"As if you can leave here," she sighed, "this is a dream everyone wanted."
"Speaking like there is no exit from here," William said in much doubt, "as this world is linked to others, it must have an exit as well."
"That's the theory," she sighed, "the only proven way out from here lies in the same place you came from."
"I checked but didn't find any way out from here out there," William shook his head, and she simply sighed.
"The exit lies in the monsters themselves," she paused, knowing how impossible it was to do this task, "to open the exit, you have to kill the monsters. And not only any monster, but the same one you already came from."
"Damn!" William now regretted listening to Sloth's advice from before. And without any hesitation, he took out a spirit power replenishing elixir, consumed it, before gushing out tons of spirit power to ignite the golden scroll he took from Sloth.
He saw the scroll absorbing his power and shone brighter and brighter, giving Angelica standing on his side a scare. She distanced herself as the scroll released torrents of air, before it finally surrounded William inside a bubble of golden fog.
The moment the bubble got formed, William knew the scroll was activated. He didn't risk wasting any moment and said in a hurry what he wanted. And as he expected, the scroll didn't last more than thirty seconds before dimming out, and the bubble vanished.
William told Sloth to search for the monster they came from its windstorm and keep themselves on top of it. He didn't have time to explain anything else, so just added the word urgent to his words, hoping that Sloth would get the message and listen to his advice.
"What's that?"
"It's a toy of mine," William stored the scroll away, "is your home near?"
"Not that far from here," she got that William hated anyone spying on his things, "let's evade this place. Next, we'll arrive at the Grand Plains where most of the people live in this part of the continent."
William followed her around, while asking more questions about this world. According to her, there wasn't a single academy here. On the road, he asked for a map and luckily, she got one.
"This world is indeed massive," William could tell this just by looking at the map. She pointed out towards two small dots on it, resembling the place William came from and the place of her home.
The two dots were closely located, despite them having tons of distance apart. Comparing this towards the rest of the world made William realise how massive this world was. And according to her, this world expanded on a regular basis, once every three years.
This map was one that described the world before two of such expansion processes. Yet she didn't think much would change from this old map.
"How do you draw maps then?" William was interested in knowing the way.
"We have masters who are blessed with space powers. They can scan the world and draw maps of it."
"For real?!" William wanted one of those to try out some sort of space cracking techniques.
"Don't bother, they can only use their powers limited to this world," she seemed to get what he wanted, "trying something like breaking the shackles of the world using their space elements is a futile endeavour."
"Won't harm to try, right?" he kept his hopes high, and she could only sigh in return.
"Let's forget about how weak and limited their powers are, to find one of these is much harder than finding a needle in a haystack. Not to mention if you want to hire someone known by these powers, you have to pay a scary amount of wealth, something I hardly believe you can afford."
"This hard?" William didn't like what he heard.
"They live in the big empires," she pointed towards the map, "the closest one from here will take you around half a year to arrive at. Not to mention all of the especially talented masters are closely related to the royal families. It's impossible to try and find them on your own."
"..."
William didn't intend to take part in the contest back at the Novistic kingdom, but that didn't mean he wanted to spend years in this world.
He tried to train before and failed. The spirit power in this world was quite berserk, hard to contain. He didn't try to devour any cores yet, as he didn't get any so far.
The monsters he killed before got thrown far away from him. And he left with Angelica in a hurry. So, he wanted to meet monsters again to test their cores.
If the cores proved to be useful, then he'd consider staying here until he'd raise up his power. But if not, then it was better to return back and continue training by the old school.
He didn't spot a single monster for days! The entire area that was filled with the explosive pearls was simply gigantic. And he and others had to take long routes to bypass them safely.
It seemed these pearls weren't just deadly to humans, but also to monsters as well. William kept chatting with Angelica about lots of things, and he learnt that alchemy and forging were quite advanced in this world.
This was thanks to the high concentration of spirit power in the plants and ores. The overall might of any product was determined initially by the amount of spirit power stored within the raw materials used.
William could get that, as he could get how hard it was to make something on high grade. Artisans and alchemists got a much higher standard here than in the world he came from. They were well respected and sought out by many powers in the world.
Angelica spoke a lot about her people, and William knew the overall structure of powers in this world depended entirely over clans.
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