William got his reasons. While she was trying to convince him that everything was alright, he spread his spirit sense and noticed the presence of monsters in the heart of these hills.
"This reminds me of the Scarlet Bears," he didn't recognise the type of the monsters in the heart of this place. They looked like cats, big in size, with thick fur like foxes. He didn't know what was with furs, but he cared more about how these monsters acted as if they were entrapped inside that place.
"Wait here," he didn't want to carry a dead weight over his shoulders when he expected a big battle, "don't come forward, no matter what," he didn't wait for her to say anything, and changed directly into his spirit form.
Since he stepped into this world, and something seemed to stir up his dormant snake spirit. He didn't know if this was a good or bad thing, but at least his fox spirit was now merging with the snake with each time he transformed.
She watched him run forward, heading towards the hills without even adding another word or explaining anything. He didn't bother to explain anything and just went towards the hills.
"The entrance is always well covered, but…" William already invaded lots of hills during the past five years with his guild, uprooting what remained hidden from the dark forces around the Scorching Lands area.
He knew the right way to do it. Trying to look for the entrance by searching the hills wouldn't do. It was much harder than finding a needle in a haystack. The right way to do it was by removing the ground and digging the entrance out.
He had an earth element, but he didn't plan to waste his spirit power in doing it this way. It was better by using his attacks, and that would also add more damage to the hills and the bases hidden underneath them if there was any.
William ran around one hill, stacking fifty attacks before releasing them. A fierce explosion occurred, and with it lots of rubbles flew in the air, exposing a deep hole and with it a gap that appeared down there.
"I found you," William mumbled when he saw the hole on the ground. It wasn't big, but it was enough evidence to tell him this was a lair of dark masters.
By habit he waited on the side, waited for the dark masters to come out and flood the world outside of their bases. Every single time he raided any of these dark bases, dark masters would come out not only from the base he attacked but from all other bases as well.
He prepared everything he got, his grenades, his flying weapons, and even prepared the ring filled with deadly offensive arrays. Yet in the end nothing happened.
"What's wrong here?!" William was puzzled by this. Not a single soul came out from the hole in front of him, not from any other hills around, "perhaps this is just an empty base… Let me try other hills then."
As he started to run deeper, he attacked and uncovered lots of bases. And yet he didn't sniff a trace of a single dark master.
"I need to go inside and see by myself," William didn't question himself, knew he found a grand lair of dark masters. But the lack of his enemies made him quite unsettled. So, he didn't hesitate and went inside the last base he just uncovered.
The entrance was narrow at first, headed towards the bottom of the ground, before it slowly started to grow wider. After walking for almost half an hour, the tunnel started to expand exponentially, exposing a grand space underneath the hill.
"This is indeed a base… But why is it abandoned?" William could see lots of stuff at the ground, thrown out as if the people who lived here left in a hurry or something.
When he examined these, the first thing he found was the thick layer of dust covering everything. There were lots of things thrown on the ground, covered with a layer of dust and rocks that covered most of their shapes.
William could tell this place wasn't just abandoned in a hurry, but it seemed like it was collapsing on those who used to live here. And that was something that added more puzzlement to him, instead of answers.
"Wow! You discovered an ancient site, what luck!"
Just when he was lost in solving this mystery, he heard Angelica's voice coming from behind. He turned and gave her a stern look. "Didn't I tell you to wait?"
"There is no danger here," she seemed more interested and excited about this base. From the look on her face, jumping around and inspecting everything with such a big smile on her face, Wiliam got the impression of her finding a treasure trove.
"Do you know what this place is?" as he lacked any intel, he had to ask.
"Of course! You aren't from here, so it's expected you won't know about this," she spoke without even looking at him, continuing to meddle with the thrown-out stuff everywhere.
"And?" William waited for her to speak, but for a few minutes she kept picking things and cleaning them up as if she was looking for a gem or something.
"Few hundred years ago, something big happened in our continent," she finally said, yet she didn't stop what she was doing, "according to records, a violent earthquake happened, not only one but a series of them. No one knew what caused the ground to shake, or what made it tremble for days. The result was for many hidden bases of the dark masters to get abandoned. And that marked the beginning of their crisis back then, the start of their later uprising in our continent until ruling over it today."
"Hmm…" William got what happened here at last. The entrances of the bases were tightly sealed and didn't show any signs of breaking through or anything. In return, the place inside looked like a mess.
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