There wasn't a single city around the path he selected. But that didn't help him in the end.
William didn't know that the seal he had wasn't that simple. It carried the scent of the Hot Snow lands, and it'd grow thicker the more he resisted it.
If he let the seal work its effect and didn't partially break it using his arrays, then he wouldn't have faced such a weird situation against monsters.
It wasn't the problem of monsters having strong senses to his battles or humans, but it was because of him acting like a magnet for trouble. Anywhere he went, his scent would start to spread out fast, covering up an area of tens of kilometres around, turning monsters crazy and drawing them all towards him.
This was all related to the true origin of this seal. The ones who were behind such a thing in the first place made sure that no one with the ability to break this curse would survive long enough in this world, fearing to teach another master the right way to undo the seal or something.
William was fighting against a big scheme, one that was much bigger than what he initially thought.
William continued his adventure forward, while what he was doing was all spotted and closely watched by the masters sent out by various cities.
If they didn't see him change into a form of a monster, with one tail and fox ears, they'd have doubted such tales and would have mistaken him for a monster.
Yet it happened right before their eyes. And then more shocking things happened. William kept fighting densely packed monsters all the time, and didn't enjoy long minutes of rest. For a reason they didn't get, monsters ran from various regions towards here, coming at him and trying to take him down.
And yet they all failed, either by dying on his hands or by him running quite fast. As they watched this happening for many days, they started to notice something more bizarre than that.
"His power… Is it rising up or is it just me?" one of them asked using spirit telepathy, and others responded with the same doubts.
There wasn't a single incident before, when one master would grow strong by simply fighting. They kept watching, and such doubt was confirmed after the passage of two weeks.
When they relayed such news back to their friends and leaders at the city, the ones there questioned such intel. But as all of them confirmed it, there was no room for doubt.
"He must be a special master, one who can rise up in power with more fights," one of the formidable masters leading one city's envoy said, and many nodded in agreement.
"I believe that's the reason behind his decision back then," another said, referring to William's unexplained and illogical decision about going out and adventure at dangerous places.
"Shall we give him a helping hand or what?" This question kept repeating during the past two weeks. At first, masters didn't want to help to see what William was capable of. And when they heard about his ability to change into a monstrous form, something they confirmed later on from Angelica, they decided to keep watching, to learn how he did it, and what abilities he had, different from other masters in the world.
"Let's watch from the shadows," one master said, "if those despicable dark masters appeared, then we'll let our masters deal with them."
"I want to see him fight!"
"Me too!"
"Then let them record what they are seeing using dark gold recording orbs," another said, "they have the ability to record anything one's spirit sense is seeing."
"Good point."
Like this William's fight and struggle turned into a way of amusement for all of the masters, either following him or back in the city.
The hero of this tale was fighting like crazy without a single moment of rest. He consumed elixirs like running water, and he started to use lots of healing potions and elixirs as well.
"I never had to use a single healing elixir in normal battles for a long time already," he sighed after the passage of ten more days. By this point, he could already see the outer grand layer of the swarm zone from far away.
He was still far away from this zone, but it felt like that place emitted a special aura of itself, pushing away all the monsters despite their desire to eat William.
William was now standing in his place, looking at the grand collection of monsters that kept gathering up. They marked the place around, forming a circular line that not a single monster dared to cross.
He was now standing less than five kilometres away from that line, watching them while eating and drinking. After standing in his place for a long hour, he decided to sit down and rest.
"If you don't dare to step in, then let me show you part of what you made me taste," after resting on the ground for ten hours straight, William decided to go and kill a few monsters.
The monsters never dared to step in that line, yet they never stopped coming towards here. After all these hours, the sight in front of him was one that was filled with tons of monsters, filling the world to the horizon without an end.
He knew trying to kill all of them was a futile dream. But he just wanted to vent out part of his frustration swelling inside him after getting chased and hurt for all these days.
If he got his spirit body, he'd not hesitate to try and kill all of them. After all, all of these were cores that could help him advance. But he knew trying to bypass that protective line, going out there to grab these cores was like a death wish for him at this moment.
He went towards that line, and started to use his long-distanced attacks, killing lots of monsters for hours.
Follow current nov𝒆ls on freew(𝒆)bnov𝒆l.(c)om