"Not again," Sara and Ibra rolled their eyes while William simply smiled.
"I will go inside and check things out. If needed, then I'll let you come to my aid."
"Won't you need my help?" Thomas paused, "I can help save you a lot of trouble."
"You will be in danger," William paused, "and also will be a liability that I can't afford. Focus on reading the entire place, and help others dig the dark bases hidden under the hills."
"Ok," Thomas wanted to object, but from the silent gazed of the other two he knew it was a lost case.
"Let's prepare then," William sent them away, and kept himself studying this map. He knew everything was going as planned. He got Lara to handle the part related to the portals, and the different forces were flooding this region.
The war supplies he asked the city masters to make were brought as well. Tons of barrels of that modified toxin were in the rings of many masters, besides lots of grenades that were made in the past two weeks.
This might seem all great, but William knew they weren't enough. If that Nightmare monster was so confident to even lure them here, it meant there was much more behind all this.
William kept studying the map for the next ten hours. During which, lots of forces already got here.
[We got enough to start moving] Lara suddenly spoke again, [This area won't accommodate all of us]
"Let's roll then," William picked up the two scrolls before adding, "start dividing the forces into four big armies. Start with the hills first and keep me updated."
William walked out of this settlement with lots of his guild members. Every one of his vices already knew about what he intended to do.
Berry and Ro tried to change his mind, tried to join him but he refused. William knew he'd use this battle and jump over the gold grade border, activating the trial of the black fox. So, he didn't need others to be around him, or else he'd be burdened by keeping them safe.
Last time he experienced what it meant to be invincible. Fighting enemies while not caring about oneself or defending was just a cool feeling.
He didn't know about that until it was too late back then. Yet this time he'd start fighting while placing this point in mind.
So having others from the guild vices by his side would distract him. In addition to that, the key to win this expedition was by taking down the hills and killing the hidden dark master forces beneath them.
William and others guessed it right. All these hills were filled with tons of dark master forces. The Nightmare monster appeared just in the right time, collecting and rallying all the disarrayed dark forces not only in the Scorching Lands region, but in the entire continent as well.
This took him lots of time to do, but he managed to gather up a scary force. And as everyone guessed it, he hid these dark forces under all the hills in the region.
But that wasn't everything! In addition to the sealing grand formation established there, and all these dark forces, there were other scary things planted there as well.
William didn't hurry to enter this trap. He waited for the other forces to arrive at their places, a task that took roughly three days to accomplish.
The moment the masters arrived there; they started hitting the hills directly. The earliest news he got was one day later, and they spoke about the presence of lots of dark forces in these hills.
Any hill the earth-based masters unearthed and flattened with the ground revealed a grand space underneath. It looked as if these dark masters lived here for a long time, not just a few years.
The fight started hot and continued for four more days. During which, William did nothing but listen to the news and follow the development of the ongoing battles.
The armies of the spirit masters weren't having any trouble at first. They landed on seemingly unprepared enemies. William was slightly surprised by this. He thought that monster would at least warn the dark masters, so they'd be prepared for him.
But from the look of things, this wasn't the case. These dark masters were backstabbed by this monster. Or perhaps he never cared about them in the first place.
William didn't mind this. But soon enough, things changed.
The city forces started to face lots of ready dark masters, with tons of traps and deadly fights. This slowed down their initial swift advance from earlier. Yet with the earth-based masters working at the forefront, things didn't look that bad in the end.
As things progressed smoothly, William started to feel weird. He thought that the Nightmare monster spread the sealing formations all over the hill zone. And now that zone was getting swept clean by the city masters.
William expected a fiercer resistance from the dark masters, or even an early activation of the formations. But it seemed the Nightmare monster thought about such a move and didn't mind what he was doing right now.
William didn't intervene to stop the ongoing plan. He knew taking down these hills mattered a lot in the upcoming hard times.
Things didn't change for the worse unless on the sixth day. By then, the hills were mostly removed, and one side got totally cleared from all the hills.
This was the side led by his guild masters. Thomas seemed to do magic wonders out there. And William expected such a result.
Yet he never led his forces into the middle of that region. On top of all, he didn't know where this academy lied so far.
So, after taking down one side, he asked his vices to send any dark gold grade masters to scan the entire area, drawing detailed maps about it. And when these masters started to work, weird things started to happen.
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