Chapter 26 - Strange nothingness and training
He takes the first step and instantly a wave of pressure assaults his body causing him to become unsteady on his feet, it feels like there is a massive invisible force pressing down on his body pushing him into the ground, wanting to reject his advance down the steps.
Jack focuses his mind and forces his foot down on the next step except when he does that, it appears that the step under his foot is crumbling, Jack instantly pulls his foot back and attempts to jump back but he's already up against the barrier where he entered this area.
Jack feels sweat pour down his brow, there is just pitch black before him now, there is nothing ahead nor is there any where the steps crumbled, he is stuck now on the initial step with nowhere else to move.
He peers down into the black hole that appeared where the step once was, he can feel his mind starting to get drawn in to the pure blackness, his body slowly starts to lean over as though he wants to look directly down into the dark. His body leans over more and more when his mind is struck by a wave of pain as his eyes start to glow a rainbow colour, the colours slowly rotating as his mind returns to normal.
Jack is shocked at the pull that this darkness has, his eyes haven't moved but he no longer feels the draw as he peers down, he is unable to see anything but occasionally there will be a shimmer, a slight glint from something within the darkness. Almost as though there are countless eyes down there peering up at him, waiting for him to come down.
He no longer lingers, he calls upon the fire qi within his body and amasses it into a fireball attempting to open the barrier similar to how he opened up the city heart barrier, the barrier appears to just be absorbing the qi he is pouring in yielding no result. He's starting to get panicked not knowing what to do but he tries to calm down and think about the situation.
He forces more qi into his attempted fireball with the same result, the barrier is absorbing it and becoming stronger almost defeating the entire purpose of what Jack is doing. He stops attempting this and starts to think, he has two types of qi that he can use for a fireball and he has never tried to use the phoenix qi within his body to do anything other than suppress the dragon qi that rampages around.
Jack quietly withdraws all the dragon qi that is flowing through his veins and starts to call upon the reserve of phoenix qi within his forehead star, he pushes it out via his hand and into the form of a fireball. This fireball is vastly different from the dragon qi fireball, it's smaller and seemingly more docile instead of rampaging and containing over powering heat. The flame is almost white with a slight tinge of red and yellow, Jack is just holding the tiny flame almost becoming mesmerised by it.
He is awoken by an unfamiliar feeling emanating from the fireball, it's a bone piercing chilliness that is spreading throughout the whole area. The Phoenix qi fireball may seem more docile but it has its own overbearing-ness to it, the piercing cold as though saying "Nothing can escape, not even the soul". The dragon qi starts to circulating strongly within his body and suppresses that piercing coldness Jack feels and his mind returns to normal.
He brings up the fireball and attempts to open the barrier again, this time almost immediately the barrier presents fissures and shatters, Jack is startled by this sudden breakage and almost falls into the giant pit that is the crevice he was trying to explore.
Desperately he grabs at the vine almost jumping out of the opening that the now shattered door left behind, his hands luckily find their target and with renew vigour and a focused mind he quickly climbs up the vine.
Taking one last look down into the crevice, he feels that there is still something down there calling to him but shaking his head he stops thinking about it swearing to himself that he'll organise a team to explore down there in the future.
Climbing out of the crevice, Jack feels exhausted both physically and mentally, wearily he walks back to Sleipner, the horse is agitated because it didn't know where Jack went within that hole. Jack walks up to it and soothes it, lightly brushing it while letting it know that he's ok. It calms down quickly and the two of them walk back over to where they parted with Drakon and the group of soldiers.
Jack quietly re-joins the group, he doesn't want to draw much attention as he doesn't know how to describe what he experienced, a weird door opened up on the side of a crevice leading to an area with stone steps that suddenly crumbled leading into a black hole of nothingness. Jack just watches the group of soldiers take down several ants while he recovers.
Several minutes later his mind has settled and he doesn't feel as exhausted, dismounting Sleipner he wants to start basic sword training, so far Jack has been using a single sword strike for most encounters but upon watching the soldiers taking care of ants, he can see the benefit in learning foundational sword techniques.
Jack talks to Drakon about this and the two of them split off from the group of soldiers slightly to teach some basic techniques in private. Drakon shows Jack how to make a follow up strike from the initial sword strike, the best starting position for the initial strike, where his feet should be positioned for each strike and so on.
Jack slowly learns everything that Drakon is showing him, after each set Jack will go off and kill a couple of ants relying solely on the techniques that he was just shown solidifying that foundation sword skills. After killing several ants, Jack will consult with Drakon about issues he faced, how to resolve them and attempt to correct the issues on the next lot of ants.
The group keep this rhythm, the soldiers slowly getting exhausted but Drakon and Jack ignore them and continue what they're doing, slowly time passes by and its mid-afternoon. The soldiers look like they're about to collapse and Jack isn't faring much better, Drakon then orders that it's time to clean up and go back.
The soldiers all rush around and attempt to collect items that are left behind including some of the more rarer ant carapaces, such as red and green ants. The group make quite a lot of coins, they killed several hundred ants resulting in over 10 gold being added to the village's reserves. It's not much for a village but for an individual, that's more than most will make in a few years.
The group finish their clean up and make their way back slowly to the village, Jack feels hungry so leaves the group at the entrance to the village and heads to his tent by himself. The gigantic white tent that is almost symbolising a palace, it still has that ethereal quality to it and upon entering it Jack can feel his mind instantly become uplifted.
Peering around the tent, Jessica isn't located within it, the bed has been made and it has been tidied up with a plate of fruits located on a table including a note placed by the plate. Jack eats one of the numerous fruits, something that looks like an orange but is purple and really bitter. Jack quickly spits it out after taking a piece of the fruit, he looks at the note:
'Dirty boys need to eat Hayuti Fruit. I am making some new sleepwear because some pervert attacked me last night, don't go to the tailor'
Jack puts down the note and chuckles to himself, last night was mostly unintentional but it did feel satisfying so with a sly smirk on his face, he eats the rest of the bitter fruits located on the plate struggling but enjoying the taste by the end.
After finishing up the fruits, he feels full and starts to consider what he wants to do next, he feels tired but not tired enough to sleep thus decides to cultivate settling into a seated position he circulates the qi within his dantian.
This only lasts a few cycles before there is a noise at the door of the tent, the guards have stopped someone from coming into the tent but Jack can hear that the person wants to speak to him. Standing up and walking over to the door, he can see that it's one of the scholars that he has created, they look exhausted but pleased right now.
"Sire, this person would like to speak with you but we stopped him because only just returned" one of the guards explains, Jack just waves him down indicating that it's ok as he turns to look at the scholar.
"Lord, we have researched one of the functions of the city heart, it will allow communication within the Empire to be conducted as the primary language of the Empire" the scholar explains, trying to simplify the terms.
Jack is somewhat confused at this explanation and sums up his understanding, "You mean that if a person speaks another language then submits to our village, their communication will automatically be translated?" he asks the scholar.
The scholar nods his head and holds out a small stone, "Yes, this stone will allow everyone part of the Empire to understand each other once you use it" he explains passing the stone to Jack bowing his head deeply.
Jack looks at the information of the stone:
The languages that it can translate are quite limited, just the simple fantasy race languages but it's important to be able to communicate, they have already got a subsidiary goblin village but haven't been able to speak to them. Jack quickly uses the stone; it turns into light and is absorbed into his body.
He feels no different from the stone, he thanks for Scholar for bringing it to him so quickly while Jack leaves to find Sleipner again and takes a short ride over to the Goblin village, the last time he was here it was just an empty plains area but now there are two wooden buildings and several grass huts indicating that they're living there now.
There are no wolves that Jack can detect but he doesn't doubt that they're stalking the goblins still, Fenrir still hasn't woken up. The goblins notice that Jack arrived by himself, they proceed to kneel while the goblin leader rushes out to greet Jack.
Jack can hear the usual noises coming from the Goblin leaders' mouth but instead of not being able to understand it, he can understand that he's actually speaking coherent sentences. "Dragon Lord Sir, please have mercy on my group" the goblin leader says and joins the other goblins in kneeling.
"Rise!" Jack says while lifting his hand, looking down upon the goblins from high atop Sleipner.
The goblins have a shocked appearance because they could clearly understand Jack, the goblin leader also has a shocked look but quickly reverts to normal, "Dragon Lord Sir is invincible, Dragon Lord Sir long life" he almost yells, the other goblins quickly join in and create a chant.
Jack lets this continue on for a few moments before they settle down, raising his hand to indicate for them to stop all the goblins immediately stop making any noise as Jack starts to speak, "You are all my residents now, you will be looked after if you serve my Empire, I do not discriminate on race or species, if you do good work you will be rewarded, if you do wrong, you will be punished appropriately it doesn't matter if you're a lowly goblin or a god, all must submit beneath my Empire" Jack finishes the sentence with closed eyes with his body exuding a overbearing regal aura causing the goblins to start to kowtow.
"Enough, I wish to speak to your leader, go back about your work" Jack dismounts Sleipner and walks towards the goblin leader, the rest of the goblins quickly scurry away clearing the scene.
"What is your name?" Jack asks the goblin leader.
"This one is called DeeYo, part of the Willow Grove Tribe" he explains, Jack has heard the name DeeYo before as Jessica mentioned it so he's curious as to how she knew it but pushes it out of mind and continues to speak.
"Why was your village located in the middle of the plains where there was nothing?"
DeeYo has an annoyed expression as he begins to recount, "We were from the United Goblin town, the large goblin town near our village, but were kicked out from there because we didn't wish to raid merchant caravans, we would have been killed if I wasn't friendly with the leader of United Goblin town"
"Why didn't you want to raid merchant caravans?"
"We didn't need to; they were only raiding the caravans for coins that we are unable to use while all the resources were destroyed" DeeYo explains. Jack finds this odd; it seems stupid to raid a merchant caravan and then destroy all of the items that they were carrying.
Jack attempts to ask more about this but DeeYo doesn't really know, he grew up with the leader of the village but wasn't able to gather information on what they were doing. Jack then asks DeeYo about more information about the town.
It's a goblin town that was formed after several smaller tribes gathered together, they had trouble deciding on a leader until DeeYo's former friend 'Jax' found an item that caused him to become super powerful and change his race into a Hobgoblin making his skin appear brown instead of green, no one was his match after that and he took over the united town.
The town went from a group of goblins trying to survive collectively in a world that is out to kill them into a force that could compete with most towns in the region apart from the System Towns. Unfortunately, 'Jax' the hobgoblin made the united goblin town into his own personal town, controlling the population and army at his whim.
Jack is intently listening to the information provided by DeeYo, including information about total amount of residents and the size of the army, the special units within the army and how they train their soldiers. They will often attack a random village on the plains but as to not draw attention from the System City or larger towns, they focus primarily on something underground. DeeYo isn't sure what's underground but it's important enough that anyone going underground without permission will be killed without question.
Jack mulls over this information and can feel some pressure as the United Goblin Town isn't very far from their village, he wants to talk with Drakon about this new information when DeeYo informs him of some more information that he's quite interested in;
"Is Dragon Lord Sir interesting in other small villages like Green Brook Village? There are many species located on the plains that hide their villages quite well, Dragon Lord Sir should take those villages before they're attacked and killed by someone else"
Jack immediately asks for more information, it turns out that DeeYo is aware of the location of several small villages with the closest one being a kobold village, kobolds are just small creatures' sort of like goblins but they're primarily blue and prefer to live underground often digging their own burrows.
They have just taken over a mining village and need to find people to fill in the village, the population left there isn't suitable for a mining operation but having some kobolds do it instead would be perfect. DeeYo shares the location of several of the villages and shares all the information he knows on the kobolds.
Jack thanks DeeYo for his help promising to reward him and quickly mounting Sleipner and riding back to the main village to find Drakon and discuss attacking this kobold village. He wants to attack soon because the Dragon and Phoenix appearing in the sky will still be fresh in their minds, it will be suitable to use the same method that he attacked the goblins with.
Excited Jack finds Drakon and the two proceed to the city hall building to discuss attacking this village with Hilda and Bane.