Ro's face slightly changed, and everyone noticed this. William's words might have been harsh, a little rude, but he intended for them to be direct and clear. And now everyone got the message. This wasn't a mission for him and his master, this was a test for them.
As for Ro, she wanted to blurt back and argue, yet she said nothing in the end.
"Let's heal, collect the loot, and move out. There are lots of monsters waiting for us."
"Like these?" John asked, and William nodded.
In the next twenty minutes, the entire team dissected and collected cores and various materials from all the monsters killed. During which, they all used healing potions to cure themselves.
"Let's move out!" William already contacted Sith, asking him and his team to slow down their advance. He also stressed over for them to spot any dark spirit masters around.
These folks were usually hard to detect, but William already gave them an array they could use. It'd help anyone to detect any hidden enemies in a fixed area.
William knew using such an array would be great. However due to the low grade of materials in this world, the arrays wouldn't show their true prowess thanks to their limited range.
The most they could cover was just half a kilometre area around anyone. But it was enough for now.
William didn't depend entirely on his scout team to spot these dark spirit masters. He depended more on the dark spirit masters to show up once they spotted him.
His face was known, and he already caused lots of problems for the dark spirit masters. So once getting spotted thanks to all the ruckus of killing monsters here, William was sure these dark spirit masters would spurt out and come for him.
So, in the next day, and as he took his team around, killing lots of monsters, he kept his vigilance high all the time.
Even with the use of that array, the scout team failed to spot anything unusual. William even made his entire team scatter, cover up a distance of a few kilometres from time to time, scan for the presence of these dark spirit masters as they marched forward.
And soon enough, and just by the start of the second day, they finally spotted something.
"There is something out there," William already stressed over his team that once they found anything unusual, they wouldn't show anything and come to speak in low tone with him.
Just now, Berry approached him as she added in soft voice, "I felt something flickering out there in the middle of that array."
"Cool," William knew how his detection array worked. It'd cover up a certain area, then anything hidden inside would show a weird shimmering and change in the air around. It'd appear as if a bubble was there or something.
"What are we going to do?" She and others looked at William in wait and anticipation.
"Nothing," but unlike what everyone expected, William chose to let those hidden dark spirit masters tag along, "to catch a fish, one has to be patient…" he paused, turned around before shouting, "let's go! There are more monsters out there to kill!"
He didn't do anything to this group of dark spirit masters. He wanted them to invite more of their kin. And as he expected, over the course of the next two days, and as they crossed the distance of one hundred kilometres, killing monsters all this time, the number of those weird bubbles kept increasing.
Instead of one, there were now over fifty of them. William started to act cautious and didn't let his team scatter around except once every two hours. He wanted to catch more fish but didn't want to lose anyone on his side.
During these days, he didn't just keep killing monsters. He started to absorb any silver cores he got to raise up his spirit power. After three days, and with the help of close to six thousand silver cores, he was so close to breaching the doors of silver rank.
William didn't care about the insane number of cores he consumed to get such a rise. As long as he was getting stronger, it meant nothing.
But the final one-hundred-point stretch was indeed a nightmare! If the silver cores came from low and mid-tier silver monsters, then he'd gain one point for hundreds of cores. Only the high tier silver grade cores would give him one point every dozens of cores devoured.
Part of William's desire to postpone the fight with the dark spirit masters was to raise his grade towards the silver rank. And when he felt the increase in the bubble number, he even started madly absorbing thousands of bronze cores.
Even if they ended up giving him few points, it was helping him to get closer to his goal. However…
"Sigh! I thought I could pull it before this battle, but it seems I can't…"
The presence of over fifty bubbles meant there were hundreds of dark spirit masters lurking around. And that number was enough to put them under lots of pressure.
And so, he decided to give them a try, killing anyone he and his team could, and run away if they met any dangerous foe.
"Listen up," to not arouse any suspicion in these folks, William gathered his vice leaders, Thomas and Ro, "we are going to hit those bastards next. But we are going to use a different tactic…"
William moved his eyes around his trusted circle, while his voice was already low to be a soft whispering, "Thomas is going to be the cornerstone of our entire operation."
"Me?!!" Thomas was surprised by this. He didn't do much during the past battles, only worked under William's lead, attacking and killing monsters with other teams.
But compared to Ibra or Sara, or even to Berry, Lang, and Peter, he didn't do anything that was worthy of note to be appointed highly like this.
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