Jack’s group follows the strange villagers into the building, it’s a simple building with a large hall upon entering it. There are large tables around as though it’s nobles gathering for a feast except there’s nothing on just bare wooden tables.

The woman is still leading the group towards the largest table, a large high-backed chair is also located where she is going. At times she is peering back at Jack and Drakon looking at Jessica with disdain, each time her eyes meet Jack or Drakon they flash a slight violet tinge but it passes momentarily.

Jacks eyes also flash violet when hers do, Jessica as if feeling a change in Jack locks his arm tighter while looking closely at him. Jack’s eyes flash quickly from violet into a rainbow of multiple colours before changing into a familiar red and finally back to normal, Jessica is shocked at this but she has seen Jacks eyes have a red tinge previously when she needed to get out of trouble, so it’s almost reassuring to her to see this.

The man that initially greeted them is trying to start up a conversation asking questions to Drakon such as; “Where do you come from?”, “Where did you hear about our village?”, “Did you bring any carts to haul goods?”, but he’s getting no response from Drakon yet this doesn’t stop him from continuing to try.

They quickly come before the table with the large high-backed chair where the woman pulls it out but stands besides it, Jack’s group also continue to stand around on the other side of the table with neither side budging. The woman visibly gets irritated at their continued standing but keeps a smile on her face.

“Sirs, your group must be weary from travelling so far to our poor little village, why don’t you have a seat and take a rest?” the woman asks in a seductive voice. Jessica glares at the woman, Jack just has a smile on his face while Drakon is expressionless as usual.

The woman visibly getting irritated now signals the outspoken man to go into the other room, the sound of dishes being knocked about can be heard but shouting can also be heard. It sounds like 4 people are arguing with the outspoken man. The woman upon hearing this loses the smile on her face and marches into the side room quickly.

She can be heard yelling at the people to settle down and to not blow this, Jack almost starts chuckling inwardly. He leads Jessica around the table and sits on the high-backed chair pulling Jessica down onto his knee. She initially resists as it’s embarrassing but upon seeing Jack have a serious expression, complies with him.

The woman steps back into the room and upon seeing where Jack is sitting, her expression goes stiff as she starts to say, “Sir…” but Jack cuts her off as he says, “Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on around here?” he asks the woman while playing with Jessica’s hand not looking at the woman.

“Sir…. I don’t know…. What….” The woman tries to explain but she is unable to finish her sentence before clattering can be heard and from two side doors, two group of men burst in. There’s only 5 people per group but they have the classic bandit appearance, scarred weathered bodies, leather and hide armour and an uncouth look.

“Chief, these guys look like they have money, I bet those horses are worth a pretty bit of coin” one of the men speaks up. The woman has an angry expression on her face, Jack is just smiling while still playing with Jessica’s hand, as if he’s watching a show.

“Chief, we need to recover our funds and leave, this crappy village isn’t worth anything. We got scammed by the people who sold us the mining rights but I bet those horses are worth more than triple what we paid for the mine!” one of the other men shouts drawing out one of his swords.

“We should kill them and leave, we’re bandits and always have been, we don’t know how to run a mine!”

“Yeah”

“That’s right”

……

The lot of men are shouting between each other and towards the woman, she appears to be reaching a breaking point bringing out a whip from god knows where and just starts to whip the men. The show continues for a few moments when everything goes quiet, the woman is panting from using her whip so much but the men aren’t affected much.

The room is quiet with no one talking or moving when a noise can be heard and a small fireball appears above Jack’s hand, everyone in the room can feel their bodies heat up a couple degrees upon the appearance of this fireball.

“Who is going to tell this king what’s going on?” Jack looks over the group as if he’s looking at people beneath him. His body is releasing an imposing aura causing all the people within the room to feel a pressure, they look at Jack and the fireball that’s still within his hand as they settle down.

The woman upon sensing the changes in the room feels slightly relieved, “Sir, we don’t mean any harm to you, we only need to find someone to take over this village from us.” The woman explains, she is the leader of this group and they had heard the rumours of a village discovering a valuable mine.

They had rushed over to this village where they were able to buy the rights to both the village and the mine, the bandit group had been wanting to find a legitimate place for their funds and this seemed like a way for them to get out of the bandit life.

They discovered upon taking over the village that things weren’t as they seem; all the able-bodied villagers fled the city with money leaving only the old and infirm, the mine was actually a useless ore called ‘Yisium’ that can only be used as a spice.

The bandit group quickly discovered these problems and attempts to get their money back but found out the original people had long fled too; they had only discovered all these problems yesterday and were going to decide what to do when Jack’s group showed up.

Jack listens to the woman speak about their experiences and upon hearing her finish, smiles towards Jessica as he stands up. He closes his eyes and places his hands behind his back, his regal bearing coming through.

“I have a simple solution, submit to me!” Jack says in a normal voice but his voice resounds through out the room. Most of the bandits look towards their leader, she is also speechless but doesn’t speak up.

One of the rowdier bandits starts to carry on, “There’s no way we’ll submit to a pretty boy like you!” as he attempts to rush at Jack holding a dagger using one a dash skill. Jack brings out the White Dragon - Phoenix sword and lets out a massive sword light, the room goes bright white from the sword light as it travels down and impacts the man, instantly cutting him diagonally and continuing to travel through the building going over the street through the building there and continuing into the distance while leaving a trail of fire. Jack then launches the fireball that remained in his hand on to the spot where the man stood, his body nearly instantly turning into ash.

Nearly all of the bandits attempt to rush out of the building at the same time because they’re scared and because it’s on fire. Drakon steps forward holding his own fireball in a threatening manner, nearly all of the bandits stop their movements.

Jack puts away his sword, returning his hands behind his back peering over the group, outside clouds are gathering around in a familiar fashion, Sleipner is readying its Heavenly Lightning Descent skill outside.

The bandit leader is now having cold sweat running down her back, she now knows that Jack is someone to not mess around with and has some power behind him. She puts on a submissive look and walks towards Jack, a violet tinge in her eyes flashing again.

“Sir, no master, this lowly person would like to apologise for any offence and would like to submit herself wholly to you in mind and body” she says with a seductive air around her.

Jack’s eyes flash violet but is quickly replaced with red as he puts his hand on his weapon, the woman stops her footsteps stiffly. Jack looks at her coldly as he says, “This king is aware of your petty tricks, try it again and you will find the limits of my patience”.

The woman stops her steps stiffly again, she has never come across this situation before as her charming technique has always worked previously. This group of bandits was formed by charming the old leader and taking over his position, she has always got what she wanted when she used this technique on a man and finally found someone that could withstand it.

“Yes, this lowly one knows where she went wrong” the woman lowers her head submissively, this time truly acting submissive.

Jack feels relieved at this change and handling the situation like this, he just killed his first person and while it’s within this game world, he doesn’t really care. The man was attempting to kill Jack first but instead got struck down turning into less than ash within a couple of moments.

The clouds are still gathering outside and since there’s not much left to do inside here, Jack tells Drakon to watch over the bandits while he starts to walk outside. Jessica walks behind Jack, when the two of them pass by the woman Jack tells her to follow him as well. The woman has a relieved smile on her face and follows after Jack and Jessica.

Sleipner is outside, the horn on its head is emitting the crackling of electricity as if lightning is just waiting to come out but upon seeing Jack walk out safely, it calms down as the clouds disperse revealing a nice day, Jessica starts to calm Sleipner down too.

“Take me to the city heart also what is your name?” Jack says to the woman.

“My name is Amber Lazali, the city heart was never actually turned over to me so this lowly one is unable to assist you with that” the woman says meekly, she still feels uneasy about her position as the man before her did just kill one of her subordinates.

“Ok Amber, take me there” Jack says ignoring most of her sentence, he is curious as to what protections a city heart will have on it. They should have an inbuilt defensive barrier but Jack wants to know how strong it is for a village of this size.

The three of them walk over to the city heart, a small stone building on the other side of the town.

A few old villagers are out of their houses now, many of them were curious as to what that massive sword light was and attempting to put out the fire that spread from that sword light. Jack didn’t actually see how far the sword light travelled but the smoke from the fire can be seen quite far into the distance.

Jack didn’t put much power behind that sword strike so he’s feeling rather proud that this was the result. The group before too long appear before the small stone building and attempt to enter but are greeted by an invisible barrier that stops them.

Jack feels this barrier with his hand putting an increasing amount of pressure on it and is unable to affect it at all. Jessica is also touching it; she’s just playing with it as the barrier will shimmer where it’s being touched and looks quite beautiful.

Jack brings a fireball to his hand and brings it into the barrier, a sizzling can be heard and a small hole appears within the barrier. Jack smiles upon seeing this take effect, he puts a lot more qi into his hand and the fireball grows larger, it grows to the size of a head then it quickly grows into larger than Jack’s body.

His forehead is now sweating from pushing this much qi, one of the stars on his forehead is glowing a bright red colour as a large hole appears in the barrier but as Jack is thinking about jumping through this hole, fissures appear all throughout the barrier and it shatters shortly after.

Jessica and Amber are quick to praise Jack, “Well done, lord/Jack!” as though they’re competing with each other over who can congratulate him the quickest. Jack ignores them and steps towards the small city heart, it’s small but larger than the goblin city heart.

As Jack reaches out his hand to inspect, he pauses as behind the city heart, there is a small animal just shivering scared, it’s a dog. Just a normal dog that looks like a brown Labrador, Jack stops reaching out to the city heart and walks over to the dog.

Crouching down at it, he pets the dogs head but it’s just shivering without moving so Jack starts to speak to it in a soft voice, “Sorry for breaking in here, the old owners are gone and I would like to take over this village, I’ll look after you” Jack speaks to the dog just petting its head. The dog becomes calmer after hearing Jack’s soothing voice, slowly leaning into the petting.

A prompt appears before his eyes:

‘SYSTEM NOTIFICATION – Brown Dog Village Guardian Beast would like to submit to you, do you accept?’

Jack quickly accepts it and looks over the information of the dog, it’s literally just a dog that someone could get off the street and probably did. Dismissing all the prompts Jack returns over to the city heart as Jessica goes over to the dog and starts to speak to it, “Welcome little doggy, now I get to name you… uhh…. Chocolate sweety? No, I don’t know if you’re a sweet dog, umm… Doggy Dog Chocolate Dog? Hmm, that’s too long” she escapes into her own world, Jack ignores her while Amber looks at her incredulously, like she’s an idiot.

Jack can feel that the city heart doesn’t reject him as much anymore, he reaches out and touches it as another system prompt appears before his eyes:

‘SYSTEM NOTIFICATION – You have subdued the city heart guardian beast, would you like to capture, relocate or destroy Brown Dog Village city heart?”

Jack thinks about it for a few moments, he would like to relocate the city heart to somewhere closer but this town is by a mine that may be important in the future. Jack thinks it over for a few moments and looks towards Amber.

Amber upon seeing Jacks look almost immediately lowers her head but a slightly vicious glint in her eyes can be seen. Jack chuckles inwardly and chooses to capture the town, Amber was able to lead the bandit group for some time, if she is reinforced with actual soldiers, she should be able to manage this city properly until it’s developed into a proper mining village.

Jack looks over the village information and there’s nothing he doesn’t expect within it, the town only has 48 residents which is about equal to what White Dragon – Phoenix Village has currently.

Jack’s eyes turn cold as he speaks towards Amber, “This king will let you control this village until he organises a team to take it over, you will continue to run the village as normal until then, understand?” he asks.

Amber wishes that she could bring out her whip but she also knows that the person before her can’t be affronted, so she meekly nods her head with clenched fists and teeth. Jack chuckles outwardly upon seeing this, walking up to her and feeling her body up, his eyes have a violet tinge.

She almost immediately starts to lash into Jack for taking liberties with her and through clenched teeth she asks, “Do you want me to warm your bed for you?” while muttering under her breath “despicable” as if Jack wouldn’t be able to hear her.

“Hahaha, just a test” Jack laughs as he stops what he’s doing, he is confused as to why he would suddenly do that, he tries to search his mind as to why but it feels like something within his head is blocked off and can feel a headache developing the more he pushes towards the blockage. He shakes his head to get rid of this feeling.

“We won’t stay for much longer; do you have a sample of the ore the mine produces?” Jack asks Amber not stepping back from where he is.

“They’re kept in the village chief house; you can take as much as you want…. Lord”

Jessica is still down with the dog trying to work out a name, the dog is eyeing Jack with sad eyes wanting him to save it but to no avail. She is unable to decide on one name but Jack tells her that they can come back and she will be able to name it after she thinks up something good.

The group head back to the village chief house, the largest building that now has a massive hole in the wall where the sword strike went through with a good portion of it also burnt. Drakon has managed the bandits quite well, some of them have new bruises on their face but they’re all submissive and not rowdy anymore.

Amber is shocked upon seeing the change, her eyes look towards Jack with a new found respect as clearly his underlings are capable, she wonders just what influence he is from as nothing has been explained. Jack explains to the group of bandits that he has now taken over the town and will soon send some soldiers to help with management.

He goes on to explain that he will greatly reward them if they do a proper job and leaves the rest unsaid but everyone could sense a bloodthirstiness from his eyes as he looked over the group. Jack leaves Amber some instructions and says that he will be back within a week to sort out everything while he gathers up the minerals.

Everything is quickly loaded up on the horses, Sleipner is glad to finally be leaving and they start their journey home from their random impromptu trip to this mining village. Jessica is sitting in Jack’s lap as they ride, she doesn’t feel too threatened by this new woman. She leans closer to Jack’s ear and asks, “Do you feel better about taking a trip with me to my home village?” she asks softly.

Jack thinks for a few moments before answering “Yes” as he wraps an arm around her waist, Jessica closes her eyes and just gets absorbed into the moment as the group goes along the road back towards their village, the only sounds that can be heard are the clopping of horse hooves and the wind.