"It has to be done this way. Only when people lower their guard they'd show their true colour," Peter said, and William just remained silent while they kept hassling among themselves about this point.
William was standing with the other five at the safe part of the forest. And with the activity of the other forty, it was expected that not a single monster came to test them out.
During this time, William took it to recharge his depleted spirit power. And just before the three hours would end, few of those who went out started to come back.
"Here, I killed twenty monsters during this period."
"I killed thirty, ten more than you, hahahaha!"
"I… I only killed ten… Is it enough?"
One by one came, and William let his five friends handle the loot. Of course people might trick them and bring cores they already got out, so William asked for materials for this purpose.
No matter how one came prepared, they'd miss a material or two from the loot they supposedly collected. And luckily, the ones these four gathered up were all good kids, and none tried to cheat at all.
The white grade spirit masters stood in doubt and fear when they saw the large number of monsters other disciples killed. The highest white grade disciple record was just thirteen monsters, all were white grade.
People who were at bronze grade killed twenty up to forty! And even many killed bronze grade monsters as well!
As for the silver grade spirit masters, they looked like monsters in the eyes of those white grade disciples. They killed more than a hundred monsters during this period, and even most of them were bronze with one or two silver monsters in the mix.
But that wasn't the performance of everyone! Few leaned towards securing the minimum requirements, and those stood in the group, while feeling more pressure and quite anxious.
Watching others take lots of monster cores and materials out in front of them made those lazy disciples realise the huge mistake they committed.
And after everything got checked out, everyone stood in a nervous way, looking at William while waiting for his decision.
The initial group gathered up by the four included five silver spirit masters, seven white grade ones, and the rest were bronze spirit masters.
Out of all of them, two white spirit masters failed to gather the required cores and materials in time, five bronze spirit masters failed to gather more than ten.
"The ones I'm going to point at won't join us this time," William stood in front of all of them, calmly moving his eyes around. The ones who failed to gather up enough cores, and the ones who just got satisfied with the ten monsters quota knew they were going to get expelled without the need of William to lift a finger at them.
"You… You… You… And you…" William kept pointing at these dudes who knew they failed before finally adding, "thanks for coming here. But you didn't fulfil the criterion of the test, or barely achieved the results. So… I hope we meet up next time and you will be more prepared."
William didn't truly mean what he said, but he said it out of respect and care to those seven spirit masters' feelings.
As expected, every single one of them moved while having their heads lowered. They regretted not working harder, especially for the five bronze spirit masters.
Watching others leave made those standing here cherish this chance even more. Sometimes, people wouldn't get the value of what they got until they saw others losing it.
"Now…" William turned to his newly formed team. Including the five he originally recruited, the initial roster of his team amounted to thirty-eight.
It was a bit more than he initially expected. But it didn't matter. He knew this was just the initial test, and further tests would come during their journey and many would get disqualified or killed during their risky mission.
"I first congratulate you all on joining the beta version of my team. You all know me, and under me are these five…" William paused while pointing at the five friends of his, "they are going to be the team vice-leaders. They'll help organise the team, leading you around, and even taking part of you to do something for us. Follow their orders to the letter, as they will get their orders from me directly."
William established the hierarchy of his team from the start, to remove any room for doubt or suspicion.
"Can we know where we are going now?"
"What mission are we going to do? Is it really related to dark spirit masters?"
"Are we going to fight these monsters?"
Many started to speak up, and to William's surprise the silver grade spirit masters all kept their silence and didn't speak up.
"Calm down," William ushered for them to go silent, "I'm not sending you out alone. I'm going with you, and surely I'm not trying to get myself killed."
"So… Is it true?" Lang was the one to speak this time, and everyone remained silent when they saw him step up and speak for them.
Among the initial forty brought here, twenty-seven belonged to the Long clan. All the white grade spirit masters came from the Long clan, alongside three of the silver grade spirit masters.
Peter recruited one silver spirit master, and Sara recruited the last one. As for John, he only recruited three bronze grade spirit masters. As for the remaining eight bronze spirit masters, Sara invited three, and Peter invited five.
Out of those who left the team, all belonged to the Long clan, all but one bronze spirit master who got invited here by Peter. And that made Lang slightly embarrassed by such a result.
However William didn't dwindle around this, nor even cared about asking which belonged to who.
"We are," William firmly nodded, admitting the thing everyone here either heard about or suspected after Ibra's words from before.
"It's true then," Sara sighed, "we are going to the Scorching Lands and will seek out the dark spirit masters there."
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