"I don't get it," William felt puzzled by what she said. And soon enough he learnt about the things he didn't know before.
This world was indeed quite weird. The intelligent monsters here seemed to place their interest over the towns and cities. It was a weird attitude, but William didn't think much about it.
If the monsters sat their gazes on something, they'd attack it relentlessly. Even if they were led by intelligent monsters, they'd end up forming a grand monster tide.
But soon enough, William would realise how he greatly underestimated these monsters.
"Damn! There is no end to them," once they walked away from the town for a few kilometres and things started to turn south for the two of them. William didn't have an issue fighting monsters, but feeling like he was fighting against a monster tide was something else.
He didn't have much time to collect cores. The moment he'd launch one of his deadly attacks and more monsters would appear and come to ferociously attack him.
He kept releasing one attack after another endlessly for long hours. He consumed lots of elixirs to keep doing this. And when the sun rays appeared, announcing the arrival of the morning, he finally could heave a sigh of relief.
"You are indeed strong," from the side, Angelica just kept tagging along and did nothing but watch and run after him. She didn't fight a lot, as William didn't give any chance for her to do so. Not to mention she doubted if she attacked, she'd do any help at all.
"Give me the damn cores and materials," but as William was doing the dirty work, he gave her the task of collecting cores and materials if possible.
"There aren't that many, just few hundreds," she tossed a ring to him, "I didn't have much time to claim more cores or materials."
"It's enough," William was sitting on the ground, in the middle of a grand forest. He didn't know when they got here, and right now he was gasping for breaths, dying to sleep.
"I warned you before, it's quite dangerous to go out at night," she seemed to care about him, but she said these words while smiling as if she was finding his current situation a bit amusing.
"I never expected things to turn out this way," he sighed, "monsters standing outside towns and cities, trying to hunt down anyone going in and out from these are weird."
"This is just normal," she shrugged, "and don't take it wrong, with such grand numbers around our town, a monster tide was expected to arrive in a few days."
"And now?"
"Thanks to you, it will take weeks for them to gather more monsters," she laughed, "you shall expect a handsome reward from my clan and others."
"I just want to rest," William took an exhaustion cleansing potion out and gulped its content, "don't tell me it's like this every night."
"Only around towns and cities," she looked around, "we are inside the desolate forest, a place that's known for many mysterious things happening at its core. Let's evade that place and circle around it."
"What things?" William seemed a bit interested to hear more. And yet what she knew were bits and pieces of rumours and nothing much.
She spoke about people going there and never coming back, rumours about hearing loud thunder explosions, rising of weird flare of rays in the heart of starless nights, and even trembling of the ground around the core.
She knew nothing concrete about that region. And William wanted to go and see what was in there, but he knew his current power wasn't sufficient to do something like this.
"Are we going to rest here till the night?" she looked at his exhausted state, and he shook his head while slowly standing up.
"Let's go," he already took a potion to cleanse his fatigue, and it started to work right away. It was enough to cleanse his physical exhaustion, but the mental stress was still there.
As she said, monsters didn't appear in the same way he suffered from last night. They walked for hours, meeting a few groups of monsters, but William didn't have the will or mind to kill or hunt any down.
During their walk, he kept devouring a few cores from time to time. The devoured cores helped not only in increasing his spirit power, but to also relieve the mental stress he suffered.
The forest was something that looked familiar to him. And that made him walk in a much better mood. The two rested every five hours for a half or so and kept walking like this even during the night.
William made sure to review the map from time to time, making sure he wasn't walking towards or close from any town or city.
The forest expanded to cover a big area in the map, and that meant it was indeed vast. If he wanted to cross it from one end to another, he'd take at least a few months in doing so.
But unlike what it was in the tiny world, the forest had few towns scattered along its vast course. William tried to evade any town, but in the end, he couldn't evade everything.
"These hills give me bad vibes," William was standing in front of a grand series of hills, one that reminded him of the dark master lairs in the tiny world he came from.
He knew dark masters in this world, especially in this continent, didn't need to hide or anything. But seeing the hills in front of him made him recall bad memories.
"These are normal hills found in the forest," Angelica didn't get why he got stirred by these hills, "they are just normal."
She didn't get why he acted like this, but she could already feel how vigilant he was. And even with her words, she didn't feel he got better or anything. Instead, he seemed to raise his vigilance quite a bit.
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