Chapter 46: Possessed

The arena was quiet and still. The growing invisible pressure was already at a staggering level. The spectators were sweating in expectation and excitement. It almost seemed that the viewers of this battle were even more anxious for it to start than the duo standing in the arena.

James stood in a very relaxed manner, half facing Sword Girl, with his scimitar and pistol just dangling at the side. The Sword Girl lowered her stance with her left hand sitting on the sheath and the thumb touching the hilt of her Samurai Blade. Her right hand hovered over the top of the hilt as she stared directly at James.

Although her face was void of all expression, the fact that she was actually looking at an opponent at the beginning of the battle showed how dangerous she expected James to be. As the two people eyed each other from across the field, a gentle breeze, almost looking staged, blew across the arena and lifted the fine dust creating a haze of dust between the two.

At that moment, James flicked his hand again, throwing out a little box into the field. Moments later, it began to emit sound. The song Thunderstruck by AC/DC began to play. After a short time, the bell rang. The dust haze settled. Two figures suddenly disappeared.

For a full second, the arena was empty. Before the crowd could register what was happening, James and Sword Girl reappeared in the centre of the arena. The scimitar and katana intersected each other and a huge ‘BOOM!’ rattled the defensive arrays and could be felt even by the crowds seated around the arena.

James let the force from sword girls strike spin his body as a kick like lightning spun around to axe her in the neck. Sword Girl lifted the hilt of her sword to block, then countered with another strike that looked like a cold ray of light.

James moved back a step and then fired his pistol towards the ground directly below Sword Girl. The earth cracked and rumbled as a huge spike drove up from the earth trying to pierce through her. She blurred again and reappeared beside James striking out again.

James’ scimitar, as if by its own accord, split the air and deflected the strike. A wave of flame poured out trying to engulf Sword Girl. Sword Girls katana blurred and water formed along the edge of the blade sizzling and turning to steam.

James began to grin. His own water energy poured into the scimitar and steam engulfed the arena. The crowd was stunned by this development. Even more stunning though, was that the collision of swords continued even once visibility was lost.

It seemed like, even without being able to see one another, the duo could still attack. Soon, the cloud of steam covering the arena started to billow and surge like great waves. Huge tornados of flame blazed up, and a massive serpent formed from water reared its head and roared out from the steam.

The temperature around the serpent began to drop rapidly and it slowly formed into an ice serpent. It coiled around hundreds of meters and was as thick as a tree. It looked down at a certain spot in the arena and let loose another roar. A storm of ice shards and slushy ice water spewed from its mouth, freezing everything it touched. The sudden drop in temperature caused the steam to begin to rapidly cool and condense back to water.

The arena grew still again, for a short while nothing moved. Slowly, all the steam condensed into moisture and fell to the arena floor wetting the dirt and causing everything to become muddy. Revealed in the centre of the arena, was the Sword Girl.

She was surrounded by the Ice Serpent and behind her was a hundred meters of the Ice Serpent’s long thin body, coiling and rising about in the arena. The tail of the Ice Serpent ended at her sword, and the head sat high in the air above her, staring at James with a ruthless gaze.

At the other end of the arena was James surrounded by 5 pylons of spinning raging flames. His scimitar was rapidly spinning in circles in his right hand and feeding more and more flames into the pylons. His gun was raised and aimed at Sword Girl still in the centre of the arena.

As this stalemate continued for a few more seconds, the ammo clip in the pistol seemed to dematerialize and then a new one rematerialized in its place. James finally stopped feeding his flaming pylons and slashed out towards Sword Girl.

The pylons formed into raging flame tornados and sped across the arena in zigzagging patterns as they raced towards Sword Girl. The Ice Serpent roared in indignation and spewed slushy ice and shards onto a tornado. Unfortunately, although it managed to drown one of the tornados with ice, the other four approached it too fast.

It took a defensive posture and curled around Sword Girl. Like a huge palace of ice, it completely enclosed Sword Girl. James blurred and reappeared like a phantom in and out between the flame tornados, using them as cover to approach.

Seeing the Ice Serpent curling around Sword Girl to protect her, James grinned like a savage and started firing off shots from his pistol. Each bullet was filled to the brim with wind, fire, plasma and lightning energy. As they left the gun, James’ magnetic energy increased the spin rotation to unimaginable speeds while at the same time, poured water element into the pistol to keep it from overheating from the berserk power of his elements.

4 bullets struck the same spot on the serpent consecutively and unleashed a storm of fire, plasma, lightning and wind that was in the shape of a spear. The spear spun rapidly and buried into the ice until it was a few meters in. Then, it exploded with a raging firestorm.

Moments later, the flame tornados all made impact with the serpents weakened area, melting the ice like butter on a hotplate. The Ice Serpent let out a ground shaking roar until it was split in half by the tornados. At the moment a gap was exposed, James shot into the centre and was met with a ruthless sword arc from Sword Girl’s katana.

Thanks to the Ice Serpent, the confined area James and Sword Girl was in was difficult to see thanks to refraction, and even if they could see, most of the crowd would only be able to witness two blurry shadows clashing and retreating at unfathomable speeds.

Soon, another boom rang out, and dozens of towering earth spikes shot up from within the Ice Serpent, penetrating through its dead frozen body and shattering it like glass being struck with a hammer. A blur shot out backwards along with the huge shards of ice and rolled through the wet, muddy ground a few times until getting its feet under it.

The blur was Sword Girl. Only, she now looked much worse off than before. There was a long deep gash on her right shoulder and arm. One of her thighs was spilling blood out at a prodigious rate and was clearly a wound from James’ pistol. Just based on how she was standing, it could be seen it was paralysed.

Her hair was in a disorderly mess, and her clean white robes were caked with blood, mud and burn marks.

Seeing her in this state, everyone’s gaze suddenly went ‘swish’ as they, by some unspoken agreement, all looked to see what condition James was in. In the centre of the arena, where the Ice Serpent had been coiled up, was a cloud of dust from the dozens of earth spikes that now filled the area.

James slowly walked out from the dust area. His blue robes were in tatters and barely enough to cover his lower half. His bare skin was covered in blood from tens of gushing wounds and stab marks.

Lotus like flowers made from ice were blooming from his injuries. However, in comparison to Sword Girl, he was smiling widely, like he’d just gotten the best present he ever could.

His eyes were filled with arcing lightning and raging fires. His scimitar was spewing flames out endlessly and his every step caused the ground to crack and shatter. The wind seemed to rage around him picking up the dust from the arena and creating a subtle storm of dust and wind around his body.

He looked even more demonic than the demonic cultivator that had battled Betto. As he slowly strode towards Sword Girl, he raised up his pistol and fired. A bullet pierced the air followed by the cry of a sword being released from its sheath.

Somehow, Sword Girl was still in good enough condition to deflect that bullet. However, James just continued marching towards her like a demon as he fired shot after shot. Every shot was imbued with every single one of his elements. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that his bullets were imbued with his pride energy, which naturally carried each of the other elements with it.

Each bullet glowed like a golden pallet dropped down from the heavens themselves. Although every shot used up James’ already mostly depleted energy, they just got more and more powerful with each passing bullet. Every time Sword Girl blocked or deflected a bullet, Goldy’s rage grew. In James’ Spirit Realm, Goldy was roaring into the sky and he was slowly becoming smaller and more invisible with every shot.

But each time, he poured more and more of himself into every bullet.

In the arena, Sword Girl could no longer fully deflect and was grazed by a bullet. The moment it touched her, it exploded with a vortex of different energy and space itself shuddered under the onslaught of so many energies fighting and contending to fill the area at once.

Lighting surged, and fire raged. Water sprayed out, with each droplet like a bullet itself. Metal fragments from the bullet itself were warped and shot about at high speed from the magnetism, and the wind created a huge shockwave. Tiny sharp needle-like fragments of rock formed into the storm. Enveloping all of this was the pervasive golden glow of pride energy.

Sword Girl couldn’t retreat fast enough as the side of her body was peppered with shrapnel and burnt by the raging flames. The lighting filled her body and almost stopped her heart for a short moment. With this amount of damage, even she couldn’t remain calm and let out a loud scream. Her body was blasted away by the shock wave and then after rolling a few times, finally couldn’t stand up again.

James, like the devil himself, bathed in blood and with a sinister grin, stood over her frail, broken body. He raised the flaming scimitar in his hands, but then his face became strange. He nudged Sword Girl with his foot. Seeing no reaction, he actually let out a sigh of disappointment.

“Looks like, I broke it...”

James lowered his scimitar, let all his energy slowly settle down from the heated battle state he was in, then like a tree, fell backwards rigidly and passed out.

The arena bell gave a customary ‘ding’. Finally, someone in the crowd reacted. It was too stunning of a performance for Spirit Realm cultivators. This kind of battle, shouldn’t this be a battle between palace realm cultivators?

A clap sounded. Then another. Then the entire arena exploded. Staff from the Brotherhood moved out to start cleaning up and move the two injured contestants out from the arena. Although the crowd was roaring with enthusiasm, the VIP boxes were eerily quiet.

Only those old tower realm experts from the big factions were aware, this sort of battle, was beyond even palace realm cultivators. Although at tower realm they had a great deal more power, they were aware that their control over their elements wasn’t half as precise and easily wielded as these two juniors had just displayed.

It seemed that, although these two juniors were still only at the Spirit Realm, their level of control was equivalent to a tower realm cultivator. After all, hardly any of them could brag that they could create a life like serpent with their element. Even that final shot from James. In theory, it’s easy to shoot something with lots of elements at something.

The problem is that those energies should have rejected and clashed with each other just while imbuing the projectile. In other words, even if they had the means to try it, none of the tower realm experts present could claim to be able to imbue a projectile with that much energy without it exploding in their hand.

Soon, with the final main battle of the day finished, ranking battles started. These battle were a means to properly rank everyone in the competition and were still watched by many factions interested in trying to recruit the younger unknowns that weren’t a part of the Seed teams.

While that was happening, James and Sword Girl were rushed to the HQ lab were Jasmine personally took on the duty of fixing them up.

Without delay, the two were pumped full of all sorts of stupidly expensive drugs and potions. When James finally awoke, it was already night time. Like every time before this, James woke up in a white operating room. Strangely, unlike other times, he felt even better than before he’d started the battle.

After inspecting himself for a while and then inspecting his spirit realm, he could only smile wryly. It appeared, the massive exhaustion of spirit energy had given him a boost in his cultivation. He was aware that overdrawing his spirit energy and going into energy deprivation would help him cultivate faster, but it also carried the risk of causing permeant damage to his cultivation, so he avoided using it in training normally.

After his brief inspection, and watching Gold James rushing about his spirit realm excitedly and shining even brighter than ever, he left the room and went to visit another operating room in the lab. In that room was Sword Girl, covered in immaculately clean white robes and quietly sleeping.

Although she looked like a sleeping beauty, lying there quietly, James wasn’t fooled for a second. During the battle, she was ruthless and intense. Her sword skills were phenomenal and put James’ skill with a blade to shame. Which wasn’t hard since most of his sword skill came from just fumbling along himself.

James readily admit to himself, that without his multitude of elements allowing him to counter her, and his use of the pistol, he’d very likely be unable to defeat her. Even her speed was beyond his own. He wasn’t sure how her speed was so fast. After all, as a lightning expert, there shouldn’t be many that can keep up with him.

He also could tell after scrying that her only abilities were in water, earth and what he was for the moment calling ice. Which would actually be more like some kind of backwards exothermic reaction. Instead of energy leaving a high energy system to low energy system, she somehow created a spirit energy that forces energy out of a low energy system into a high energy system.

For now, he wasn’t sure how else to explain the sudden creation of ice. Even he himself wasn’t certain he could achieve that sort of accomplishment. He knew he could probably control ice, but creating it was different.

Or perhaps, he was just overthinking it, and it was more a rare or abstract element and didn’t rely on the actual science that he observed most of his elements with. If it were like pride or death, then he wouldn’t even try to explain it yet. For those strange elements, he just chose to accept them as they were.

As he stood outside the door of the room and watched the girl sleep, that old Japanese man and his moustached disciple walked up next to him. The old man put his hand on James’ shoulder with a bright smile on his face as he looked in at his young disciple.

“Your spirit girlfriend said she’d be fine. You did well young man. It’s been a long time since she got such a well-deserved ass whooping.”

James was slightly stunned by the old man’s somewhat vicious statement.

“Oi? Old man, isn’t that girl your apprentice? Why are you so happy she lost?”

“Heh. That’s obvious, isn’t it? How is she going to get stronger if she doesn’t have a direction? Now, she’s met someone near her own age and at a power level that she can’t overcome. She’ll have to forge ahead and become even more powerful so she can defeat you. Adversity breeds strength.”

James turned back to look at the quietly sleeping Sword Girl. He then felt a shiver run up his spine as he remembered their battle. Without any warning, he just turned and started striding off towards the elevator.

The moustache man looked at him quizzically but said nothing until the elevator closed and left. “Master, he’s rather rude don’t you think? Are you sure we should have agreed to join this guild?”

The old man chuckled as he stared through the door window at Sword Girl. “I don’t think so at all. Most likely, right now, he’s gone to train. He’s become aware that he let a tiger into his backyard. If he wants to stay ahead of her, he’s going to have to push himself as well.”

Just as he’d guessed, James was already in the arena practising with his scimitar and pistol in hand.

-Arena-

The next morning all the spectators piled into the seats of the arena like well-behaved lemmings and cheerfully discussed their expectations for today’s matches.

The semi-finals. 4 contenders remained. James, Demon Guy, Pigtails and Brightly. Of them all, Pigtails was the most shrouded in mystery. No one knew where she came from or what faction she represented. She also didn’t make any effort to reveal that to anyone and was actually rather quiet despite her outgoing appearance.

She was also the one that managed to reach the semi-finals with the least amount of effort. Having blown all her opponents away with a single massive wave. She also happened to be James’ opponent in today’s match. Naturally, that left Brightly trying to keep his pitiful little life in front of Demon Guy.

James and Pigtails both walked out into the arena and faced each other in preparation for battle. James appeared to be somewhat distractedly waving his arm about as he walked out into the arena and mumbling to himself.

Pigtails was dressed in a thick sweater and short shorts with suspenders and high laced boots. If James wasn’t wrong, she was most likely some kind of sailor. Regardless, now that he’d taken a better look at her, she wasn’t as average looking as he first thought.

Her red hair tied up in pigtails made her look quite adorable, and her proud chest forced the two suspenders straps to the side only helping to perpetuate the size of her breasts. Her legs were toned and smooth and were very tightly hugged by her short shorts, which were pulled up by the suspenders to the point her muff was clearly visible through the fabric.

As they stood there in readiness, Pigtails made a salute and bowed slightly. Her voice rang out across the arena and was projected to James clearly with her soul force.

“Greetings City Master James, I’m Imogine of the Red Hearings. Please enlighten me.”

James continued to swish his arm about and mostly ignored her. Although he was tempted to bed her, he was momentarily occupied with testing something.

Seeing the city master ignoring her, Imogine’s face blushed with anger and shame. Her cute little face scrunched up into a pouty frown and her fists clenched onto the hem of her shorts tightly as she bottled up her rage.

Only when the bell tolled did James finally look up at Imogine. When he finally looked up and could see her rapidly sprinting towards him with anger apparent on her face, he was somewhat confused. However, he didn’t put it to heart and decided to try his latest discovery.

In his spirit world, Gold James and Spirit James stood abreast each other and simultaneously stepped forwards. For a brief moment, the spirit realm shook violently, and the pervasive golden light of Goldy shone even brighter than ever. Moments later, all that remained was a single James.

Unlike like before, when his spirit body was somewhat illusionary and shadowy, or when Goldy was all gold, and it was difficult to make out his features, the remaining James of their fusion simply looked like a completely normal, corporeal form of James.

For this brief moment, his True Spirit had achieved fulfilment and was complete. In the arena, it had appeared as if James had just stood there staring at Imogine as she rapidly closed in on him. Just as she was within a few tens of meters, James whole body lit up like a small sun and shockwave suddenly came from his body.

The arena shook violently, and the defensive arrays lit up brighter than any time they had in this whole competition. Imogine was blasted back by the shockwave and rolled numerous times along the ground until she managed to get back to her feet.

When she finally got her bearings and looked up at James in the arena, her jaw fell slack, and all she could do was stare at him agape.

James hadn’t moved an inch since the start of the battle, but for 30 metres in every direction, the ground had been flattened and crooked fissues spread out in every direction as if he’d suddenly weighed a few hundred tonne.

In addition, a slight golden radiance shone from his body like a godly aura and a huge golden illusionary giant standing 12 metres tall rose up behind him. This golden giant resembled James in every way, except for the strangeness of having two heads and 4 arms.

Without warning, James suddenly moved. Like a mirage in the desert, he disappeared, and almost simultaneously reappeared. Only this time, he reappeared behind Imogine. James placed his hands together like a monk and then made a hand sign. With that, the giant behind him formed a palm with one hand and thrust towards the back of Imogine.

Imogine had still been trying to figure out where he’d gone when a swelling killing intent came from behind her, and every hair on hair body stood up on end. Just as she started moving to escape, a force like a mountain struck her back, and she was forced into the hard ground like a rock into soft sand.

Without warning, without suspense, and in only a few seconds, James had established complete dominance and taken victory in this battle. Most of the crowds hadn’t even realised what had happened until it was over. Even those ancient old tower realm cultivators were shocked by what they saw.

The two James’ split apart again in his spirit realm, huffing and puffing and looking miserable and weak. As James looked around his spirit realm, he noticed that almost half his spirit energy from every element had been sucked dry by that short attempt.

After his fusion split, James in the arena also released a breath and the giant golden apparition behind him slowly faded away. As if a huge pressure had suddenly been released, everyone let out a simultaneous breath and then erupted into cheers.

Down in the underground markets, Kelly was eating noodles at a dingy little side shop while she watched the screen. Seeing this scene, she smiled like a fox, slurped down the rest of her noodles and left for the gamblers den so she could collect her winnings.

Before the battle, she’d purposefully asked James how long he thought it would take to win a battle against the other three finalists. Without thought, he said he could defeat them all in less than a minute.

After some begging and pleading, Kelly managed to convince him to agree to completely obliterating his next opponent. She then raced here to the underground and bet every penny she could find on James winning his first match in less than a minute without the use of any artefacts.

As she pushed her way through a crowd of ne’er-do-well’s and vagrants, a hand covered in scars and withered old skin reached out through the crowd from and alley and clasped onto Kelly’s neck. Moments later, she was gone.

This wasn’t an unusual sight in the underground markets of Tech City. After all, most of the scum of the city resided here, and it was rare for there to be a day gone past when there wasn’t a mugging, murder or robbery.

The moment that Kelly disappeared, the AI was alerted. In 5 minutes, a dodgy little shack on the outskirts of the town was surrounded by an army of drones. When James finally returned to the lab, Jasmine filled him in on the situation. James scratched his chin for a moment as he glanced around the lab.

“I was wondering why I hadn’t seen Kelly anywhere today. So, what do these abductors or whatever want?”

“From the gibberish they’re yelling at the drones, I can only assume they want you to forfeit the next match, James.”

James scratched his head as he dawdled through the lab back towards the elevator. “How powerful are they and who are they?”

“One tower realm and three palace realm cultivators. They appear to be from the guild that previously captured and enslaved Kelly.”

James stepped into the elevator and pressed a button. “Oh? Interesting. Patch me through to Kelly.”

In a barely standing little shack on the outskirts of the city, 3 old men donned in expensive black robes were yelling and screaming at the drones outside. On the dirt floor in the middle of the shack lay Kelly, who appeared to be knocked out cold ... until a loud snore alerted the world that she was actually having a nap instead.

Suddenly one of her earrings buzzed and she sat up drowsily before speaking to the air half asleep. “When are you coming to rescue me? ... Like hell! ... Fine! ... Not a chance ... I don’t know, I guess ... How should I know? ... Whatever.”

She then slowly stood up from her laying position and rubbed her eyes sleepily. “What an asshole.”

The three masters of the ‘Shadow Men’, the dark guild responsible for enslaving Kelly when she first came to Ascension, all looked at her angrily. “Bitch you better get on your knees and beg forgiveness. I don’t know how you broke your oath and lived, but once this is done, you’re going to the chamber of sin.”

Kelly looked at them in a rather bored manner. As if by design, at that very moment, a huge pressure descended onto the little cottage. Kelly simply walked out from the door and meandered off towards the city.

Back at the cottage, the hundreds of drones all had their little chests opened up revealing their Cube Reactor, and were building illusionary arrays in the sky. Finally, after a few minutes, all the arrays fused together in the shape of a giant bronze bell. The bell slowly lifted one side then dropped and rang out.

A thunderous ‘dong!’ rang out across the entire city. At the same moment, those old bastards stuck in the little cottage house turned into a fine bloody mist. Not only them, but for about 500 metres around the cottage, everything was disintegrated into fine powder. The shock wave of the bell ringing carried on for another kilometre or so and levelled the entire little town outside the city walls.

Hundreds of ignorant visitors were pulverised by the colossal wind wave, and the debris of the town painted the city wall. All the residents of Tech City who’d noticed the bronze bell forming in the sky had long since evacuated into town and dragged as many people with them as they could. They had lived here long enough to know that the City Master was absolutely ruthless when it came to people being idiots.

With the entire little town completely demolished, the west gate of the city returned to being a flat empty area with only dirt. Within an hour of this happening, drones swarmed in like bees and cleared the entire area.

The three competing Construction guilds in the city all raced out of the gate under contract from the City and started compacting dirt for foundations and roads. By the same time tomorrow, the city will have claimed all the land in the immediate area outside the gate and built all sorts of fancy buildings like taverns, stables and all kinds of other amenities.

Seeing this scene, the 3 other townships at the north, south and east gate all evacuated then sent requests for the city to develop their areas as well.

With this, Tech City slowly started expanding again. On the same day, a small armed force from the Brotherhood, outfitted with the latest in tech, along with a squadron of drones, all shot off on hover boards towards the west.

By tomorrow, whatever is left of the ‘Shadow Men’ will have been completely obliterated.

-Arena-

Tomorrow came rather quickly. Naturally, Brightly was beaten into a coma by the Demon Guy. This time around, when Solaris jumped to his feet to concede the fight, Demon Guy simply glanced at Gary somewhat unwillingly, but nonetheless decided not to anger that unfathomable fellow. Even the Demon Soul he carried on him was somewhat afraid of Gary.

At about midday, James and Demon Guy stood in the arena. James had heard some of the rumours about this guy and read up on the legends and stories of demons. Now that they stood in the arena, face to face, James had a strange feeling as he looked over at creepy guy.

He unrestrainedly released his Scrying field. At the same time, he touched his space ring. After some thought, he decided on what he was going to do. The moment the bell rang, Creepy Guy suddenly changed.

Huge waves of black flames billowed out of his body and began to fill the stadium. His posture straightened out and his face twisted into a snarl looking very demonic.

In his scrying field, James saw the visage of another spirit overlapping the Creepy Guys body. This foreign spirit had two long black horns on the crown of his head and thick grey skin. His mouth had two long fangs, and his hands were adorned with long fingers filled with razor sharps talons.