Four were bronze grade, and one was only gold grade. This one was Oliver. He was the same fellow in Sith's old team. As William experienced how capable Oliver was, he appointed him as the leader of all the grenade making spirit masters in the guild and his team.
That was of course five years ago. Right now, Oliver was so close from getting to the dark gold grade. While the four others climbed from bronze all the way up to early stages of gold grade.
What delayed Oliver was the same thing that made lots of spirit masters despise and get discouraged about learning a second profession. He wasted his time on learning new stuff from William, ending up stuck in that gold grade for years. But he didn't mind that. In fact, he and others like him were very grateful and feeling blessed to join William.
Not to mention the entire grenade department spirit masters managed to make new grenades thanks to William's teachings and care for them. William would act stingy towards anyone, not towards his precious gems.
"Are we going to build landmines?" Everyone got what William wanted to do. And the latter nodded.
"Sara, take Berry and go around the city. Try to find any detailed map of the region of Blue Hills," he turned then towards John as he added, "you'll handle what Sith, and his little team want. Here, this is a ring with enough crystals to purchase anything they need."
"Anything they want? Any amount?" John asked in doubt.
"Buy everything they need and double it!" William acted decisive, before pointing out towards Lang and Peter to go and help him.
"What about me?" Ibra asked, "what shall I do?"
"You and others, including Lina and Tina, will handle the issue of low morale in the team," William placed a serious look on his face, "we can't win against an enemy when we are feeling down like this, got it?"
"Tsk! What a troublesome task you handed over to me," Ibra shook his head, "I hate babysitting others."
"I know how terrible it is, I kept babysitting you all these years," William rolled his eyes, returning to his old self again. He couldn't ask them to help others to improve and get better while they were also feeling such sadness and depression.
"Screw you!" Just exactly as he wanted, Ibra got stirred up by habit, and blurted back at him.
"Just go," William smiled, waving for them to leave. They left one by one, while giving him a meaningful gaze. They felt like he didn't say everything in his mind. After all, this landmine plan would help defend themselves against monsters and dark masters alike, but it wouldn't solve anything related to the sealing problem.
They knew William long enough to guess this far. He wouldn't get satisfied with just one plan. And he used to have the second plan only known to him.
They were right in their doubts, William prepared another plan, kept it only to himself. In fact, it wasn't just a backup plan. It was actually part of his initial plan. He didn't just tell them anything about this plan as he didn't have the final decision about it.
He told them that they had to experience the sealing arrays first to know what the enemy prepared. But as they already guessed, it'd be fatal to just gamble their lives like this without any guarantee.
And that part he thought about was this guarantee. Without it, he'd depend entirely on luck to break through the entrapping arrays.
If he didn't get a way to break free from these arrays, or whatever trap the enemies prepared, then it was better to postpone this grand move for another time.
William hated even thinking about retreating, not when his friend's blood was still warm. But the one who got the answer to this problem wasn't actually him, it was someone else.
"Sigh! Fate really has its own ways," William sighed, took something out from his ring, inspected it for long minutes before storing it back, "it's better to go personally and ask."
As he returned that thing back, he started to go through his newly acquired rings. It felt like ages since the last time he did such a thing. And indeed, he had changed a lot since then.
"Seeing such a grand gathering of spirit crystals, gears, cores, and materials stopped to impress me already," he sighed while emptying all of these items into one of his old rings, before going through the rings again.
He wasn't interested in any of these items, only cared about one thing. He kept looking, but not a single scroll could be found there. He couldn't find any intel or clue about his enemies or their plans, not even anything related to that dark academy.
"As I expected… They came prepared even for the worst," William spent an hour doing so, before finally storing everything away. "Time to go out and pay that person a visit."
Like this he exited the hotel, while feeling that being in one held a bad omen for him. It was the second time he was in a hotel and ended up facing some sort of disaster.
William's mind was filled with lots of questions without answers. He knew the upcoming battle was going to be grand and hard to win, but he didn't want to flinch away from it.
What frustrated him a bit was that many factors didn't lie in his power to control. First, he lacked any intel about the entire region, knew nothing about his enemies. Be it their numbers, their preparations, their strongest forces… He was kept in the dark and had to discover everything on his own.
This meant more losses were destined to happen. William didn't want to lose more members to avenge one. But wars got their own way to toy with men.
He had to go there and fight as his goal wasn't just to avenge Smith, but to stop that enemy or at least deal a severe blow to him, delaying whatever that enemy had in mind for him and his guild.
This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by (f)reew𝒆b(n)ovel.com