There was a side he didn't know about its enemy, and for the first time, he met something who knew about it. The myths he heard from Karoline all spoke about another lifetime of that nine-tailed fox monster, and it seemed this spirit here was on by that monster's side back at that time.
"It's not my problem, this is the rules of this clash, and you have to figure out how to reach there yourself. Now, shall we begin?"
William already expected this, but he acted as if he was frustrated by such injustice. Before he could say anything else, the black fog around swirled.
"Oh, this looks familiar," William looked around and there he spotted a huge number of monsters appearing out of nowhere.
"This time, you won't have it nice like before," the voice of the spirit came as a sinister being was speaking, "You won't get protected by anything, will suffer damage, one that's directed towards your spirits… So let's see… Damn! How come you have these four spirits together!!!"
The moment that spirit spoke, William acted. He already expected such a thing to happen. That spirit would look weird and suspicious if it didn't aim to deprive William of any advantage he'd get.
The last time he fought against monsters and enemies he got the total protection from damage granted to him by the black fox. But now, he expected there wasn't a single aid to be on his side. And so he didn't wait to hear more from this black fox, ending up getting into action at once.
The first thing he did was to call upon his spirit. The moment it appeared, it silenced that talkative and arrogant spirit, giving it the first surprise of tonight.
"I grew up and worked myself a little bit," William shrugged his shoulders before calling forth for his weapons, "Let's start!"
"..."
This time the spirit didn't say anything. As William started acting, he noticed two things. First, all the monsters coming at him looked a bit familiar, like the same monsters he fought against and killed before.
That made him jump to a conclusion, that spirit couldn't form anything from nothing. It was the same back when the black fox used the enemies in the real world and let them come at him. This time, it was the resurrection of all the monsters he killed before.
All the fog turned red, and that meant they were all enemies. "No allies this time," he slowly muttered, before testing out another matter.
The last time he fought into this mess, he had an endless amount of spirit power. And that is what made him last for a long time here. If that wasn't present, then he was in front of a big problem.
"Phew! The spirit power support is present at least," he muttered to himself while killing tons of monsters using his strongest techniques.
Once he made sure of this point, checking on his spirit power and found it still the same, he started to madly fight without caring about anything else.
Worrying about defending was only a problem that'd arise when fighting against stronger foes. And in William's case, he leant towards using absolute might to kill and crush anything else around, before any of these shadows would reach him.
Seeing this made the spirit a bit startled. He took care of everything, but seemingly it missed this slight point of spirit power constant regeneration.
"Doing this would have been a headache even to a group of spirits like myself… He is blessed with the world's laws and will gain an infinite supply of spirit power. But what can this do against endless enemies? Even if he can use strong techniques, he still hasn't seen everything I prepared for him yet…"
The spirit didn't see that coming, but it already prepared something for William. Soon enough, William started to guess it.
"It made this challenge so dead monsters will merge and form much stronger monsters? Interesting…" he knew the power of the monsters he faced so far was quite low actually, mostly at bronze and white grade. Yet after an hour of killing like a machine, he noticed their power rose slightly up, becoming at silver grade.
He instantly guessed what was going on here, and knew the end of this path was going to be quite deadly and dark for him. He could handle up to the high-stage monsters of dark gold grade, not anything higher than that.
If the spirit designed this test to keep monsters evolving the more he killed, then this was going to end up quite nasty for him. Even if he was at the pinnacle stage, he wouldn't be able to fight against endless hordes of pinnacle-stage monsters.
"The only way out of here is to get that black fox out, let it take back control of this world… But there isn't a way to get there…"
William suddenly froze while thinking about this point. He was now sure all the monsters here were the ones he killed before in this current lifetime. And that meant there was something that could help him get to that cage.
It was risky, but he had to do it. As for using his trump card, he first had to release that black fox to make it work. Or else, things weren't going to end that great for him even if he killed or drove away that hostile spirit.
He tried to recall what grade these monsters were, and he could recall they were either at gold or dark gold grade. Either way, he had to wait for more hours and kill more monsters, before reaching such a stage.
As he decided that, he started to focus on killing more of these shadows. They didn't pose much threat to him, and he kept fighting like mad for hours.
During all this time, those outside were dead worried about him. Panther returned in half an hour with lots of healers, and yet they weren't much help.
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