Jack is quietly cultivating in his tent; the day goes by quietly as he enjoys the hustle and bustle of the village slowly coming together around him. He is trying to store qi within the stars on his forehead, he has 18 stars and has decided to fill two of them with the two qi he already has, Dragon Qi a hot fire type and Phoenix Qi a cold fire type.

He can feel his body influenced as he partitions off each type of qi and forces them into a blank space within his head, he can feel his body heat up as the dragon qi gets stronger, he can feel himself becoming calmer and colder within his bones as the phoenix qi gets stronger.

Jack really wants to spend some time kissing Jessica again; she cultivates a pure Phoenix qi technique and should be able to supply more but he feels like it’s not a good excuse to just kiss for cultivation. He would like to rely upon himself to solve this issue, so he’s using this slow methodical process unknowingly training his qi to become larger pushing him into the next stage of his cultivation. He’s still at the ‘vein opening’ stage, but instead of Stage 0-0, he could be considered Stage 0-2 now.

His body is still healing rapidly and he would be about 50% better now, as Jack is healing and cultivating Jessica is off doing something, she hasn’t revealed what she was doing with the tailor. When Jack thinks back to how she looked as she was blocking Jack from entering the tailor, it brings a smile to his face.

The sounds outside stop, Jack almost immediately notices and wonders what is going on and as he exits the tent is surprised by what he sees. Albert the merchant has returned, he has around 20 normal looking horses and about 30 people that are following the horses. Jack walks over to Albert to find out what is going on, he is joined by the civil ministers, Hilda and Bane.

“Lord, I have returned from the closest town and have had some great success, it appears the spirit herbs that have grown around here is very useful in general purpose medicant and even if they’re low quality, are worth a lot” Albert explains.

“I sold out in almost the first hour of trying to sell it the rest of the time I was trying to go through all the people that wished to join our village, there were nearly 200 people originally but I got rid of a lot of them explaining that I’ll be back with more in the future and need to consult with you regarding this” Albert adds while motioning to all the people around.

The people are nearly all middle-aged well weathered men, a group of farmers or people that have led a rough life. Some of them look better off than the others but overall, they look like peasants, just as Jack is about to speak to the group he is interrupted by Bane.

“My lord, we need to thoroughly investigate and interrogate all these outsiders, we don’t know what allegiances they have and it will be disastrous if some of these people have ill intent in coming to our village” Bane explains while squinting his eyes over the group of people, as if he’s suspicious of all of them. Jack quickly agrees to this and allows Bane to organize this while the people and horses are led away.

“Lord, I also learned of a village close by that has a newly discovered mine, they are looking for people to trade with and I thought that this would be a prime opportunity for us as we are located only a single day’s ride from them” Albert explains to Jack and Hilda as Bane has left.

“Do we know anything about this village?” Hilda asks before Jack can.

“No, I only know that it has less than 100 people and that the newly discovered mine might have some problems with it” Albert replies.

“Problems?” Jack asks intrigued that this would be included with the rumors.

“I heard that there might be something wrong with the ore in the mine, I wasn’t able to obtain any samples so I’m unsure about it. I still think it’s worthy of investigating, I would like permission to send a trade convoy” Albert asks, Jack mulls it over for a few moments.

“I think I’ll personally go and visit this village; I’ve been feeling cooped up today and was thinking about logging off for some time but this sounds like a better idea” Jack states his thoughts.

“Is that wise with your injuries?” Hilda asks quite bluntly; she can sense that Jacks body has not recovered completely.

“It should be safe but I’ll take Sleipner with me, he will allow us to escape should the situation warrant it and if the town is after merchants to trade with them, it should be a safe route there.” Jack replies almost dismissing the concern. Hilda steps back and nods her head.

“Lord, I would like to open a store within the close by town to allow us to have a better presence in the local region” Albert asks, Jack agrees and tells him to discuss all the details with Hilda as he leaves the two to talk.

Drakon is currently training up the group of soldiers, they’re all panting collapsed on the ground. Jack is glad to see them working so hard and walks up to the statuesque Drakon and asks his opinion on taking a trip to the village.

He says that while it’s not a good idea while injured, it could be considered safe but he recommends taking some cavalry, only using the fastest horses and equipping some of the new armor they have created.

Jack feels more confident in his decision and goes over to the tailor to find some of the armor where he’s greeted by Jessica, as he explains what the plan is, she quite resolutely announces that she is going to join in too. Jack attempts to persuade her to stay but to no avail as he is dragged into the tailor.

Jessica shows that she has been working on with the tailors, it’s a kingly robe(hanfu). It looks very nice with black and white colours, featuring several embroidered phoenixes and dragons on the front with two big ones twining around each other on the back. It feels somewhat heavy too, Jack can feel it has some armor plates within it.

Jack wears it with help from Jessica and everyone in the room can almost feel a regal aura coming from him. They want to get on their knees and loudly proclaim, “Lord!” even Jessica isn’t able to escape the feeling, Jack’s eyes change containing a slightly cold aura but it disappears within a moment as the aura disappears from the room.

“Good Robe” Jack says to the room, Jessica has a big smile on her face. The two of them leave the room and start to prepare for leaving. They gather some supplies, a couple days of food and water and various other goods they might need including gifts for the other party they’re greeting.

This doesn’t take too long they meet Drakon and the two heavy cavalry on their Lightning Scaled Horse, they look quite imposing on the large horses. Jack and Jessica are both riding Sleipner, he makes an oath to himself that they’ll get an appropriate carriage if they’re going to do this again as they set out.

The group follows the trail that has been partially created leading to the main road, Jack feels uncomfortable riding on the main road but feels more confident now that he has the city lord weapon by his side, two heavy cavalry and a general.

They’re riding for sometime when they pass through a small village, nearly all of the villagers get out of the parties’ way. No one wants to deal with what looks like nobility out here, nobles quite often run rampant in small village towns and they would have no recourse should something happen.

The group is just about to exit the town when something catches Jack’s eye and he stops, it’s a noticeboard or something for the village and on one of the bits of paper that are posted, there appears to be a drawn picture of Jack, Jessica also notices this jumping off the horse to grab the piece of paper to read it.

‘Man wanted for stealing several Scaled Horses from Harold’s Merchant Group, reward for information or return of stolen goods’

Jessica reads out the notice and Jack is confused as to what brought this on, he’s unable to answer the question but it means that he’ll need to start hiding his face in the future. The group then quickly leave the town behind and continue the journey.

They’re roughly half way there when their journey is interrupted, a group of sheep are blocking the road but these sheep appear to be infected with demonic qi as instead of white, they’re jet black with red eyes.  They’re fighting amongst themselves in the middle of the road, biting each other and launching blood coloured fireballs but as they’re covered in wool, they don’t take any damage.

Jack wants to jump off the horse to deal with them but he’s stopped by Drakon who then proceeds to bring out his newly forged sword that appears to be made of ant carapace. He walks over to a sheep and just as he’s about to get bitten.

The sound of a sword slicing through the air can be heard as the sheep loses its head where it stands, the other sheep notice this and stop fighting between each other and start to attack Drakon, launching fireballs or trying to run in and bite him. Drakon coldly snorts as he launches more sword strikes and takes down sheep without any effort, as Drakon is doing this several messages resound in Jack’s mind:

“System announcement! Your General has killed an Elite magic beast, the Violent Demonic Sheep, and has gained 6 Achievement Points.”

“System announcement! You have gained 3 Achievement Points.”

These announcements pop up from each animal that Drakon kills, there was roughly 20 of them but now there’s only 5, actually only 4. Jack speaks up and tells Drakon to see if he can knock out one of the sheep for research purposes later. Drakon acknowledges Jack and knocks out a single sheep successfully while killing the rest.

There are severed sheep heads littering the floor, their bloody bodies are writing on the ground as blood pours out the neck hole, slightly smoking as its in the sunlight. Jack steps over and inspects one of these bodies and notices on the ground that they have dropped coins and an item each.

Each sheep has dropped 2-4 silver coins each and a strange blood coloured orb which Jack inspects:

[Innate Energy Orb] Description: An orb that has gathered the lifetime energy of a creature, able to grant skills or bonus stats depending on the creature.

Jack decides to test out using one of the many orbs on Drakon, he uses it and is granted the skill Fireball, which makes sense as those sheep seemed to be able to launch a fireball. Jack uses an orb on himself, he can feel the energy be absorbed into his body but he can also feel pain as if a foreign qi is attempting to invade his body.

Jack tries to push this qi away from his dantian and into his forehead, one of the stars on his forehead shines briefly before changing into a dark red colour, similar to blood. This is the demonic qi that was acquired by the sheep somehow, it should have been dissipated before being absorbed into Jack’s body but for some reason it was attempting to be absorbed.

He feels relieved that his body wasn’t influenced by the demonic qi for very long and it’s contained within one of the stars on his forehead, he looks at what else he acquired and he finds that he also acquired the fireball skill, smiling at this windfall he orders the group to collect all of the remaining items on the ground and to tie up the knocked out remaining demonic sheep and place it on the back of a horse.

The Lightning Scaled horse isn’t willing to accommodate this demonic creature on its back but after some coaxing is willing to after the sheep is wrapped in several layers of cloth restraining it further. Jack feels excited and calls out a fireball into his hand, it’s different to the one emitted from the sheep.

It’s not blood coloured and feels incredibly hot, he launches it at a random tree that almost melts instead of burning. Drakon then explains that as he used Dragon qi to form the fireball, it was dragon fire contained within that fireball. Jack starts to laugh loudly; he finally feels like this game is rewarding him for all the crap that he has had to go through lately.

Jessica also receives an energy orb, learning the fireball skill but she’s too self-conscious and doesn’t want to launch it so Jack doesn’t push her. The group continue along the road, setting up a campsite to stay at overnight when the night becomes high in the sky.

Jack and Jessica end up sharing a tent together where they sleep as they have done recently, in each other’s arms often waking up in rather lewd positions, Jessica complaining about something always poking her while Jack wants to blame her for rubbing against him all night. The demonic sheep woke up twice during the night but Drakon promptly knocking it out each time.

The night quickly passes by and it’s morning, the group set out for the village at last. Jack feels even better now, roughly 60% better and is able to walk normally even run short distances. The village quickly enters their sight but instead of a bustling town trying to greet merchants, it feels like a ghost town.

There are no signs of anything untoward as the group proceeds through the village, heading to the largest building, it’s just as if everyone is inside not coming out of their domiciles. As the group of 5 on horses are just before the largest building a young man walks out the door and greets them, he has several scars on his face and if talking honestly, he looks like a bandit.

He holds his arms open as he yells, “WELCOME FRIENDS TO OUR HUMBLE VILLAGE, OUR CHIEF WOULD LIKE TO HOLD A BANQUET TO WELCOME YOU!”, Jack’s group are immediately put on guard from this but upon seeing nothing sinister dismount their houses and walk up to the man.

Drakon steps forward so that Jack doesn’t need to speak, “We were passing by and heard this town has a newly discovered mine, we were wondering about trade opportunities and if we can inspect the mine?” he asks the man.

The man just smiles as he says with his arms still wide open, “Yes friends, we have a mine newly discovered, our chief would like to discuss it with you inside!”.

Jack is about to say to the group that they should leave when someone else steps out from inside, it’s a late 20s woman with long black hair, she looks rather beautiful but also rough as though she has had a tough life, “Friends, we don’t get many visitors, why don’t you step inside after such a long trip?” she says while giving a wink to both Drakon and Jack.

“Alright, we will” Jack says looking towards Drakon and Jessica, giving them a look as though he has a plan incase something goes wrong. He pats the sword by his side as he walks next to the woman, the woman eyes the sword but doesn’t say anything as she steps back inside the house.

Jack’s group follows shortly after, Jessica gives Sleipner a whisper “You keep an eye on things out here” as she runs after Jack quickly linking her arms around his.