He studied that nine tailed fox for a long time, trying to get to the bottom of its power. And he thought he knew enough, but it seemed he didn't know a thing.
It had the Devour ability that William never knew anything about. And now he learnt about the presence of another scary ability, the Nine Lives ability. In addition to that, that fox wasn't just focused and adept at the darkness element as he thought. It knew more elements, including time and space ones.
Adding everything together, William suddenly saw the face of that old bastard smirking back at him. He didn't need a foresight technique or ability to know that he'd fail if he continued down this path.
"He said that this bastard scattered many of his spirit seeds into lots of worlds. That means… I have to take down these copies first before fighting that damn bastard…"
William's mind started to shift from thinking negatively into proactively considering what to do. "And… He asked to trap that fox copy and not kill it. Did it want to use a tracking method perhaps, one that can locate any similar spirit in other worlds? I never heard about such a thing before. But in this world, nothing is impossible…"
William started to formulate a plan, a new grand plan in his mind. And as he kept thinking about this, he remained silent for hours without moving a muscle.
He missed what happened to the seven buildings in his territory. The moment the scrolls burnt down; fire started to appear all over these buildings.
Thomas was present and listened to all the talk of the old fox with his master. Thomas learnt that his master had a very mysterious background, and also got a bright future in front of him.
Even the scary old fox, the one who terrified the entire fort, wanted to just accompany him in the form of a statue. But when the buildings started to catch fire, Thomas panicked.
These were all old buildings, ones that were fragile and built out of lots of wood to begin with. So, he expected only ruins to be left after the end of this dense and rogue fire.
However, when he turned to William, he noticed that he wasn't moving a muscle. He didn't need to check to know that his master was in a moment of epiphany, the legendary moment all the spirit masters dreamt to experience even once in their lives. And most of them failed to even try it for a brief second.
"Damn! What shall I do?" Thomas got more panicked when he realised the current status of William, "will he get mad at me when he sees the aftermath?"
Thomas got terrified from such a thought, and then tried his best to put down the fire. He wasn't a water-based spirit master to begin with, and so it was expected that he'd fail.
All he could do was to grab dirt from places around and try to throw these on the buildings to put down fire. Yet he wasn't doing it in enough speed or magnitude, ending up giving up after one hour or so.
"At least… I tried," he muttered while returning to stand by William's side. Even he felt quite the pain from such destruction of all buildings.
But unlike what he expected, when the fire went down after three more hours, the buildings didn't fall or even crack.
"This…" Thomas moved to inspect all the buildings, to find out to his surprise that all of them were intact. It felt like nothing touched any building, not fire, not anything.
Thomas didn't get it, but what happened was for all the traps to burn and vanish on their own accord. It was just like how William expected it before. He had to finish mapping all the buildings, see the mystery of the grand drawing first, and the traps would be solved easily later on.
But William never imagined that all the traps would be removed spontaneously, without the need for him to do anything at all.
William broke free at last after five hours from being in such a status. He already had a rough plan in his mind, one that didn't differ that much actually from his initial one.
"So, I got to just target other clones of that damn fox before doing anything else. And that means I'll need lots of capable spirit masters on my side… Why are you looking at me like this?"
When he got jolted awake, he didn't feel the passage of time at all. And to him, he was just continuing his train of thoughts next to Thomas, with only a few minutes passing. But right now, Thomas was looking in a weird way towards him.
"Well… Something happened when you were… Were in that status…"
Thomas didn't know how to deliver the news, so he started from the moment the scrolls got burnt down.
"Oh, is that what happened?" William was a little surprised by that. He never thought he'd stay in his place for such a long time, "tell me, did Remy knock on the gate or not?"
Unlike what Thomas expected, his master didn't care about that fire or what happened to the buildings. To William, he knew the things that burnt away were the remaining traps. And now everything was quite safe inside his vast territory.
But to him, he cared more about Remy and the deal he got with her. He wanted to get done of that, so he'd be free to start his grand plan.
"Well… No, she didn't knock or do anything," Thomas was still unable to get over this. He felt extreme panic and care for what happened here, ending up getting all disappointed by William's cold response.
"What? Did you think the buildings were all going to burn? Hahahaha! Even if that happened, we could build much more if we wanted," William found it a bit amusing, especially that look over Thomas' face when he said his words, "don't worry. I already planned to build more places here for those who are about to join us."
"Join us?!!"
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