The night gives way to the morning as many people in the region are wondering exactly what is going on with the blood-red moon. Many religious institutes have proclaimed that it's the sign of demonic invasion yet nothing has changed for the common person, people are still waking up during the morning as per normal going off to their job but they would not know in the regions surrounding the plains area things are not the same.

 

Many people are standing outside a town of 2500 people with high city walls made of stone, yet they are confused as no one is standing on the walls nor is anyone greeting them by the gate to allow them in.

It’s as though the entire town has disappeared but no one is willing to say this.

 

One of the merchants standing outside the town walls orders one of his guards to step forward and see if the gate is open, the annoyed guard steps forward and pushes the gate. It effortlessly swings open to the reveal a town devoid of anyone, there's blood all over the ground and ripped up clothing but nothing else, the town is eerily quiet with few other clues about what happened but the guard speaks up with confidence, "Demon have attacked this town last night" causing the groups standing outside the gate to back away while in a panic.

 

The guards of several merchant groups step into the town together as they investigate what happened but while this is happening, within Dragon – Phoenix village they have avoided all of this due to Leah taking care of the first wave of creatures.

Jack is still sleeping peacefully but his face also has a frown on it while his forehead is covered in a layer of sweat, the dawn has passed so Mai has left the bed to do her morning ritual but Jack feels incredibly hot, the heat continually builds up causing Jack to wake up once he starts to smell some smoke.

 

Jerked out of his slumber Jack looks around the room to find the source of the burning but his vision is attracted immediately to Jessica who is on the ground surrounded by a white energy glow, part of the bed has caught fire from the residual heat coming off this white glow but Jack can feel familiarity with it, it's from Jessica's cultivation technique as it appears that she's somehow cultivating in her sleep.

 

Jack gets off the bed and steps toward Jessica but finds the heat unbearable just a few steps closer, the heat coming off Jessica is to a point where a metre away from the bed she is able to cause the wooden frame to give off smoke also melting some of the sheets.

Jack steps back unsure how to sort this out, she doesn't seem to be having any difficulties but he also doesn't the whole tent to go up in fire. Not knowing what else to do, Jack spends several minutes just moving the furniture away creating a safe zone around Jessica.

After which he steps outside the tent, nothing much has changed it's still looking and smelling like spring and gives a refreshing feeling, walking forward he can see a few of the guards that are usually posted out the front.

 

"Lord" the two guards announce, giving a military style salute that has been gradually adopted by the soldiers.

 

Jack lightly waves at them, "I'm going to need you two to keep an eye on the tent, inform Hilda or Maurice if it catches on fire"

 

The two guards are confused about this request but they know better than to question it, they've been given a task and must complete it regardless of how illogical it seems, cupping their hands they respond; "Yes Lord, these subjects shall do as requested".

 

Jack nods at them before entering the street, it's as busy as usual with three clear groups of people going about their tasks.

 

There are humans passing around resources between buildings, these are the civil jobs people such as blacksmiths, armourers, forgers, kitchen workers and just people hauling goods. These are humans because they're capable of lifting heavy goods much better than Goblins and Kobolds, there are some Dragon-looking people with horns or scales, there are also some Bunny-humans joining in but very few of them that have enhanced stats compared to the normal human villagers from other towns.

There are kobolds and goblins in groups carrying around tools for digging or laying down building foundations, they are tasked with starting the defences like the city wall and the water barrier, they are being led by their village leaders and also joined by a few humans to assist with relaying information, it will take some time for them to become integrated into the village properly but none of the non-humans look displeased with their current situation, their bellies look much fuller than when Jack first saw them.

 

The final group are the people with military professions, they're running around while fully equipped with gear. Their shiny black weapons, their black iron wool that looks like chainmail and their white helmets give them an intimidating look, the cavalry are particularly intimidating with the large scaled horses and their long spears. They seem to be drilling as they’re all covered with sweat yet don’t stop running.

 

As Jack walks through the streets watching these sights, he makes eye contact with many people upon which they make various gestures to show a sign of respect, Jack returns their gesture with a slight nod of the head as he makes his way into the City Hall building where Bane, Tahel and Hilda are currently discussing something around the usual table.

 

"Lord" they all greet him, Jack walks up to the table and looks at what they were discussing, just a simple map with several circles to indicate the major focus points today.

 

Jack can see that there's not many locations marked to the north of the village indicating that their focus is mostly towards the west that suits him well, Jack's plan today is to head north and being able to operate by himself will make things much easier but first thing is to take care of the teleportation.

 

Jack turns toward Bane, "Are you ready?".

 

"Yes Lord, I will be taking Tahel and a squad of the Bunny-humans to investigate what we need to, Albert will also be joining us later where we will both spend two nights preparing before we return"

 

"Good, will Hilda be able to handle your jobs around the village?"

 

"Yes, Lord" Bane responds without explaining further causing Jack to look at Hilda.

 

Hilda then explains what has been decided, currently Bane has no pressing matters after handling all the new villagers that have been taken in over the last few days and setting up a taskforce to handle some of the more mundane tasks for him, Hilda only needs to handle allocating the human resources properly while delegating tasks when needed. Jack listens while they're explaining but doesn't really care, he just wants get on with the day so after Hilda is done explaining he's feeling impatient.

 

"Ok sounds good, I trust you all to handle your jobs, Hilda are you done with the storage ring?"

 

Hilda withdraws the storage ring from her pocket, Jack quickly wears it and inspects the contents but finds that it's empty and much larger than before. Jack feels slightly panicked because all of the items disappeared such as the spear, Jade Palace key and a few other important items such as his bunny ears and looks toward Hilda with a displeased expression

 

"What happened to the items in here?"

 

Hilda looks to Jack confused but adopts a neutral expression, "Your Majesty, your items are located within the ring we only removed the Holy element items you acquired"

 

Jack inspects the ring again but it's still empty, he picks up a pen from the table and places it within the storage ring, it disappears like normal but he can feel that robust thread of divine sense has slight pressure while the item disappeared as if the item is traveling along that thread instead of going inside the ring. Jack concentrates and can feel the pen located somewhere within his mind, he calls it out and it appears within his hand.

 

The people within the city hall room look at Jack strangely, they can only see him storing and recalling the item within his hand while frowning.

 

Jack stores the pen away within this other storage area while concentrating heavily with his second thread of divine sense as it looks into the ring, this time he's able to see all the items within the ring but it doesn't feel as solid as his connection to the other area as he concentrates and withdraws the spear, Jack feels strange about this change but relieved that it worked.

 

Looking at the room, he can see that everyone is patiently looking at him so he lightly coughs "Ok, I see the items are still within there, let's get going".

 

Jack quickly leaves the room while his concentration is with the pen still, he doesn't trust this new change but feels that it's related with that crystal that was absorbed into his mind yesterday. Bane and Tahel quietly follow after Jack as the three proceed to the city heart building, where Albert and a squad of rabbit-humans are waiting patiently, Jack is still making a pen appear and disappear within his hand.

 

Jack looks over the rabbit-humans that are waiting, there are a few that he hadn't seen yesterday but they look rather plain with brown ears that one would associate with a normal rabbit. Jack looks over the other rabbits and compares them to Tahel, for some reason Tahel seems to have a much more exotic colour pattern making Jack wonder if there's a reason behind it. As if noticing Jack's gaze, Tahel returns the gaze with a slight smile.

 

"Ready?" Jack asks Albert as he walks through the city heart building's door trying to ignore Tahel’s slight smile.

 

"Yes, my lord" Albert respectfully bows while the rest of the rabbit-humans join in, they're all wearing civilian clothing making the group look rather poor but beneath the exterior they have plenty of weapons and armour.

Jack walks up to the city heart, placing his hand on the orb he brings up the teleportation prompt, this will be a trial to see if he needs to teleport with them or not. Selecting the option to teleport to Sacred City, a teleportation gate appears before Jack but he stands still, Tahel walks forward and steps through the gate causing him to disappear without incident.

 

The rest of the group walk by Jack as they disappear one by one, Bane stops before entering "We will have someone waiting by the teleportation exit point after two nights, I suggest you adopt a good disguise next time you go to the city"

 

"Ok, I expect to see some rapid progress the next time we meet" Jack watches Bane disappear through the teleportation gate, which stays around for several minutes but Jack just stands there playing around with the storing and recalling of items waiting for it to disappear after which he confirms that he doesn't need to teleport with the people.

 

Jack looks at the City Lord weapon for a few moments, it's sticking out of the floating black and white city heart orb but he doesn't take it as he feels that it's not needed right now, previously it was his only combat option but now he has Heavens Piercing Thrust and Bunny dash including a good spear to use the skill with, these two combined with Sleipner should allow him to escape any situation that warrants escaping.

 

Looking around the village, he feels like he'll get in the way if he stays here much longer so letting out a loud whistle, Sleipner can be seen running down the road while everyone makes way for him, Jack quickly jumps on the giant horse's back and steering it to run by the white tent, Jack is able to see that it luckily hasn't caught fire yet so leaves the village while squads of people are leaving the city on their jobs.

At a distance from Dragon – Phoenix Village, Jack can still hear the bleating of several demonic sheep which he had never heard from this distance before but ultimately, they are being controlled by the trappers and don’t need Jack to do anything.

Today Jack doesn't really have a plan about what he wants to do, he just knows that he wants to inspect how the northern area has been impacted, as there are the ants and goblins which might pose a problem but there's also that treasure detected a while ago that he never followed up on, thinking for a moment Jack decides that it's probably not the best time right now to go treasure hunting and remembering how slippery the crevice was, he's not in a rush to return.

 

Riding Sleipner towards the north, he passes by several groups of kobolds and before too long comes across a rather large ditch that looks similar to the stream only a few metres across but rather deep while kobolds are spread evenly across its entire length just digging, Jack pauses for a few moments to watch them as they amass the poisonous substance in one area and continue to dig in another.

 

Giving Sleipner a nudge, the giant horse leaps over the ditch and continues to ride towards the north, the noise of the construction gets lost to the background noise of the long grasses rustling in the wind as Jack rides towards the ant’s hill when he quickly come across the first ant, a normal looking black ant.

 

Jack wants to test how well his spear will kill the ants so he stops Sleipner at a distance, the giant horse is looking angrily at the ant as if he wants to squish it but Jack settles it down while withdrawing his spear from the storage ring, he still doesn't fully trust the new storage method and giving it a twirl, Jack is tempted  to pour some fire qi within the spear to see what effect it has but opts to not do that this time.

 

He holds the spear by his side and calms his mind and breath, the ant hasn't noticed him yet while Jack psyches himself up which only takes a few moments as his gaze goes from the tired aloofness he usually has into one of seriousness, he bends over and picks up a random rock and throws it at the ant while readying the spear in a thrust position.

 

*Ding*

 

The rock hits the hard-outer shell of the ant causing it to be pissed off and looking around and letting out a high-pitched noise as it notices Jack and rushes toward him brandishing its pincers.

 

Jack places his feet in a stable position and recalls the first motion of the spear technique, he looks at a single point a notch on the ant’s head as he quietly hopes that this is the ant’s brain as he'll only get one serious stab at this.

 

The ant stupidly rushes towards Jack while opening and closing its pincers but once it's within three steps of Jack, he steps forward as his eyes never leave that notch on the ant’s head while he thrusts the spear toward the ant.

*SQUEALCH*

 

'First motion' Jack says in his mind as the spear pierces through the ant's outer shell easily, the ant's pincers open and close a few more times before some acidic substance starts leaking out of its mouth and it starts to randomly twitch.

 

Jack withdraws the spear out of the ant and looks at the spear and the ant, the spear has no damage on it as it effortlessly pierced through the ant that now has a rather small hole on its head where the notch was previously.

 

He has a smile on his face as he stores the ant body including the dropped items away within the storage ring, he feels happy that this worked out so well as he signals to Sleipner to follow him while he proceeds up the slight hill towards where he was chased away the first time he came across the ants.

 

*rustle rustle*

 

Jack is creeping through the long grass and comes across three ants surrounding something, two black ants and a red ant, they are just the standard ants that the village has been farming previously and use their carapace for all sorts of purposes, the carapace is not needed desperately right now so Jack decides to experiment on them using the spear’s fire qi ability.

He quietly stands for a moment and circulates his qi, letting the qi flow from his dantian along his meridians and then his veins while the spear starts to vibrate as fire qi enters the intricate patterns carved down the spear causing it to glow as if they're also veins.

The spear head glows red and causes the area to feel hotter as if the spear itself is raising the temperature, this lasts half a breath before everything settles down and returns to normal.

 

This is the first time Jack has seriously poured qi within the spear and he's curious as to what will happen, he creeps up slowly to the ants as they're distracted by whatever they're surrounding, he's 10 steps away and they don't notice he slowly walks up and gets within 5 steps of the ants before the red one lets out a high pitched noise into the air causing the black ones to be agitated.

 

Jack quickly crosses the last two steps and takes aim at a spot on the red ant, what looks to be an old wound on the side of its head and stabs out with the spear, quickly crossing the three-step distance.

 

*BOOOOOOM*

 

A large explosion appears from the tip of the spear as incredibly hot fire and dragon fire qi enters the area engulfing the red ant and most of the two black ants as it travels a few meters into the distance, as if a shaped explosive was launched from the tip of the spear, the explosion only affects the area towards where Jack stabbed.

 

The loud sound can be heard far in the distance causing many ants to take notice, Jack doesn't feel drained by that explosion at all nor does he feel worried about the ants,  he feels excited by the result as he looks at the small dug out area left behind and by the sounds of all the ants rushing toward him.

 

He quietly focuses and quickly recharges the spear, this time it happens instantly as if he feels a familiarity with the spear already, an ant appears suddenly beside him from some long grass.

 

The high pitched noise can be heard but Jack ignores it and takes another jab with his spear causing another explosion to happen as the black ant is turned into ash but revealing a group of 50 behind not too far behind, Jack smiles as he circulates his qi within the spear again and readies the second motion, this is the training he needed to feel comfortable with the newly acquired skill.