them were lucky enough to have been picked up by a sect, or weren’t noticed when they came through a gateway, so those people were living their lives mostly freely.

Interestingly enough, he heard rumours of a few of them possessing rare or abstract elements. Even other people possessing one of the elements of sin. These people were all top priority to be dragged back to the guild. Everyone except Pride. Anyone who had the sin of pride was hunted and killed immediately. There can only be one Pride after all.

While all this was going on, Tech City was winding up for a huge commotion. The day the war of the worlds came, Tech City was filled to the brim with traders, tourists, powerful factions and commoner alike. Every inn, hotel and spare bed had someone sleeping on it.

Not just that, the outer city, which was the town’s slowly building up outside the gate of the inner cities walls, had thousands of practitioners building little dodgy wooden shacks to sleep in for the next few days.

Originally, James had intended to only have competitors that bought tickets enter the competition, but two months ago he instead announced that those tickets would only be seeded spots. Another 50 slots would be opened to allow competitors who couldn’t afford to buy a seeded slot to compete for a chance to enter.

Although there was some dissent from the factions that forked out huge sums of gold for their ticket, there was nothing they could do about it. It’s not like they were going to throw their seeded spot away and potentially lose a chance to win a velocity or the help of the guild.

As the day had approached closer, James had released an even grander prize list. Third place was a spatial ring with about a square meter of storage space.

This was made using the residue spatial particles built up over the past month from the pressure formations. He started calling the stone in the centre of the formation a Seed Stone. As it grew more spatial energy, he would harvest it with his Forging Chamber and then pour it into just a normal metal ring.

Because the properties of the metal ring didn’t resonate with the spatial energy like spatial stone did, the effects of forging a ring with the spatial energy were drastically reduced. Nonetheless, it allowed him to keep the same amount of spatial stone that he had so he could make more spatial energy.

When people found out something so rare was going to be a prize, people started seriously training or seeking disciples that could contend in this competition. Many factions didn’t look favourably upon the first and second place prize, first because they were too small a faction to need the Brotherhood or second because they were too powerless to keep hold of an artefact like the velocity. Everything was different though when the third place prize became a spatial ring.

Not just that, but all sorts of interesting prizes were listed. Fourth place was the guild paying and supplying the materials to forge this placeholder a customised weapon to their exact specifications.

Because of this, the competition became an event that could be finished in a few days to an event that could take almost a week.

The opening day of the War of the Worlds, everyone who wanted to compete had to climb to the 15th floor of the spire. For most true spirit realm cultivators, this was incredibly difficult already. Apart from seeded teams, there weren’t many true spirit practitioners as monstrous as James who could climb beyond that.

James once again stood at the base of the Spire and addressed the whole city via the drones.

“Boys and Girls, if you wish to apply for the War of Worlds, registration is simple. All you need to do is ascend the spire to the 15th Floor and meet one of my guilds Halls Masters. They will register you and check to be sure you’re a true spirit realm practitioner.

“I should warn you all of two things beforehand. The first is, this competition doesn’t disallow killing. If you join to compete, you must be prepared to die or hope that your opponent is merciful. The second is also rather simple. I know there are means for tower realm or palace realm cultivators to suppress their realm to the true spirit level or hide their true cultivation.

“If you are one of these people, please stop your pointless effort now. The moment you enter the spire today, you will be crushed to death.”

James finished this statement with a rather malicious smile. When he was done, he turned and walked into the spire. Taking that as an invitation to start, people started rushing wildly into the spire.

There hadn’t even been a few hundred people in the spire yet before an old man in red robes stepped past the main door into the first level of the spire only to suddenly freeze in place. The pressure directed specifically onto him was immense. Using everything he had, he gave a roar and circulated his cultivation base to try and back out of the tower.

Unfortunately, the moment he released the seal on his realm and returned to his usual palace realm cultivation to escape, a huge array pattern shaped like a hand descended from the roof of the first level and clasped into a finger pointing formation.

Everyone watched on, shocked, horrified and awed, as what appeared to be the hand of God slowly fell onto that old man and squashed him into a mushy paste. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the gory remains of his body were indistinguishable.

The hand then shimmered and disappeared. James, who was already on the 15th level watching this on a screen with the Hall Masters couldn’t help but chuckle. This array was purposefully designed and built for today by James. His sick sense of humour couldn’t help but be unveiled in this brutal display.

He wanted everyone to know that he is like a god in this city and regardless of how powerful you are you will still be squashed like an ant under his finger.

Naturally, screens were put up all over the city by the drones so that everyone could watch the fierce competition. Why else would all these people be coming to Tech City?

Seeing this display of might, everyone drew in a cold breath. Some palace realm and tower realm practitioners faces became stony, cold and unreadable. Whatever they were thinking, no one could tell.

Seated in there very luxurious rooms in the most lavish hotel in the central district, the seed teams all had varying reactions.

Of the sixty spots open for seed candidates, nearly 20 teams had been formed. Of the nation’s on the mainland, Soel and Hastoel had 4 candidates each. Strangely, Baquerro sold off their tickets long ago but didn’t seem to realise they’d done it or even acknowledge that today was the day for the war of the worlds.

The five western nations of Chor, Sargie, Lanthoe, Lokio and Jecuro all had 2 members in each of their teams.

Bietsu, Pomit and Castello each had 1 candidate.

Nahtiro, the island nation far in the south, didn’t have a single team but rather had 4 teams from each of the respectively powerful factions that ruled the island together. Each of these teams had 5 members showing just how powerful the southern nation’s factions really were.

The strangest team, which James still had no idea how they even got a ticket, let alone numerous, was the Tillion Unity. This was the island nation that was controlled by bugs. Interestingly the Bugs were very humanoid in appearance, except instead of having skin they had a carapace or shell or some other insect-like qualifier. They managed to secure 4 slots.

The Gollian Empire, which was an island nation from the far west, and it’s neighbouring island nation of Sully Isles, both had 2 spots each.

The United Islands had 5 spots. From what James had heard they’d expanded a huge amount of wealth and resources for this chance. The Island nation was in frightful need of assistance due to the Tilion Bug people attacking from the south and Pirates attacking from the west.

The last few teams were from assorted powerhouses scattered around the continent. This made up 3 teams of two and single one man team.

All of these seed teams were put up at the Hotel along with whatever important dignitary that had escorted them here for this competition. Quite a few had hoped to use this chance to try and set up some contacts in Tech City and most importantly set up a relationship with James.

Unfortunately for them, all of their efforts were rebuffed. James had no intentions of making friends with these people. After all, they are all just ants in the grand scheme of the world, and he would one day stand above them like a giant ... if he wasn’t already essentially doing just that.

As the first day continued on, a few more attempts to infiltrate the competition happened, and similarly to their predecessors, these people became a mushy paste. When night eventually fell, the Hall Masters had registered a few hundred new competitors.

Sitting in the room of central hotel were the competitors from Nahtiro. A rather dignified and arrogant looking young man was watching the screen where the final dregs were ascending the spire in hopes of signing up. He was quite handsome and well built, with long brown shaggy hair and clean shaved face.

“Humph! What use is this elimination method? That pathetic little tower is hardly an accurate measure of strength. I could probably walk to the top and then back down without sweating.”

Seated on a nearby couch, a very elegant young lady with long blonde hair was lounging around while eating little cakes and talking to some of the others about the upcoming competition. She smiled wryly and glanced at her brother, a young short-haired blond boy seated next to her who can’t have been more than 15 or 16.

“It’s not as easy as you might think. Betto and I tried to climb it yesterday. I couldn’t make it past the 21st floor. Beyond that, it’s only even more difficult. Betto was forced to give up on the 34th floor.”

Seemingly shocked, the neat arrogant youth spun and stared at Betto with wide eyes. “Betto, even you couldn’t climb to the top of that tower?”

Betto just shook his head quietly, seemingly more focused on the little cakes on the table in front of him. The arrogant youth turned back and stared hard at the screen as if trying to discern its mysteries.

“Just what kind of genius mind came up with the arrays for this ‘spire’? And where the hell are they getting the power to run this thing?” he mumbled to himself.

Also seated in the lounge room area they were in, was an old man with long grey hair and hunched back. He carried a gnarled and twisted walking cane and seemed for all the world like a boring plain old man. He too stared intently at the screen with some consternation on his face.

Similar scenes were playing out in the other rooms about the hotel. These powerful groups only now were starting to realise that what they’d seen of this guild’s power and technology was only the tip of the iceberg. It’s not that they didn’t have the same sort of arrays or even similar understandings, but rather that they simply could not imagine the methods that these people used to implement them.

Furthermore, they would never guess that the energy for these advanced arrays was actually being supplied by such incredibly dangerous and volatile device as the Cube Reactors.

-Endless Forest-

Early the next day hundreds of competitors were gathered sitting in the backs of Big Bertas and hovering over some unknown part of the endless forest. The task was rather simple, everyone got a little badge.

This badge served two purposes. Firstly, it had a little marker that pointed towards the closest badge nearby. Secondly, it was considered to be worth 1 point. These competitor hopefuls were going to be randomly dropped into the forest and had to find and collect enough badges. Anyone who could collect 13 badges would pass.

Since there were only 643 participants, the last contender only had to gather 6 badges. Unfortunately for the last remaining six, everyone that hadn’t been killed when their badge was stolen will be hunting them like dogs in the hopes of getting back into the competition.

To make it even more exciting, when 45 participants for the arena battles had been chosen, everyone else’s badges are going to flare up like beacons, attracting every person who lost their badge.

To further add to James’ amusement, the area they would be playing their game in was considered a hot spot for true spirit and even palace realm beasts. From what James had recently learnt from Exsue, these level are actually more commonly called Core and Solidification realm beasts. It was only because Atsunari was such a backwards continent they didn’t really understand how beasts cultivated.

This little area was nearly 20 square kilometres and fully policed by drones and guild members that kept an eye on anything.

Because James wasn’t completely heartless, he gave all these people a chance to escape the forest when they needed to. Everyone only had to say the words ‘Babaganush’. Because a drone would always be following everyone to live stream this event back to Tech City, this method was more than feasible.

All these True Spirit Realm’s got told this on the way out here. Once they were over the forest, they were given a single talisman to help prevent their death by falling and then pushed out one by one from 6 different Big Bertas.

Once everyone landed, they waited as instructed. Soon, everyone had landed. At this point, James’ voice resounded out from the drones that were monitoring everyone. “You may begin!”

It only took minutes before battles started erupting all over the forest. Some were cultivators, and others were spirit beasts. With the help of the AI, people could cycle through and maintain watch over their favourite player or simply watch the Action Feed, which monitored the best and most interesting battles with the use of multiple drones.

Every pub, inn and drinking hole in the city had a few screens donated by the guild, which allowed everyone in the city to monitor the game.

It was a huge spectacle, and everyone loved it. Not many places in Atsunari could boast such a scene or the ability to properly monitor it. As the day wore on, numerous deaths occurred throughout the forest. There were only 6 people left with badges. Amusingly, against James’ expectations, all of them but one had more than one badge. This meant that there were still 2 more spots open and there were 19 badges remaining.

The contender with only a single badge was a young woman with long black hair, not more than 17 or 18 years of age in appearance. She was dressed in a Japanese kimono and wielding a long samurai blade. Strangely, she never picked up other people’s badges. She just killed anyone that came for her and left their bleeding corpse and badge, or badges, lying on the ground.

James wasn’t certain if she had actually understood the rules or not. He sat in his spirit realm with Jasmine and Goldy watching the excitement on a multitude of big screens scattered about in his realm. Eventually, curiosity got the better of him, and he addressed her through the drone that followed her around. “Young lady, are you not aware of the rules in this competition?”

The samurai girl stopped walking and then looked over at the talking drone. She silently nodded her head to the drone. James’ eyebrow quirked slightly. “Is that a yes, you are aware of the rules?”

The girl nodded again, just silently staring at the drone with an expressionless face. James pondered for a bit then asked another question. “Are you just here to kill people then? Why aren’t you collecting badges?”

The looked down at the ground for a moment, then in a voice as quiet as a mouse, finally responded. “Can’t count...”

James almost fell out of his chair. His eyebrow started twitching as he stared at the screen. Goldy couldn’t help but laugh loudly and almost fall out his chair from the hysterics. “HAHAHA! Good God! The girl’s thicker than a brick! Hahahaha ... She could have just picked up the badges until she had enough and we would then automatically come and pull her out of the forest. She must have thought that if she just killed everyone, there wouldn’t be anyone to contend with her for the spot.”

James sat there listening to Gold James. On the screen, the girl obviously heard his laughing and guessed explanation then looked at the screen with slightly widened eyes as if in shock. Her very quiet voice then came through the drone. “ ... tell me when to stop?”

James gave a “yes” and then all of a sudden the girl shot off in the direction of the closest competitor. It was minutes later that the girl appeared in a clear patch of the forest. In the centre of this little patch, two participants that had badges were busily going at each other with gusto.

Seeing two people, the sword girl then seemed to blur for a moment and reappeared right between the two. Her hand shimmered as if it was some kind of glitch in the video feed and then the heads of the two people fell from their bodies in a fountain of blood.

Before the first drops of blood had even finished their arc through the air to come back down, the girl had shimmered again then reappeared tens of metres away holding 6 badges. In a matter of seconds, she was already shooting off into the distance for her next target.

Gold James had long since stopped laughing after that spectacle. He looked solemnly over at James. “That girl’s very fast.”

James’ true spirit nodded. “I may not even be as fast as her.”

The Live Action Feed in Tech City just happened to be broadcasting that battle which that girl had suddenly interrupted. When this sudden interruption happened to the fight, with the fast, lethal killing blow she delivered that even the drones camera couldn’t fully catch, the entire city went silent.

A huge raucous then spread across the city as everyone started guessing at this mysterious girl’s identity. Sitting quietly in the dark corner of a pub, an old balding Japanese man couldn’t help but smile wryly and facepalm himself. Sitting across from him at his table was another man who was donned in a kimono and carried a samurai sword as well.

He was quite muscular and had rugged features. His head sported short black hair and a black moustache. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest and straight backed. He looked well-disciplined and had a rather dangerous aura about him.

As he watched the screen, he couldn’t help but glance at the old man. “She’s incredibly talented Master ... it’s just she will only ever love the sword. Things that require thinking ... well, if she ever faces a challenge she’d rather just kill it.”

The old Japanese man wiped his face tiredly and poured himself another cup of liquor. “I had hoped she would meet some powerful cultivators in this competition, but so far we’ve been greatly disappointed. Hopefully, after this game of the City Master’s is over, the seeded teams will be more challenging for her, otherwise, she may become too arrogant, and it will impact on her cultivation.”

The moustached man nodded. “Master, I suggested she come here because I’ve fought with the City Master in the arena before. He’s definitely powerful. Although our match was won by me in the end, I believe he was only using me to train his martial techniques. Even then, I felt that he was holding something back. If I had to face him in a true life or death situation, even I might be troubled slightly. That is why I recommended she come for this War of Worlds.”

The old Japanese man looked at his disciple from the corner of his eye as his lips curled into a smile. “Oh? That’s rather high praise, especially coming from you. Is not the City Master just a True Spirit Realm? How could he be a challenge for you? You’ve been in the Palace Realm for decades.”

Moustache just nodded with a stern look on his face as he stared at the table. “I feel that, in another 10 years, I may not be that boys match in battle. If we counted all the strange artefacts his guild produces, I might not be a match for him even now.”

The Master’s eyes widened slightly. “There artefacts are that powerful? Perhaps it’s time that I met this boy. He would surely make a good Junior Brother for you two from the praise you’ve given him.”

Moustache smiled wryly at the thought. “I’m not so sure it’s that easy Master. There is something incredibly strange with this city. Within these walls, that boy is like a god. Not just that, but I feel as if I’m constantly being watched, but I can never pin point where from. It’s almost like I’m being observed from so many directions at once that it’s impossible to discern the location.

“This is the reason why I left the City so soon the last time I came here, and it’s also why I feel that the City Master’s Guild is powerful beyond the what it’s shown to the rest of the world.”

The moment he finished his discussion, a young man with long brown hair in a ponytail, fit physique and well-defined features, sat down at their table and shuffled over next to the moustached man.

He then grinned at the moustache man. “You’re intuition is quite frightening Mr Samurai. To feel the ever present gaze of my city, even though it’s not alive and has no will or intention. Very mysterious.”

The Moustache man’s eyes almost popped out of his skull when he realised that the young man who just sat down at their table was the very man they’d just been discussing. He hurriedly stood up and gave a curt bow.

“City Master.” He said as his closed fist was enveloped in his open palm in salute.

James just waved his hand about nonchalantly. “Cut that shit out. It’s belittling to us both for a cultivator of greater power to be bowing before me, a lowly True Spirit Realm.”

The moustache man sat back down and warily eyed James. Instead of crossing his arms again, he kept them resting on his thighs as if preparing to quickly reach for his sword and defend himself if need be.