"Wait… How about telling me what this technique really does first?"
"What else? It will help you level up your pathetic low levelled spirit. Instead of having that useless silver, gold, and other poor colours, you'll have the mighty black colour, better control your spirit form and tails."
"Will that make me stronger?" This was the crux of all this. If doing this wouldn't help him getting stronger, then it was worthless to waste his time on training over such technique.
"Kiddo, stop insulting me like this! Who do you think I am? If not for the horned dragons, winged scaled elephants, the bony Valkyries and others to have good candidates, I'd have not imparted this technique over and would have preferred to wait for a good human to rise."
"..."
William hated how low this black fox saw him. And yet he kept his silence this time, while listening to all the words this black fox said next.
He didn't know about any of these spirits before, never heard or met anyone using any of these proclaimed spirit form training techniques ever in his past life.
"This world… It's really too big and too complicated for anyone to grasp!" he muttered to himself while the black fox finished what he wanted to say.
"Did you memorise it well?" the black fox asked, and without waiting for answers he added, "anyway you got no time left right now. You'll return back to your world, and hopefully next time we meet, you'll be someone different, someone stronger. Scram!"
Before William would say anything, even his thanks to this fox, the world around him changed. Black fog appeared again, surrounding him, blocking his vision, and then bright light appeared.
He found himself standing in the middle of an open place, filled with fallen trees, endless dead bodies, ground stained with rivers of blood, and many faces waiting and looking at him like they were waiting for a miracle or something.
"You came back!" Just before he'd take everything in, someone jumped into his embrace with red hair. It was Berry, and she cried in his arms.
"Easy girl, I'm not hurt or anything," William patted on her back, sighing while moving his eyes around.
He saw his team, Panther, and many new faces that he never saw before.
"You made us all worry about you," Panther took the mission of speaking with him, "you… You did indeed bring us a big surprise and did a great service for all of us this time."
"This…" William didn't get what happened. But Panther raised his hand to stop him from asking.
"You can get to know everything that happened here from your team. But for now, we need to go. War is still ongoing all over the place. See you later back at the fort and try to not do anything else without consulting with me first."
Panther even winked. And that felt a bit weird in Willaim's eyes. Then he left with all the new faces he had with him. They greeted and saluted William with a silent nod, leaving the latter unable to tell what was going on here.
All he could get from Panther was one word: war. And so, he turned to Ibra, Sara, and Thomas, turned to his team and waited for them to explain things over.
Last time he was in the real world, he was waiting for a grand army of dark masters to arrive. Things here didn't look that much different than what he expected, except for the presence of new faces, Panther, and his talk about war.
But in the next hour, William got to know everything. He already guessed much of what happened here. He guessed that the shadows he kept fighting against in that weird foggy world were real, and his actions there reflected somehow here.
He knew more than what his team and other spirit masters knew. He knew all this happened thanks to the machination of the black fox, a trial for him.
As he ended up with such secrets and a mysterious training technique, he knew he passed this test. Against how that black fox acted, William got the feeling that he didn't fail in that test. In fact, he was sure he did an outstanding performance in it.
But what really took him by surprise was how things turned out to be. He never expected this small adventure, one that he started to bring trouble for the dark forces in the area, would turn this huge and become a crusade against the dark forces in the entire region.
His team didn't know lots of things, but they told him everything they knew about. They overheard lots of discussions between the big shots who accompanied them for days. And so, it was easy for them to know the tale of Alfonso.
"Hahahaha! That man… He really did something great this time, hahahaha!" hearing about what Alfonso did make William laugh. He knew even Alfonso wouldn't expect something huge like this to happen.
After one hour of narrating everything they knew about, they all turned to their leader, to William, while Ibra asked:
"What are we going to do now boss?"
"First time to call me that," William smiled, "what else? In such a grand war, we have to gain the maximum benefits out of it."
"We already gathered tons of rings for you! Isn't it enough?!" Ro rolled her eyes while Sara gave her a deep look before saying:
"Like what exactly?"
"Like raiding one of the main bases of the enemy of course," William paused before asking, "did you hear anything about the direction and location of the base Alfonso attacked? I got a feeling that it's an important place to the enemy."
William got such a feeling when they spoke about how grand the battle that erupted there was. According to them, Alfonso's attack came just little time after they caused a huge apocalypse for the dark masters here. And that meant if not for being extremely precious, the enemy wouldn't even bat an eye to go and rescue that place at all.
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