As William expected, not a single one ever dared to follow him. William was able to take them down, but he saw that the cost of doing this wasn't profit worthy.
The same number of elixirs he'd consume to do so was enough to shake a grand gathering of the enemy just like here. Besides, that grand gathering of the enemy was enough to secure lots of them out if they wanted to run away. But they didn't. And that told William that much scarier force was heading towards here.
If they wanted to take him down, then he'd prefer to keep them running and chasing like crazy around them, taking them all over this part of the forest, running in circles, while taking down lots of monsters and spirit masters in the process.
It was much better than just standing still and waiting for the scary force to arrive. Not to mention doing it this way would bring him closer to upgrading to the silver grade. And once he arrived at such a stage, he'd be able to finally use his two tailed fox form, a much stronger form without doubt.
The team didn't get any of this. The ones who learnt about William's true identity couldn't help but take a gaze every now and then at him.
"Why do I feel the atmosphere here is quite tense?" Against what anyone thought, William was the one to speak about this, "don't make it like you saw the impossible."
"What did they see?" Others weren't idiots, and they noticed how tense and weird it was here. So Sara took advantage of William opening such a topic, and asked, while moving her eyes around the gold grade members in the team.
"The weirdest thing is that all the gold grade ones are acting this weird," Lang paused, before landing his eyes at last over one in specific, "even Ibra is acting weird. What's going on here?"
William laughed, feeling it was quite amusing, "Let it go, just overthinking about it won't help," he laughed, especially when others turned to him, accusing him of holding back something, "sooner or later, everyone is going to know. And so don't make a fuss about such a thing."
William's hidden message was clearly grasped by everyone who learnt about his secret. And his stance from this took them by surprise.
They thought he'd ask them to keep this secret hidden, not share it with anyone or something. They thought he'd even threaten them to use his scary identity and fox body, but that didn't even happen, not even close to it.
Instead of asking them to hide anything, he said it was something destined to circle around. So it meant he didn't even care if they kept their mouths shut in the first place or not.
"So… Is it ok to say it?" Even Ibra felt really hesitant about exposing such a big secret.
"Of course," William paused, before laughing, "but without seeing it with their own eyes, who is going to believe you? Hahahaha! Don't spoil the amusing moments, don't act like party crushers, and let others enjoy their moments as well."
He even was carefree to wink, leaving behind a much heavier silence that soon got broken by Thomas.
"Monsters up ahead! Thousands of them in different groups…"
"Cool," William rubbed his hands, "let's roll! Like before, we'll kill them using the same tactic. And…"
He paused, moved his eyes around the gold grade members of his team before adding in a light tone that looked really terrifying, "don't disappoint me this time, got it?"
His smile, the calm look over his face was perceived in the totally opposite meaning for all the gold grade masters here. Even their bodies trembled faintly when the image of that scary fox overlapped with William's weak silhouette in their eyes.
It seemed like knowing how scary he was helped in pulling out the grand performance of his team. The team didn't struggle like before when dealing with this grand gathering of monsters, and the waves that followed!
They kept moving towards the East, killing a group of monsters one after another. William in the middle of all this kept absorbing his cores, counting the remaining spirit points before arriving at the silver grade.
"They are closing up!" but the last stretch, the remaining twenty points, proved to be a headache for him. And just before he'd absorb enough to cover this gap, Thomas shouted all of sudden, referring to the dark spirit masters.
"Damn!" William just needed five more points and he'd be officially a silver grade spirit master. During the past few hours, he absorbed thousands of silver cores, tens of thousands of bronze cores, ending up without having enough to reach silver grade.
He slightly experienced this problem before, when he moved from the white grade to the bronze one. But that time, he didn't face such a stubborn situation. He just had to shift from absorbing the monkeys' cores towards absorbing bronze monster cores. And that helped him a lot to not face the same tough situation as now.
He was absorbing cores like mad, and yet he didn't get many points in the end. At the last twenty points gap, he had to absorb a thousand silver cores, or ten thousand bronze cores, to just raise up one single point.
Realising this made him quite mad! He was this close from stepping into the silver rank, able to use his full power two tail fox spirit form, but he couldn't. After spending close to six hours running and killing, the dark spirit masters seemed to pick up the pace, coming close enough to make Thomas this worried.
"How far away are they?" William needed just five more points and he'd be done. He was sure if he spent three more hours doing this, he'd be able to cross this little and annoying gap.
"Not far," Thomas paused, trying to assess the distance between them and their incoming enemies, "but we are surrounded! They are at most one hour away from us."
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