? Then a gush of pure golden and orange light would sprung out from the ground, breaking even the sturdy rocks anywhere, shredding trees into nothing, while creating a rapidly expanding ball of fire towards the sky and all around.
They were something that wasn't commonly seen in the world of spirit masters. William got to see a few of these back in his past life, and he never expected to run into a group of spirit masters adept at these at the tiny world.
"Keep running! Or else…"
"I know, I know, the entire place is damn besieged by grenades!" William shouted back and kept running forward with all his might and remaining spirit power.
He couldn't even risk slowing down or delaying using his lightning technique. At this moment, he felt like jumping out of the frying pan directly into fire!
And that fire could kill him almost instantly if he got in the middle of any of these brutal explosions!
Grenades were explosives crafted by skilled artisans. Not all artisans could do them, but selected few who used to hail down from special lineages could.
It was literally like walking and running in the heart of a landmine, and William knew if he delayed for a single second, he'd get absorbed in the middle of the deadly explosions going on wildly behind him.
He ran with all his might, not thinking about anything else at this moment. He kept using his technique repeatedly, flashing fast while the grenades buried under the ground were detonating in succession, releasing bellows of deadly balls of fire into the dark sky.
To use these grenades, the spirit masters had to bury them in a unique way. Then they'd link them together using special spirit power threads, something unique for the artisans who could make these grenades.
William knew all this, and also knew that these folks here did lots of work before he'd step here. For a moment there, it seemed like these spirit masters laid such a trap here out of pure coincidence, and William simply walked in the middle of all this.
But when he realised how huge the landmine he walked into was, he dropped such an idea off his mind.
"They were planning to help me and kill those monsters for a long time then!" William gritted his teeth, not daring to think deeply about the real intentions of this group.
What he knew was few and yet valuable intel. At least there was one in this group who hailed from such unique artisan lineage. This group here was lying in wait for him, preparing all this beforehand. And that meant one thing…
This group was tracking and following him for a long time already! Perhaps from the moment he got out with his team from the defensive array.
It was a crazy thought, but it was the only viable one his mind provided at such stressful moments.
William didn't know how this team found him, or what real intentions they got towards him. All he cared about right now was to get away from this deadly spot as fast as he could.
He kept running, while the sounds of explosions faded from all around. Only the sound of his heartbeats kept banging fiercely inside his ears.
And just after a long minute, one that felt like an entire lifetime for him, he finally crossed the edge of this landmine zone, and finally landed on the ground, catching his breaths in a difficult way.
He had to push himself too much this time. If he was in top shape, then he'd have gone out without feeling such stress and fatigue.
His body, mental strength, and spirit power were all depleted and exhausted. William's chest kept racing up and down, fighting to catch his breaths.
"Stay here for now," and just as he laid on the ground, facing the darkness that got brightly and weirdly illuminated by the dancing red tongues of fire coming from the explosions, the voice he kept hearing sounded again just metres away from him.
William knew he stepped into the safe zone when he saw the ten spirit masters standing in a line at that spot. And as he wanted to turn around or stand up to get a better look at the face of the speaker and others, he couldn't! He didn't have a single speck of power inside to do it.
"Just rest, you already did enough," and when that dude who stood by his side noticed the slight trembling of his body, a sign that William tried to stand up and failed, he simply said.
Then William heard nine muffled flashing sounds, announcing the nine other spirit masters joining the battle.
"Who… Are… You?" William was struggling even to speak properly, and yet he had to ask. He wanted to know if he ended up falling in the hands of an enemy or a friend.
"Easy there, and don't worry… We are friends. We spotted your flare signal of help back when you released it a day or more ago. Since then, we kept watching that weird array thing until we saw what you did with the gold grade monsters. We followed your team until you got attacked, and watched you start such a brave and admirable fight and run."
"This…" William never expected that the flare signal he used before would bring the attention of such spirit masters around. Thinking about that made him realise meeting the dark spirit masters from before wasn't that coincidental perhaps, and they might have seen the signal as well.
"Just rest, we already anticipated your running away paths, planted many grenades under the ground to prepare for the army of monsters following you. But I want to ask, why the hell did you run away in the first place and break apart from your team?"
"It's because of… That damn monster appeared…" William felt a little better to speak more properly, but not that great to even continue a single sentence in one breath.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢